Jeff Symonds returns on ElectraCast Records with Every Five Minutes, a high-powered elegy on gun violence in America. This energetic composition with poignant vocals and a breathtaking guitar outro is an homage to the martyrs and a contemplation of the circumstances leading to school shootings.
The endless cycles of violence are encapsulated with the lyrics, which capture the visual depiction of these horrors from a child’s point of view: “someone plays this role, someone plays that role”.
Symonds discusses the song on a recent episode of 50 Years of Music w/50-Year-Old White Guys, the podcast he co-hosts with his longtime friends, Tim Plaehn and Ben Barton.
Talking about his new release, Symonds contemplates his relationship with the violence and how being a high school teacher himself, he needed to deliberate the depth of the issue after the Parkland High School shooting. Having spent more time with other people’s children, he sees them as family and how they are often treated as a theoretical statistic rather than actual formative students, for whom now a “violent incident drill” is a part of their timetables.
Every 5 Minutes is a provocative, punk rock wake-up call about the absurdity of it all and, as Symonds puts it, “meant to unsettle listeners and steer the conversation away from the politics of and towards what’s actually at stake”.
You can listen to Every 5 Minutes on Spotify and other music services.