Alex from Edward Sharpe was one of the first people Chris passed the story of the women in Uganda on to, and one of the first things he and the band did was offer to combine their record release party for Up From Below with us so we could use money raised at the event to help support the women. We had asked the ladies what they could use from us and because women in the region often don’t even have the right to own land, making a living is that much harder. So with the money we raised at the party we helped secure a small farm for them, and nine months later they had their first harvest, were already going to turn a profit, and were reinvesting the money in more supplies and opening a small office in town to start a brick making operation. The ladies thanked these musicians they had never met helping out from halfway around the world, by singing “Home”, yet another message passed in song. Chris and Alex did a beautiful remix of with the women’s voices (available here) which got a good bit of radio support and really put the message out to a lot of folks as well as energizing us to really make this all happen.

So it’s pretty obvious from the video that the Dawes and Ed Sharpe folk are tight, both based out of LA, we’ve all sort of lived in the same neck of the woods around Silver Lake and Los Feliz, and it’s a pretty tight community which may sound odd when you’re talking about LA but it’s true. Was really amazing of the boys to do this, not one but two covers, before we even had a decent website up or anything, just on faith and wanting to help out. We literally told them about the project and with nothing prepared, they said “come over and we’ll figure it out” that afternoon, and they did, for not one but two (almost three) covers. The choice of “Carries On,” awesome… the lyrics seem to capture the whole idea of this thing in a nutshell.

Many thanks to guys, Allen Alcantara and Jay Sweet for setting us up.