The song is about Harper Lee’s ability to describe the complexities of growing up with the irreconcilable contradictions inherent in American culture through the beautiful and heart-wrenching telling in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Harper

I wrote this song for my dear friend Tim Lyons, who passed away last year. Our lives were interwoven for more than 30 years; he was an encyclopedic music lover who introduced me to many bands and musical styles and once got me an audition with the BoDeans. He was the kind of friend you have for a lifetime, whether or not he's with you physically.

Timothy

Birds and Ships

The Mighty Rutabagas perform the Psych Furs' classic.

Ghost In You

Sixteen Days

Shine On

The Mighty Rutabagas offer this take on U2s classic that features unique harmony line!

(C) Will Hector, 2019. The Mighty Rutabagas doing their part for the homegrown music scene in the Bay Area!

This Life

This collection represents two projects. The four cover songs are demos made by my performing acoustic music project, the Mighty Rutabagas.

Harper and Timothy are songs I wrote. Timothy is for a dear friend who died unexpectedly. Harper honors Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird in anticipation of the release of her new book. It’s about her clarity and artistry in naming the impact of racial and economic injustices on the fabric of society, particularly how it shapes children. 

In addition to juxtaposing the unconscionable racist killings in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, New York City, in 2014 (too soon replaced as the latest heinous act by the tragedy at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina) with the jury’s conviction of an innocent black man in 1930s Maycomb, Alabama, I modeled a few lines from the song after a few of the many brilliant lines from the book. 

The line Ms. Maudie says to Scout, affirming Atticus' telling Jem it's a sin to kill a mockingbird, is "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." I used this language to pay homage to Harper Lee’s searing insight in the song’s line: “You sang your heart out for us, Harper.”

I also modeled the line at the end of the first verse: “But Scout hears the mockingbird so clear and it don’t sound like fear” after the book’s theme of fear, which appears profoundly in Tom Robinson’s running from the scene not as a fear of being caught but a realized fear of being accused, and in Scout’s overcoming fear of Boo Radley’s house, among other things, as she grows up. In this case, if the mockingbird represents innocence or righteousness, it has nothing to fear.