"The Magical Flying Rowan Tree" is for those people in our lives who protect us with their joy and an earthen prayer for when they lose it. (Dedicated to C.R.E.G, defender of the good).

LYRICS
They named that child for a tree that flies 
with the fairies of the woods
Long fingers waltz like magic batons, 
tiptoes tappin’, roots in dirt old as earth

Rowan flies above the door. Rowan, child, you guard our joy
Rowan flies above the door. Rowan, child, you guard … us

We’re lost out here, child. We wander the miles. 
Wicked riddles bewitch us. 
Your sister the rose lays her thorns in the road, 
but the sun laughs, bright, when you light up the sky

The roots are strong in this holy-rollin’ grove, 
down in the soil where they cling to one another
The rowan tree fell, blood rain from the sky; 
mountain kings, winter deities keep hold

CREDITS
from The Highway Moves the World, track releases December 3, 2021

Jesse James DeConto (ASCAP CLARENDON STREET PRESS): vocals, guitar
Jon DePue: bass
Scott McFarlane: drums
David Wimbish: audio production, guitar, organ
Adam Gonsalves/Telegraph: mastering

The Highway Moves the World

The Magical Flying Rowan Tree

I wrote "(Not All) The Boys Will Be Boys" out of watching my kids grow into adolescence and start to navigate the patriarchal world we've known. Like all of us, they've had to explore their own gender and sexuality within the context of deep disappointment and I daresay disgust, without exaggeration, at the way men have behaved in our past and in our present. I wanted to capture the fighting spirit I saw in my children and in all the women and allies who have struggled against toxic masculinity in the #MeToo movement and in the Women's Marches, this Fourth Wave of Feminism. 

My collaborator Bernardo Tirelli, an Italian animator, rendered the fight against patriarchy with an allegory. I hope you can feel the emotions of the music, the lyrics, and the imagery at both a personal and a societal level. I offer a special thank-you to Tori, Sarah, Rebecca, Katie & Caroline for singing the protest with me. -- Jesse James DeConto, singer-songwriter + guitar

lyrics
Who's the one to keep you safe?
From what you don't know you don't know?
I know you know; you're the knowing girl
I know you know that this glowing world
is a shine put on synthetic pearls

The good old boys, the princes, the kings
they pass the scepters, kiss the rings
They wanna put one on your calloused finger
but your fist is raised, your fist is raised

You sing, "No, no, not if the boys will be boys."

Mama's truth, you should never hear
You knew the pain before you could feel it
Regret's a shield, but regret will deceive you
And you could lose her memories

Keep singing, "No, no, not if the boys will be boys."

You can love who you wanna love
And you can love no one at all
But, darlin', love, love, it's all we've got
And trust is the life worth living

credits
from The Highway Moves the World, track released January 21, 2022 
Jesse James DeConto, singer-songwriter + guitar
Caroline DeConto, Katie DeConto, Tori Gingerich Elliott, Rebecca Kuhns, Sarah Shearin: vocals
David Wimbish: audio production
Scott McFarlane: drums
Jonathan DePue: bass
Garrett Langebartels: guitar
Adam Gonsalves/Telegraph: mastering

(Not All) The Boys Will Be Boys

"Sometimes, Brothers" comes from that experience where someone you love is suffering, and there's a lot of miles between you, and the distance means that you can't fully understand the pain they're in, much less do anything about it. It's that feeling of big empathy and big helplessness. -- Jesse James DeConto, acoustic guitar + lead vocals

Scott McFarlane - drumkit
Jonathan DePue - bass
David Wimbish - audio production + piano + organ
Charlie Humphrey - trumpet
Caroline DeConto, Steven DeConto, Katie DeConto, Sarah Shearin, Tori Elliott-Gingerich, Derek Skeen, Fleming Talton - additional vocals
Kevin Williams- additional production
Adam Gonsalves/Telegraph - mastering

Sometimes, Brothers

"A vaincre sans peril, un triomphe sans gloire," 
Pierre Corneille, LE CID
(To win without risk is to triumph without glory.)

