STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS: “Cryin’ Shame”

Over the next few Mondays we’re going to walk you through the latest FE album and give you the stories behind the songs on The Cycle We’re Living In. We hope it gives you a little insight into who we are as people and what inspires our art.

First up: Track #1, “Cryin’ Shame”

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It may or may not surprise you to know that our faith is very important to us.  We certainly don’t market ourselves as a religious band or even set out to make our music with any sort of agenda.  But we all know that art is an expression of the way an artist sees and interprets the world around him, so as we unpack some of these songs you may begin to see how our world view is often revealed in our songwriting, whether in a love song or a song about cultural/social issues.  Hopefully as music lovers that will be interesting to you regardless of what world views you do or do not share with us.

That said, the idea for Cryin’ Shame came from some internal wrestling with some tough ideas about faith.  The pastor at my church did a series of sermons about the past, present and future of the Church (according to the Bible).  Two ideas continually grabbed me and I had a real hard time reconciling them: 1.) as believers in God it is important to pray and work to spread hope and pursue peace, and 2.) it’s going to get worse before it gets better.  I had a real hard time living with this tension.  Idea #1 gave me hope that I could do my part to make the world a better place and idea #2 kinda had me asking, “what’s the point?”  It’s hard to have faith in praying for people/the world when your pastor is reading passages about how dark the world will continue to get before it’s all over, and yet it was very clear he was also sharing about the importance of hope and spreading love and peace.  This song is an expression of the internal struggle between those two ideas rolling around in my head.  The central idea of this song is expressed in the bridge:

Cause it’s a cycle were living in / Keep on trying, keep on giving in

In other words, the world is not supposed to be this way, but I don’t know what I can possibly do about it.  So in living in this tension I “cycle” back and forth between the hope that I can make a difference and the haunting idea that it doesn’t matter how hard I try because the hurt in the world is so great.  By the end of this process hope is found in one idea:

And I don’t know what to do but leave it up to You (meaning God) ’cause I know it ain’t through….

This is the idea that I can at least hold onto the hope that it’s not over and there’s some role I can play, all the while coming to grips with living in the tension.  We all have to do this to some degree.  Here’s a practical example: We can try to stay as healthy and fit as possible.  Vitamins, excercise, diet, etc.  But we’re all going to get sick sometimes.  We’re all eventually going to die.  So do we all just say “screw it” and eat nothing but lard and lay on the couch all day?  Sounds pretty hopeless, right?  But there’s nothing we can do to avoid it.  However, we all (hopefully) want to make our lives worthwhile, and doing so is about learning to live in that tension and making what time we do have count for something.  To lose that perspective would be to lose hope, and to “just shake my head and keep on saying, ‘It’s a cryin’ shame.’“  This is a song about the internal struggle to find perspective.

*Side note: the original working lyric was “it’s a damn shame.” I know, edgy, right?