Singled Out: Baldy Crawlers' Bring Me a Flower
(aM) Baldy Crawlers just released the new single "Bring Me a Flower" and to celebrate Martin Maudal tells us about the inspiration for the track. Here is the story:
The moment I saw the words Vigilantes Oscuros, the words for Bring Me a Flower started dropping on my head. Songs happen in all kinds of ways, but this one fell on me and was fully written in 10 minutes.
The folklore of the "dark watchers" of the Santa Lucia mountains above Big Sur has been around for literally centuries and is known to several cultures. For me, scientific explanations for these apparitions aren't nearly as important or interesting as what they *mean* to those who see them. And it's a wonderfully atmospheric environment for a song!
Legends often don't really grab me though until there's a particular story. In this case, I read of a woman who spoke of her mother's relationship to these Vigilantes Oscuros. She would go up into the mountains and leave candy and other sweets on a particular rock where she had seen them from.
Now whatever a modern American wants to say about it, this woman says her mother swore to her last day, that one day when she'd gone back up in a very dark time for her, she found a flower laid out on the rock exactly where she'd left some candy.
This gave me both title and bridge, but what was the song really *about*? And the story of literally anyone coming to the US from anywhere in the world in hope of a better life, only to meet the inhumanity of masked and armed kidnappers poured out almost faster than I could write it down.
Sure, there was anger as I wrote it. But the song turned out to be better than what *I* felt. It turned out to be about more than mere anger, but about endurance and hope... and a future that included those who sing.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below
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