AMAB/ACAB Track-By-Track Breakdown

$5 (ft. Eve 6)

Let’s be real. This song is 2:22 of weaponized nostalgia. “$5” is a love letter to the DIY punk shows of my youth, and perhaps to myself as a young, idealistic activist musician. But it’s also a loving critique of that scene, and perhaps of myself too. I told WBUR that AMAB/ACAB is a punk album made by a 40-year-old mom, and I think that comes through in this song. I’m looking back over more than 20 years of basement shows and protests and asking, “What was it all for?”

I still hold the exact same ideals and politics that I did as a wide-eyed young punk throwing shows in bookstores and swooning over getting to open for Mischief Brew and Defiance, Ohio. But I also have a lot more perspective. I think “$5” is an attempt to tell a truer story about the early 2000s DIY scene. It doesn’t need a hagiography. There were beautiful moments, love and rage, and connection. There was also tremendous unchecked privilege, rampant patriarchy and thinly veiled racism. All of these things can be true at the same time–maybe realizing that is what it means to get old.

Bunker

This song took me on a journey with it. I started writing it in a moment of frustration–unable to figure out how to navigate a challenge in a really important relationship to me. But the process of writing the song helped me realize that, actually, I was the one who was wrong, in a way. It helped me open myself up to a more expansive idea of what love can look like in a world that’s burning around us.

I’ve been playing this one out at shows for a year or so and I find that it sort of has a different meaning for everyone. A lot of queer and trans and poly couples have come up to me asking about it, because it perhaps depicts the challenges and beauty of forging our own paths and creating our own ways to love each other when we refuse to follow the rigid archetypes that hetero-monogamy offers us.

Musically, this is one of my favorite songs on the record. I spent so many years playing unplugged after like six hardcore bands and shouting over the crowd to be heard. Recording AMAB/ACAB in my basement gave me the chance to explore a different side of myself musically, and especially vocally. As a trans person, the way I sing is highly visible and politicized. I’ve never wanted to change my voice just to make cis people comfortable. But feeling more free to sing in a higher register and tap into a gentler, dare I say more feminine delivery, felt really good to me. 

Problem (ft. Liz Berlin of Rusted Root)

This is one of those songs that just poured out of me in one sitting. I wrote and recorded the whole thing in a single GarageBand session (although Joe Andragna later added real live drums to replace the fake GarageBand ones I programmed for it). This might be one of the more universal songs on the album: who among us hasn’t felt stuck or hopeless in the face of problems that feel insurmountable? And how many of us don’t know what to do with ourselves if we don’t have a problem in front of us to solve? This song was originally just about personal life challenges, but I think it also speaks to this political moment, where it can be so hard to figure out a theory of change for how to meaningfully resist fascism, much less work toward a liberated and just world. It’s an anthem for all of us who were born giving a fuck and can’t rest unless we’re trying to make things a little less shitty.

Musically, it was fun to just bang out a straightforward early-2000s vibe pop-punk song, and the harmonies that Liz Berlin from Rusted Root added here just tie the whole thing together perfectly. 

Spray Paint

This song is a true story, and perhaps a bit of an anthem for elder millennials. I was in a high school math class when 9-11 happened, and got involved in both activism and music against the backdrop of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the first protests I ever helped organize was a student walkout against the war, and I later helped organize a rally on Boston Common that was supposedly the largest since the Vietnam War. Here’s the thing, though: it didn’t work. Once I was old enough to pay taxes, my tax dollars were still going to fund these “forever wars” in the Middle East, mass surveillance of immigrant communities in the US, and FBI crackdowns on earth and animal liberation activists.

Experiencing first-hand our collective failure to stop those wars radicalized me– it pushed me to ask deeper questions about the social, political, and economic systems that drive US imperialism. I have stayed involved in activism ever since. But “Spray Paint” is not just a nostalgic lookback, it’s a bit of a bleak question for us 30-40somethings: are things just going to keep getting worse? Were we born at the end of the “good times?” Were there ever any “good times” for marginalized people in this country? Most importantly: what are we gonna do about it?

From a musical perspective, I will fully admit this was my attempt to write a song “in the style of Boygenius.” Did I pull it off? You tell me. 

Pinkwashing (ft. Victoria Ruiz of Downtown Boys) 

I wrote this song more than three years ago, long before the most recent uptick in genocidal violence in Palestine. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been following this issue, because the genocide is not new. And neither is the cynical attempt to co-opt LGBTQ rights issues and use them to justify the unjustifiable. I’ve been a trans person speaking out about Palestine for more than a decade, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that “Hamas would throw you off a roof,” or similarly horrible things. Let’s be perfectly clear: these types of comments are not driven by concern for queer people’s safety; they’re driven by hatred of Arab and Muslim people, and with the explicit goal of convincing LGBTQ+ people to support the genocidal actions of the Israeli government, and the genocidal ideology behind it. 

But here’s the thing: it’s not working. Young people especially are just not falling for this bullshit anymore. The queer anti-Zionist Jewish community has been at the forefront of protests and occupations at colleges and universities and beyond opposing the genocide in Gaza and demanding accountability from the institutions enabling it. 

I was really honored to work with my friend Michael Flowers to create the video for this track. And the guest vocals from Victoria Ruiz (of Downtown Boys) brought a level of alarm and rage that I can only aspire to with my sadwhitegirl vocals lol. This song might get me uninvited from some pride festival main stage, but every word of it is the fucking truth.

