On her new record Straitjacket, Seattle, WA songwriter Halley Greg artfully melds pop, country-tinged ballads, and bluesy rock to craft a sound that is both eminently engaging and laced with subtle nuance. Greg maybe has started singing for fun in the world of musical theater, but she wields her instrument with confident grace. In the softer moments her plaintive croon captivates, yet even when her compositions boil over into full crescendo, Greg’s crystalline highs and delightfully rough-edged midrange crests the wave, soaring gracefully above the turmoil. 

Today Greg has released “Lead To Life,” which could be found on Straitjacket along with an accompanying video.  “This song was inspired by Lead to Life, an organization that creates ceremonies of healing for families and communities impacted by gun violence,” Greg explains. “In these ceremonies, guns are melted and transformed into shovels, then used to plant trees in the victims’ honor. (Visit leadtolife.org to learn more and support their work.) I randomly stumbled across this organization in the summer of 2020 and was profoundly moved when I watched the short film on their website. I had just finished my fourth year teaching high school science. A year prior, I lost a 14-year-old student, whom I cared about deeply, to a gun accident. He was playing with a gun because he was planning on making a music video with it. I will never stop grieving for him, never stop being angry at every single thing that led to a child being lost to gun violence. And I grieve for all the other children who have been lost—I feel the pain in my gut like the mother I am not yet but will be some day.

Gun violence, in its many insidious forms, has devastated our country, over and over and over again. I still can’t believe I had to spend each of my four years teaching going through “emergency preparedness” training with my students, in which we discussed directly what would happen if there was a mass shooting at the school. And on top of that, we as a nation are only just now beginning to confront police violence and the innumerable deaths of innocent people of color, at the hands of those who are supposed to protect our communities. I know it’s possible for our nation to reimagine and rebuild itself as one of justice, restoration, healing, community, and regrowth. And that’s why the symbolic power of Lead to Life’s work burned itself into my brain, so much so that I had to write a song about it. The image of a gun being melted down turned into a shovel and used to plant a tree… That’s something we all need to absorb into our psyches and souls.”

Anger, as a force for both good and evil, is a thread laced throughout Straitjacket. Through experience, therapy, and study Greg has begun to unwind from the idea that all anger is bad.  “There is so much to be angry about right now… So much grief and loss” says Greg. “I just decided to uncork that bottle and take a big whiff… see what happened.” Straitjacket is an album about holding tensions and paradoxes.  It shows that ‘within vulnerability and tenderness, there is strength; within powerlessness, there is an undercurrent of electric potential; and within anger – women’s anger – there is fierce care and compassion’.”

Recorded at London Bridge Studio in Seattle, the record was co-produced by Greg and Eric Lilavois (Ayron Jones). George Wiederkehr of Mosaic Music mixed the single “Lead to Life”.  In addition to Greg and Samples, Straitjacket features bassist Tim Van Buren and drummer Paul Davis. Jason Cressey (The True Loves), Peter Daniel, and Bill Jones handle the brass.

Photo Courtesy: Kirsch Creative