Chris Pierce Brings A 'Perspective of Togetherness' To Tower's Live Show + Performance!

Singer/songwriter Chris Pierce joined our Tower Instagram Live show, hosted by Whitney Moore, to talk about his recent single, "American Silence" and his upcoming album of the same name. Pierce has not had this much time away from live performance in his 25 years in music, and that drove him to learn how to use all the necessary technology at home in order to record.

His latest single came to him basically "all in one sitting", but he felt it was "brewing" in him for a very long time. With his new album, he really wants people to know that injustice for Black Americans has been "going on a long time" including both the "oppression and fighting against that". It's been a "great experiment" that we've been trying to deal with for a long time to get through these things. But Pierce feels that "folks are ready" to "keep that energy flowing". The fact that people have been at home and "being still" during this time to help them take notice of the world and what people are going through. It's a "perspective of togetherness".

Early Gospel and Blues were something that Pierce listened to at Tower Records as a young person, he says, like Nina Simone, and he wanted to know the history of this work. He discovered that some of the Gospel and Blues songs were actually protest songs about the "human condition" and "struggles", but they were just labelled as other things. He found that music was "one of the only things that could bring people together" in his upbringing with a caucasian mother and African American father, who had been married at a time where that was illegal in many states. These are all things that he is bringing to his new album as a "small part" of the "larger conversation".

Stay tuned to hear Chris Pierce play his single "American Silence" and "It's Been Burning For A While" and check out his other work in the duo War & Pierce.