Dear Neighbors,

As you might’ve seen in the video, I was suffering from a pretty heavy case of “rage-fatigue”. (Not an actual medical term, but you get the point). The nonstop noise of divisive political bickering coming at me from every possible outlet and angle was changing me into someone else – someone mad all the time. I spent most of 2025 between the lonely lands of furious & hopeless.
I fell into a routine. Sleep until the last possible minute, wake to today’s circus headlines, doom scroll, get angry, rage through breakfast & school prep with the boys (4 & 8 at the time) then out the door angry. Regret the anger then bring on the dread; my personalized “unwellness plan”. The absurdity and chaos of an information overload culture had me in its grip. It was taking its toll and it wasn’t working for me. I felt spiritually void. I allowed my own creative path to suffer and dry up. This version of me wasn’t working for me or my family. Nobody likes a grumpy, disengaged Dad. Especially when he’s supposed to be fun for a living! I’d made it into my mid-forties as a professional musician. “Mr. Dan the Music Man” by day and the always gigging, every bandmate Daniel “Scrappy” Bower by night. Music was and music is my life. My life was and is good. But, to put it simply, evil was winning. And I was just laying down for it like an old dog, growling while getting his tummy scratched. Just getting older, fatter & more crotchety.

Something had to give…

One day I woke up, looked at the phone and the doom scroll waiting to take me into hell … and said %^&* THIS!! The world according to algorithms had run things long enough. I’d been so distracted by the colors, stimulating sounds, emotional tug of wars, idiotic quotes designed to distract & divide that I failed to see how brilliant it was working at keeping me in a dystopian fog of hopelessness & hate.

The hate was easy. I hate bullies. Especially anyone who thinks they’re more entitled to America than others. Lord knows there was plenty of that to see. I know I’m not supposed to hate. I’m working on it. It’s hard. But that’s my journey… Maybe someday I’ll be able to love a bully or in this case, an I.C.E. agent, so effectively that they’d see me as a reasonable, cool person worth listening to? Maybe I can be the change we’re called to be in my faith tradition; the change of radical acceptance that loves people over policy. But somedays, I ain’t there yet… So instead, for now, I’ll hate the sin; the sin of marginalizing & othering the poor stranger… I’ll rage back by helping the voiceless and powerless, and hopefully inspire some friends and neighbors to join in.
That’s what this project is about ultimately. But let me finish my story first. I’ll be quick.

The hate was easy…The hopelessness, however…
That was the hard part. A loop in my head began to repeat;
“OMG, we’re so screwed!” I thought. “Pocket computers keeping us from looking up at each other, keeping us mad & dumbing us down…This is the world right now??” Everyone was a reporter, news anchor, editorialist, expert, shake-a-fist-from-the-couch activist…
It seemed like “the great normalization of nonsense” phase in America. Any and everybody with a smart phone could shoot from the hip a reactive, hurtful, hateful comment onto the screen that everyone’s watching. And they could do it without any emotional accountability. No eye contact from a recipient. No energy in the room to read; just a ticker counter of approvals and disapprovals and a convenient space bellow to argue for days. It seemed any and everybody was in on it. Even the president. Especially the president!

One day I’d decided I had enough. The record scratched and the noise in my head got quiet… My mind said “Nope. let’s get off this conveyor belt to hell. Change this trajectory. Restore some hope, dang it!”

My anger was (& is) still real and it’s a powerful energy but I knew it was volatile and I had to turn it into something sustainable or it was gonna eat a toxic hole in my soul. I wanted to contribute to improvement and unplug from the fist shaking Facebook frenzy. It was time to try and make change for better in my own little way; to use the best I can with what I have.
But what do I have? Not a lot by material means. Some nice guitars… 
I don’t have money. I’m a working musician with two kids (they eat a LOT, btw). What can I give?? The easy answer? The only thing I know; music. Music & friends. Singing together. Jamming. Hanging out. But how’s jamming gonna change anything besides cheer me up for a night? Well… that ain’t nothing these days. We could all use a night.
Ok, let’s have a night! Bring together, sing together…
But what if we could do that AND somehow make it contribute to a common cause for bettering things? What if we could make music that turned hate into love?? What if?? What if enough of us decided to do THAT!? Sing a song with lots of love and hope. Spread that hope around the internet and then ask the people with whom that hope resonates to help us raise a few bucks. Raise a few bucks and give it to a family who suddenly has no income thanks to a hard-working dad getting bullied by I.C.E. and detained both illegally and unconstitutionally by a system that is un-American and un-Christian… A system that needs us to check it and balance it.

But if it’s gonna work, it has to be a good song!
I had just written this song in Alaska, while visiting my brother. I thought it was pretty good. (It certainly sounds glorious with a choir!) Anyway, you’ve seen it. Now you know how it happened. I hope you can help us dance away from this divide.
Chip in a few bucks if you can. We’ve partnered with two wonderful organizations called Alianza’s & SILO. They are beautifully dedicated to advocating for an undeniably “othered” population of God’s Children. People from other lands seeking refuge from violence, oppression and poverty we can’t begin to understand. People just trying to survive.

All proceeds of our song will go to help these immigrant families who have been marginalized during recent events in our country. If, like me, you’re not ok with that, this is an opportunity to stand up and take action.

So here it is. It’s up to us. I believe if enough of us decide to change, things will start to change.

Sincerely,
Daniel S. Bower