"Au Cheval" is a song for my brother and former bandmate Steven, who loves to gamble on blackjack, wait in line for four hours to taste America's best cheeseburger and do whatever else it takes to live life to its fullest. -- Jesse

LYRICS
He says, 'boys, it's time to take a shot.'
'Tick tock, goes the cosmic clock.'
You only live, only love, 
only live what what you want
Breathe deep, the air intoxicates

Take it by the bottle
Flip a nickel, double down
Cash the chips, scatter gold
Suck the marrow from the bones

At Jack's black deck, he won't leave a dime
He'll take the hit, he's too bold for the grind
The risk's a rush, the thrill's a ride
He'll raise the stakes, he'll roll the dice

Take it by the bottle
Flip a nickel, double down
Cash the chips, scatter gold
Suck the marrow from the bones

Take it au cheval
Flip a nickel, double down
Cash the chips, scatter gold
Suck the marrow from the bones

au cheval, au cheval
a vaincre sans peril
on triomphe sans gloire


CREDITS
from The Highway Moves the World, track released February 26, 2021
(c) 2021 Jesse James DeConto (ASCAP, Clarendon Street Press), all rights reserved

Produced and engineered by David Wimbish at Arbor Ridge Studios
Mastered by Greg Abate at Neon Audio
Jesse James DeConto, vocals + electric guitar
David Wimbish, electric guitar
Jon DePue, bass
Scott McFarlane, drums

Au Cheval

The Highway Moves The World

Blood In My Eyes

Scott McFarlane came up to me one Sunday night in 2015, a few months after I started a singalong series at Fullsteam Brewery here in Durham where we live. I'd been hiring musicians to form a band for each event, but I didn't have the funding to keep doing that, so I'd started leading by myself on acoustic guitar. Scott offered to start playing drums, and around that same time Bill Turner approached me and offered to play bass, and we suddenly had a band for what became Songs for Humans - Durham.

Pretty soon after that, Scott played a gig with The Pinkerton Raid, and then he just kept playing them. By that time, Jon DePue was the band's bass player, and we had a good, long run together, the three of us, from about 2016 to 2020. We made two full-length albums and toured between Charleston, Chicago and, for alliteration's sake, let's say Chicopee, Mass., even though it was really Brattleboro, Vt., at the northeastern apex. 

Scott's mother Helen Kendrick McFarlane is British. He used to talk so much about the Wirral peninsula, between Liverpool and the Welsh border, where his ancestors had lived. He got us singing the Liverpool FC fight song "You'll Never Walk Alone" at our singalongs. It was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein for the musical CAROUSEL but made famous by Liverpool's Gerry & The Pacemakers. Scott told us about getting married at St. Bartholomew's Church in Thurstaston, just like his parents and grandparents had before that; about helping one of his grandfather's heifers give birth to a calf that Scott named Daffodil; about his uncle Mike's band playing music on the family farm.

By the time I was writing songs for THE HIGHWAY MOVES THE WORLD in 2018-2019, I had ingested a landscape and storylines from Scott's narration. I wrote "Merseybeat" about that place and the music that Scott loved.

Just about the time I was working on this video in January 2022 with the Russian animator Alex Dar, I heard from Scott that Helen had died a couple of months shy of turning 65. She'd been fighting cancer off and on for decades. She'd gotten to hear the final audio mix of this song about her home before she passed. Helen and Jim, Scott's dad, had been fixtures at our local shows. I'm sad we won't get to play it for her at a show, but the music goes on in part because of her support and the life she lived. 
-- Jesse James DeConto - singer-songwriter, acoustic & electric guitars

Scott McFarlane - drums
Jonathan DePue - bass
Garrett Langebartels - electric guitar
David Wimbish - audio production
Adam Gonsalves/Telegraph - mastering
Alex Dar - video animation

Merseybeat

Basement Tapes

In Your Eyes

Every Memorial Day Weekend, the roar of the Indianapolis 500 can be heard across the city. Five miles east on 16th Street, Martindale-Brightwood neighbors hear the roar of Interstate 70, which the government cut through their midst 50 years ago. 
  
