These are the opening lines to the surprise release of “Heart Beats and Breaks” from Billy Lawrence this past Friday. This was the musical treat that we didn’t know we needed going into the long weekend. A hauntingly beautiful melodic tale of adversity and the ability to overcome, “Heart Beats and Breaks” ultimately gives us hope.
What Billy makes so clear here in the song is that often the way out is obscured by our own thoughts. The inner struggle, our operating system that may have been programmed by someone else (for their purposes not our own) is always in play. But… (there’s always a but) it is very clear to this listener that the story here informs us that we’re never too far away from sunshine, even when it looks like a rainy day.
Full disclosure, this was my reaction when I pressed play on “Heart Beats and Breaks” last Friday.
So I may be just a little biased but that’s what great music does to me: it compels me to talk about it and share. I don’t know if folks are listening when I do that but I hope that they are. You see, I used to be just like a whole lot of folks out there repeating that same ol tired trope of “They don’t make great music anymore.” blah, blah, blah. All it would take would be for those folks to hear one great song for them to be wrong. Those who know, know that great new music is being made everyday. You want evidence? I present to you “Heart Beats and Breaks” from Billy Lawrence. I rest my case.
Ivan Orr is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, performer, and writer. A native of Charlottesville, Virginia Ivan was involved with the forming and nascent days of The Music Resource Center as its first Program Director. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Music, Ivan currently resides in Richmond, VA where he maintains an active performance and production schedule while serving as the Music Editor for Grown Folks Music, a position he has held since 2010.
