Singled Out: Roger Street Friedman's Big Truth

Keavin Wiggins | 07-12-2021

Americana singer-songwriter Roger Street Friedman just released his new EP "Come What May" and to celebrate we have asked him to tell us about the song "Big Truth." Here is the story:

"Big Truth" was written during the height of the 2020 election season. There was so much false information being slung on certain networks that this song just started to emerge out of my frustration and anger at the echo chambers that were misleading millions of Americans. I was watching one of the primetime opinion hosts on a major network and the line -- "Friend of mine, what's that you say? All these lies you're spinning, I do not want in my house today" -- popped into my head. The rest of the song came pretty quickly after that. I was thinking of all the big lies being told by politicians and the media while we were in the grip of a major pandemic, and it struck me that misinformation is also a disease, an infection that needs to be eradicated and the only medicine is the truth. That's where the chorus came from: "When big lies spread like a virus through the air, big truth cures the disease."

Because this was during the lockdown, there were no in-person recording sessions happening. So I laid down an acoustic demo for this song and sent it off to my drummer, Jim Toscano. Jim added the very cool drums and percussion track. (That's a bottle full of rocks, not a snare drum.) It was then sent to Matt Schneider who played the bass. Once the rhythm section was on there, I was able to record the vocal, overdub electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, harmonium, and the baritone guitar. I sent that rough mix off to Kim Kuperschmidt, and she added the background vocal parts. Once all the parts were done, the mix came together pretty easily.

I had been messing around with some basic video editing during the lockdown and thought this would be a good project for a music video. This pushed the limits of my editing knowledge with the use of green screen footage, combined with stock footage and some footage I found on the internet. The video took way longer than the song to put together, but I was happy with the result in the end and thought it conveyed the message of the song nicely.

All in all it was a fun project, even though it's an incredibly serious subject!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself below and learn more about the EP here