Ric Alba released this single track a couple of months ago and it flows perfectly as if he never stopped making music. This could have easily fit on Holes In the Floor of Heaven. It sounds remarkable in its degree of emotion and the depth of what he is trying to communicate. One of the things that has always been so satisfying to me about Alba’s solo work is his ability to not only communicate the complexity of emotion that he is conveying through his lyrics, but also through the music itself. He does that on “Butterfly” as well. The music sounds immediate, the piano brings a fresh urgency to what he is saying and the lyrics are familiar in theme and in Ric’s style of writing. One of my favorite lines is:
“How many hearts, no one knows
Are buried under streets of gold
No one asks, no one told
And I had no other place to go”
Ric’s music is consistently touching and compelling. It becomes a mirror that we hold and look back at ourselves. Ric was inspired to write a song after Brian Healy shared the Lonnie Frisbee documentary with him. This is part of what Ric said to me, “This isn’t just a song about being gay and closeted—not by any stretch. It’s about having wonderful, special, or unique qualities of any kind that we hide, or feel pressured to hide, so that we fit in. What the documentary inspired in me was that some of us, hopefully most of us, find our way to let our wings fly open and without shame, whether we realize it or not. Lonnie did it with his charismatic ministry, maybe I kinda did it a little in the context of Altar Boys and Holes. Everybody can probably site one way or another how they broke out of their caterpillar drag from time to time.” For those wondering where to get this, you can just swing over to iTunes and purchase this track.
[2010 Independent | Purchase: iTunes]
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