![]() ![]() To have a genre of music where people don’t even feel comfortable being able to have that conversation, whether they’re pro-gun or anti-gun, it’s a sad place to operate from as an artist. If someone has something to say that is well thought-out and educated and is going to provoke an actual conversation, they should feel comfortable doing that. The issue is the artists who do want to say something being chastised for it. So I truly do understand the artist who doesn’t talk about politics and just wants to be an artist that entertains. We need good country heartbreak and whiskey songs. Not every artist needs to be Bob Dylan or Woody Guthrie. There’s a Cesar Cruz quote that hangs in my wife’s office that helps a bunch in these moments: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” When I have doubts, or fears, or questions, that always shines a bit of a light.ĭo you think there will eventually be more artists who will begin to speak out publicly on gun control? Were you scared to write a song that’s so explicitly political? Rolling Stone recently chatted with the outspoken Hoge – who also called for the removal of the Confederate flag in “Still a Southern Man” – about his new song, the NRA and why the country music industry is reluctant to have a dialogue about guns and the Second Amendment. Lyrics began pouring out of Hoge, the Nashville-area native who has written songs for Lady Antebellum and the Eli Young Band, as he wrestled with his building frustration: Then to just send out a phrase like ‘thoughts and prayers,’ as if we don’t all know that there is something they could do? It’s shameful.” They have all the opportunities in the world to make a difference, but they do nothing. “From my own experience, I know that phrase can be a kind and thoughtful way to express sympathy when there is no other way to help, but after these shootings, using that stock response from these cowards on Capitol Hill is incredibly insulting. ![]() “I’d been becoming increasingly annoyed by the statement of ‘thoughts and prayers’ for some time,” the singer tells Rolling Stone. Later that evening, singer-songwriter Will Hoge sat down backstage before his gig in Denver and began writing a song about a phrase he could no longer stand to hear. ![]() On the morning of November 5th, a gunman opened fire on a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, murdering 26 people. ![]()
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