In the '20s and '30s, Charlie Wiggins was known as the "Negro Speed King." Between 1926 and 1934, he won the prestigious Gold and Glory Sweepstakes, the national championship for Black drivers, four times. His secret was engineering his "Wiggins Special" to run on a mixture of gasoline and jet fuel. He could run the entire 100-mile race on one tank of fuel.

Wiggins was a sought-after mechanic and in 1928 drove a test-run in his car that his friend Harry MacQuinn was going to race. White fans mobbed the pit at Kentucky Speedway, angry that a Black man was driving, and police took him into protective custody. A police report said his arrest was for "speeding." 

He never got to drive in his hometown's signature race. Bill Cummings won the race in 1934 with Wiggins as his mechanic, though Cummings' Boyle Products team had to sneak Charlie into the speedway by claiming he was their janitor. In 1991, Willy T. Gibbs became the first Black driver to compete in the Indy 500. 

The Pinkerton Raid extends a special thank-you to Joanna Taft and City Gallery for hosting us in their 48-hr Songwriting Residency and to Shirley Webster, who has lived in Martindale-Brightwood since 1943 and watched the construction of Interstate 70 split her neighborhood. "It was devastating for a community," she said. 

Jesse James DeConto | singer-songwriter, electric guitar
David Wimbish | audio production, acoustic guitar, organ
Jonathan DePue | bass
Scott McFarlane | drums
Caroline DeConto, Katie DeConto, Derek Skeen, Tori Elliott-Gingerich, Sarah Shearin | background vocals

Wiggins Special (Freedom Ain't Free)

After one of those bar gigs where you're playing for a roomful of people, but there are only a few who are really engaging with the music, I was complaining to my friend and former drummer Scott about just wanting to concentrate our shows with more of the real fans all in one place and to avoid those situations where the crowd is too distracted to have the kind of experience we're trying to create for them. "Why don't you write a song about those kinds of fans that you want?" Scott suggested. 

I sat with that for awhile, thinking about the real-life human beings who count themselves as our fans and we count as friends and who've consistently shown up for the human connection we have together over the span of years. It helped me to picture these people and remember who I'm doing this for. "If a Tree Fell" is one of those anthems, declaring our mission and purpose of bringing people together with music. By the time I finally got around to writing it, we were a few months into the pandemic lockdowns, really putting an exclamation point on my longing for that magical experience with an audience.  -- Jesse James DeConto, singer-songwriter



LYRICS
I’ve got an old Gibson, made from two
conceived in the fires of neglect
In a far-off forest, mahogany fell
whose ears were there to hear it?

The trees are swayin’ in the breeze
The sound is music when you hear it
Our bodies swayin’ in the breeze
The sound is music when you feel it 

These ivory keys, a centerpiece
The livin’ gather round ‘em
In these lonely 20s, can’t give them away
Just don’t play ‘em like we used to do

If I plucked my Gibson strings
would you sing along?
Our voices carrying in the wind
when breath don’t carry poison
Seabreeze, blow away that poison

IF A TREE FELL

"If a Tree Fell"

“Happy Xmas,” like “Imagine,” is one of those John Lennon justice songs that got seered into my psyche as a little kid in the ‘80s from my mom’s easy-listening radio. Without John’s naming what was wrong with the world in his songs, I don’t know if I would have studied philosophy or become a journalist or a songwriter or created anything intended to make the world a little kinder. For better or worse, this is one of the songs that made me care, made be believe it’s my responsibility to care.

