bonus track

I wrote “No Woman Died Today” because I was sick and tired of reading the obit page and seeing no women there. It drove me mad. I hadn’t been reading the obits for very long. And boy, it struck me hard. No one had ever mentioned this to me. I thought it was unbelievable. Where the hell were the women? So I wrote this song with Ethan Fein. 
A few years later, in 2018, the New York Times started their “Overlooked” project. And that was a good day. 
When we went to record Old Bones Odyssey, our  new album, we decided to record “No Woman Died Today.” Its ideas belong to Old Bones. At its core the song is about forgotten bones. Discarded bones. Bones that are deemed unworthy. And I wanted to ask who the hell decides this stuff? And why do we all go along with it?
I’m not naive. And I am miserably aware of women’s standing in the world. But no obits about women on any given day makes no damn sense of any kind. I guess I’m still furious. About it all. We still have such a terribly long way to go.

Angry. Refusing to accept the status quo. Ready to fight.

“If women are half the people of the earth
Tell me why, oh why did no woman die today?
I guess we should all be happy
‘Cause the good news is, no woman died today”

Reading the paper every morning for most of my adult life, I was never interested in the obits section. My older relatives always read them and would send me an obit from time to time. They were always compelling. But it wasn’t till my fifties that I started to read them on my own.  And I was just gobsmacked when I saw it was a regular thing not to have any women in the obit section. I guess I never get enured to this crap. It felt good to turn it into a song. And even better to sing it.