"Surrounding Me"

photo credit: John Butler

I’ve received many messages asking about this one song we played each night on the last tour. It’s never been recorded and has only been documented in the live show setting.

I wrote a song called All My People during the pandemic, and it had several iterations. At one point, I remember trying to decide between three different choruses I’d written. The refrain that stuck in the recording goes, “one weird dream away / fading out again”.

But there was another chorus version in the mix that got left behind in the process:

All my people surrounding me
All my people surrounding me
In the skin where I’m supposed to be
Giving everyone the best of me
And with that weight lifted off of me
And every hour still in front of me
All my people surrounding me

I even wrote a bridge to attach to it:

All my people like leaves in the weather
All weightless together
All crow’s feet and fingertips
And all their voices will bleed into one
Whole exceeding the sum
How I needed that hum

If I’m honest, I feared that these affirmational lyrics were painfully earnest or verging on preachy… I worried that it could be conveyed that I was trying to accrue a flock, so to speak. The song isn’t about being followed - the song is about being unfettered by the self, and in flow with people you love. It’s about the sense of contentment we receive when we feel understood.

I played it for the band when we were discussing how we might craft the show finale for this tour and they encouraged me to give it a whirl.

photo credit: John Butler

We played this song each night using illuminated instruments that we could carry throughout the crowd. I’ve attached a recording of it below from the Imperial Theatre in Saint John, NB. Normally these recordings would be behind the paywall but I’m making this one available to all for free. If you want to hear the whole concert, or more than a hundred other concerts, you can scope out the Live Recordings vault (which spans back to the early early days!).

Anyhow - as I’ve already released another separate “elsewhere” iteration of the song All My People, I’ve decided to call this song Surrounding Me instead. It really is a different song, even though it shares a common lyric. Maybe one day, I’ll record it properly, but perhaps not - my gut says it’s meant to live with humans in a room.