Karaoke

This one is another true story. During the coldest, darkest days of the pandemic, when everything was shut down and we were starved for human connection, my partner and I would go down in my basement and do karaoke just for each other. I organize a lot of queer music events in Boston, so I have pretty much a whole music venue’s worth of stuff down there. We’d turn on the PA and all the stage and party lights and for that hour or so, it actually felt like we were out at a club. 

Musically, it was fun to tap back into my folk-rock roots for this one. There’s not a touch of punk rock on this track. I knew I wanted it to be kind of a piano-rock number, but I could not even have dreamed up the magic that happened when we brought in Josh Kantor (organist of the Boston Red Sox, but more importantly nicest guy on earth and keys player for every cool band that has ever come out of Boston). Liz Berlin and my pal Alicia Ortiz add the three-part harmony here and it may be cheesy, but girl, I love cheese.

Protect Trans Kids (WTFIWWY) ft. Ryan Cassata

I love punk rock because sometimes you just need to scream your head off about all the fucked up shit in the world without worrying about being poetic or nailing the perfect metaphor. I wrote this song during the Biden administration, when trans youth were already facing horrific attacks on their rights and safety in states across the US. Since then, things have only gotten worse. But trans youth inspire the shit out of me. They refuse to back down and they are leading such powerful resistance in schools, in statehouses, in the streets. We can all stand to learn from them.

It was awesome to collab with Ryan Cassata on this track. We’ve been in each other’s orbits as trans musicians for years but clearly, we needed a queercore punk track to bring us together.

Dates

This is a little bedroom-pop song for non-monogamous people who have tender hearts. There’s so little representation of ethical nonmonogamy or polyamory within mainstream culture. It’s usually depicted as a sex free for all, weird straight couple’s unicorn hunting, or just a huge dramatic mess. This is another song that just kind of wrote itself in one sitting. I love the atmospheric guitar and piano stuff that Casey Neill added to it. His work as a producer really shines through here on what is otherwise basically a three-chord folk song.

Excuses


This is a song about setting boundaries and holding on to your own truth in a world where we’re bombarded with lies and manipulation, whether it’s from politicians or family members or corporations. Musically, this was an interesting one for me because I started with the bass line (this is very rare for me, I barely play bass.) I’ve been really inspired by the Irish band Fontaines, DC and I’ve learned to cover a bunch of their songs. One of the things that has struck me was how many of their songs are literally just two chords, but have so many different sounds and movements and you’d never know.

I tried to lean into that simplicity here, starting with a simple bass riff, layering in some drums and lead guitar and then just singing over the top of it in a bit of a stream of consciousness way. As a mostly solo musician, I don’t get to “shred” all that often, so it was empowering to remember, “Oh right, I kind of can play lead guitar, I guess.”

Hellraiser (ft. Emma’s Revolution)

I wrote this song for my dear friend and mentor Anne Feeney, who passed away from COVID in 2021. Anne was an absolute legend of the labor and social justice movement, a firebrand who followed in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, but also a powerful organizer, feminist, and just the best friend you could ever ask to have. I met Anne when I was 19 and she convinced me to drop out of college to become a full-time touring anti-capitalist folk singer for a living. It wasn’t the best financial decision I ever made, but it was unquestionably the best advice anyone ever gave me. Anne took me under her wing and took me on tour with her, teaching me so much about not just the basics of making a living as a musician, but more importantly, how to use music as an effective tool for supporting social movements. Anne was a genius at raising money for striking workers, picking the exact right song to raise morale on a picket line, or writing a parody that skewered the rich and powerful. 

When Anne passed away, her daughter Amy called me and we were discussing arrangements. She mentioned that Anne had always said she wanted to be buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mt Olive, IL, where renowned labor organizer Mother Jones is buried. We didn’t think this would be possible, but when Amy called the cemetery they knew exactly who Anne was and said they had a spot for her right next to Mother Jones. I traveled out there with a small group of Anne’s dear friends and family for the burial and I wrote this song on the way back. It was an honor to have Pat Humphries and Sandy O of Emma’s Revolution sing on this one. Anne loved them and they loved Anne and it meant a lot to be able to sing this tribute to her together. 

NOTHX

Every year when “thanksgiving” rolls around, I’m like, “Why don’t I have a song about how fucked up this genocide-celebrating holiday is?” Welp, I finally wrote one. So much of my politics has been informed by leaders and writers from the indigenous resistance movement. I don’t think you can be an effective activist without understanding histories of colonization and effective anti-colonial resistance. I had a lot to say on this one, so I threw it into a super-fast punk song so that it wouldn’t be an “essay folk” track. ;-)

Letters to Nora

So all the lyrics to this one are direct quotes from Irish poet James Joyce’s letters to his girlfriend Nora. If you’re a literary geek, you may already know that these letters are some of the raunchiest, filthiest, most outrageously horny communications ever created by a human being on this earth. Like, it’s hard to make me blush but these letters make me feel like a prude. But the funny thing is, they’re also incredibly beautiful. Like, this is what you get when one of the greatest poets of all time is a horny Irish guy with a fart fetish. 

Mixed in with the 19th-century sexts are beautiful stanzas about love and longing. Joyce wasn’t just horny for Nora, he missed her like crazy while he was living abroad. I made those lines into a song, and set it to music, during the pandemic, while feeling that feverish sense of longing for someone very dear to me. It started out almost as a joke song or a gimmick, but I actually think it’s profoundly beautiful. Nice job, James.