An Anders/O'Bitz Single featuring Evelyn Anders
It was late summer of 2018 and I heard my just-turned-eleven-year-old daughter, Evelyn (Evy), playing piano and singing in the living room. I asked her whose song she was singing and she said it was her own. She only had a part of the first verse done, but it sounded great:
Don't let me fall / Don't let me break / Don't let me suffer / Every single mistake
These were Evy's original lyrics--not far from the opening lyrics of "Searise". We kept most of the same words and the same piano part she was playing back then. At the time, she said she didn't really know where to take it from there. I told her I loved it and asked if Mark O'Bitz and I could help her finish it. She agreed, we finished the song, and ... the song sat around for about two years.
Around the same time Mark and I finished "Searise" that summer, we had just finished Of All These Things and were well into our work on Ghosts To Ancestors. About a month or so later, I decided to do a concept album on the George Saunders novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, I had just read. Mark and I took some time off from Ghosts To Ancestors to write and release the demo for "Matterbloomlight." You can hear Evy singing the backing vocals with her then eight-year-old sister, Lilah, on this 2018 demo--completed almost two years before American Bardo came out.
You can hear Evy sing the lead with me on "Searise," starting about halfway through. You can hear Lilah, now eleven, singing backing vocals with us towards the end.
We didn't include "Searise" (what we used to call "Evy's Song") on either American Bardo or Ghosts To Ancestors because it didn't feel quite right style-wise. I think I knew that it would be released as a single one day.
In December of 2020, I had just released the first installment of our "music in the time of coronavirus" collection, "Careful Now My Son," and we were finishing up Sirens Go By. I was hoping to find a music video artist to do a video for one of my favorite songs from Sirens Go By, "Always Almost," so I sent the song and a few others to Basque artist Joseba Elorza (Greenday).
Joseba was very interested in working with us, but he liked "Searise" the best of all the songs I had sent to him--and he had always wanted to do a climate change project.
I noticed that Joseba had a lot of space and astronaut imagery in his prior work. I asked if we could use my father's photo, "Earthrise," in the video and Joseba was game. "Earthrise" really fit with the music video's narrative, especially since "Earthrise" is considered an icon of the environmentalist movement.
The inclusion of my father's photograph in a music video for a song written by his son and granddaughter makes the video a three-generation project for the Anders involved in it. The name "Searise" is derived from the name "Earthrise."
"Earthrise" - Taken by William Anders in 1968 during the Apollo VIII mission, the first mission around the moon.
For more on "Earthrise" see my blog post, "'Earth Rise' and Earthrise."
(©2018 Eric Anders/Evelyn Anders/Mark O’Bitz)
Don’t let us fall
Don’t let us break
Don’t let us suffer
Your mistakes
We won’t know
And we won’t find
A working world
You leave behind
You raised us so
We’d be more caring, see
Before you go
Clean the mess you leave
We don’t want
Left your sullied world
And we don’t want
Your betrayal so
I … I don’t want to be
Pushed up the mountains
By a rising sea
I … I don’t understand
How you make a sea
Of a promised land
Oooh Oh
Oooh Oh
You raised us so
We’d be more caring, see
Before you go
Clean the mess you leave
We don’t want
Left your sullied world
And we don’t want
This betrayal so
I … I don’t want to be
Pushed up the mountains
By a rising sea
I … I don’t understand
How you make a sea
Of a promised land
Oooh Oh
Oooh Oh
We need to know
How much time
Just got it started
Living life
We need to know
Released March 5, 2021
Written by Eric Anders, Evelyn Anders, and Mark O’Bitz
Produced and Mixed by Mike Butler
Mastered by Jamal Ruhe for Listen Up Mastering
Cover Design and Music Video by Joseba Elorza
Eric Anders and Evelyn Anders - Vocals
Eric Anders, Evelyn Anders, and Lilah Anders - Backing Vocals
Mike Butler - Drums and Percussion, Bass, Electric Guitars, Lap Steel
David Yuter - Piano
Mark O’Bitz - Piano