BMGFormer Youngbloods frontman Jesse Colin Young released a new solo album, Dreamers, earlier this month. The 14-track collection features finds the veteran folk-rocker reflecting on a variety of contemporary political and social issues.
Young tells ABC Radio that Dreamers came together following a several-year period during which he’d nearly stopped making music while dealing with Lyme disease.
Jesse says he got inspired to play and write music again after seeing his son Tristan perform at his senior recital at Boston’s Berklee College of Music with some other students.
“[T]hese young people just blew me away,” Young notes. “They were playing fusion, but no vocals, and I could immediately hear myself singing in the middle of this…[And] I said [to Tristan afterwards], ‘I want these Berklee kids all around me.’ And he agreed to help me put a band together.”
Among the topical songs on the album is “They Were Dreamers,” about the children of illegal immigrants in the U.S. who are facing potential deportation because of the current administration’s policies.
“I don’t want to lose the Dreamers,” Jesse declares. “[W]e’ve got 800,000 young people that want to work, that want to dream, they want to build a life, like all of our ancestors who came here…[T]hat’s what makes this country go ’round and gives us strength.”
Another standout tune on Dreamers is the #MeToo Movement-themed “For My Sisters,” which Young says he wrote after a request by his wife, Connie.
“[She said,] ‘I wish you would write a song for my sisters,'” Jesse recalls, admitting that he initially thought she meant her familial sisters, until she stressed, ‘No…all of my sisters.'”
Young says watching of the Women’s March that followed President Trump‘s inauguration served as further inspiration for the song.
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