JAGGED VACANCE: Winter Songs by Other People

Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Happy XMas (War Is Over)

find "THE VILLAGE" on your favorite streaming platforms or get your PATREON merch subscription at follow.thepinkertonraid.com/thevillage

FAN COMMUNITY: pinkertonraid.com/email-signup
MERCH + PERKS SUBSCRIPTION: patreon.com/thepinkertonraid/membership
BUY MERCH: pinkertonraid.com/merch
BANDCAMP: https://pinkertonraid.bandcamp.com/merch
BANDSINTOWN TOUR DATES: https://bnds.us/m8pinu

Did you ever notice that Wall Street uses some of the most dangerous beasts on earth as metaphors for the market's role in society? "The Village" is a reflection on human relationships and community as defenses against the monstrous forms of capitalism that are threatening our lives. "The Village" releases on Sept. 12, 2025. 
-- Jesse James DeConto: songwriter, bass, vocals

David Wimbish: rubber-bridge guitar, piano,
additional vocals, musical production

James Phillips: synthesizers, percussion,
additional vocals, engineering, mixing

Justin Longerbeam: mastering

"THE VILLAGE"
By Jesse James DeConto/The Pinkerton Raid
There’s a village on a mountain high
Whose walls are arms of love
It’s guarded by a hero throng
The creatures dare not come

The bulls run through the city streets
Trampling roses, seeing red
These waving flags just feed their rage
It’s a mad disease of fear
The herd stampedes right off the cliff
We escape by narrow trails

To a village on a mountain high
Whose walls are arms of love
Guarded by a hero throng
The creatures dare not come

The bears are sleeping in their caves
with their hibernating appetites
they hunger for what we have raised
those bears gonna eat our young
Unless we climb to higher ground
Where monsters have no power

The bulls will rage, the bears will roar
But we will stand our ground
The villagers surrender not
Our arms are bound as one

In a village on a mountain high
Whose walls are arms of love
Guarded by a hero throng
The creatures dare not come

The Village

Near the start of The Pinkerton Raid’s fourth full-length album, Where the Wildest Spirits Fly, songwriter Jesse James DeConto asks, “Where’s the star to lead us home?” Amid landscapes pigmented with pain, the question is a quest for meaning, in resistance to Camus’ absurdity and the Will-to-Power in the White House. And the answer, over and over again, in a repeating cycle of realistic truth-telling and undeterred hope, is simply this: We sing together.

For nearly three years, Jesse and other band members have been leading barroom sing-alongs back home in North Carolina, gravitating toward the songs that have soundtracked social movements since the 1940s: Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” Traci Chapman’s “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution,” and countless songs by Dylan, Guthrie and Seeger. Rather than chasing a particular sound, Jesse worked with producer David Wimbish (The Collection) and engineer Jeff Crawford (Skylar Gudasz) at Arbor Ridge Studios to serve the original but classic-sounding melodies and invite the listener to sing along. Drummer Scott McFarlane, bassist Jon DePue, saxophonist Tony Sali and guitarist Steven DeConto form the core of the band, and the new recordings captured the sing-along vibe with a choir joining in on the catchy choruses. 

The Pinkerton Raid has shared stages with The Soil & the Sun, The Ballroom Thieves, Annabelle's Curse, Forlorn Strangers, Lobo Marino, Lowland Hum, Noah Gundersen and Denison Witmer. The release of Tolerance Ends, Love Begins in 2017 brought the band from Durham to Chicago to Washington DC, with slots at the Festival for the Eno and Shakori Hills, a session at Daytrotter and critical acclaim from Paste, No Depression, Popdose, Aquarian Weekly and more. 

The title of the new album is a lyric from the song “Thin Places,” conjuring the Celtic idea of an earth charged with spirit. These songs were shaped by wanderings from the South to the Midwest to northern New England, and the band will bring them back on the road in 2018, in search of more thin places.

pinkertonraid

Popular tracks