Storytime EP

A police chief who wouldn't take the coal company's money. An outlaw who told his men to spare the ploughman and bind the bishops. A rocket scientist who called himself Don Quixote. A town drowned so rich men could keep their fish.

Storytime is the first collection from Dr. Noah Pression: one original song and three settings of other people's words, each chosen because the person behind them pushed back against the people in charge. A new song comes out every Friday from October 16, and the whole EP is out November 6. Every song has its roots, the history and sources underneath it, linked from each track below.

Liner notes

Sid Hatfield was a small-town police chief who took the miners' side and was shot dead on a courthouse step in 1921. The oldest long Robin Hood ballad has the outlaw giving his men their orders: leave the ploughman alone, go after the bishops, and keep the sheriff in mind. Jack Parsons helped build America's first rockets, lost his security clearance twice, and in 1943 wrote a poem in the voice of Don Quixote. Isaac G. Reed wrote his poem in 1889, after a dam owned by a club of Pittsburgh millionaires burst and drowned 2,209 people in Johnstown.

Credits

Two Guns: words and music by Dr. Noah Pression.
Him Hold Ye In Your Mind: words from A Gest of Robyn Hode (anonymous, c. 1450–1500), adapted; music by Dr. Noah Pression.
I Hight Don Quixote: words by Jack Parsons (1943), adapted; music by Dr. Noah Pression.
Night of the Johnstown Flood: words by Isaac G. Reed (1889), adapted, with additional words by Dr. Noah Pression; music by Dr. Noah Pression.