WILD BEAT THE WINGS


John Flynn’s thirteenth solo album, Wild Beat the Wings, is some of his strongest and most adventurous work in an award-winning career spanning four decades. The new album features Flynn’s trademark heart and lyrical artistry juxtaposed against a background of bolder production and harmonic choices as the life-long marathon runner belies his 64 years by arguably singing better and stronger than ever.

Like so much new music these days, Wild Beat the Wings is the byproduct of months of the found, focused time imposed by the COVID restrictions. Flynn addresses these in the country-rock offering “Space Station”. Even the cover art for Wild Beat the Wings can be traced to Flynn’s year-long enforced status as a homebody as he rediscovered his drawing pad and inked the stark but lovely cover image of his wife Beth rescuing a mourning dove on their Northern Delaware back porch. The title song of the album recounts the story of the dove’s escape from a swooping raptor by crashing through a screened-porch door. Disoriented and terrified, the trembling bird failed to relocate the open door and required tender human hands to help it return to the sky. The song is a metaphor for all loving relationships as it pertains to the need to create paths to greater freedom.

Unsurprisingly to anyone familiar with Flynn's canon, restorative justice themes are explored on Wild Beat the Wings as he follows up his 2020 BLM hip-hop single “How Many Bodies”. “Circle of Love” challenges those of all political and cultural stripes to enter into relationship (“It’s the circle of love… may it grow ever wide until no one is standing outside”) . “An American Cage” mourns this country’s callous disregard of the ideals nobly expressed in the Emma Lazarus poem enshrined on the Statue of Liberty. “Stranger in a Strange Land” is an elegiac reflection on the toxic polarization so deeply dividing our country.

Flynn's writing has always mined the light as well as the shadow and Wild Beat the Wings includes some lighthearted offerings in “Stayin’ Young (Is Sure Gettin’ Old)” about the unending and futile attempt to stave off the inevitable, “The Song of my Becoming”, a quasi-Buddhist meditation on unitive consciousness written for Flynn’s first grandchild, and “Everybody Needs a Friend”, the true story of an elephant who was rescued by singer Cher from a desolate and solitary existence in a Pakistani zoo. Flynn’s roots as a former Nashville staff writer are evident in "The Eyes of Marie".

The album extols young passion in the love song “It Don’t Get No Better (Than This)”, even as Flynn admits the error of the song’s foundational assumption (“But I was wrong… love grows old… love grows strong”). Wild Beat the Wings heads for the barn with the rollicking anthem “Folk Me”, which reveals a tongue-in-cheek Flynn at his rambunctious best as he celebrates his love for his chosen musical genre (“Just need to let something earnest get under my epidermis”).

Continuing his successful musical partnership with Harvey as producer and “house band” (Harvey provides all the instrumentation other than Flynn’s acoustic guitars and harmonica), Wild Beat the Wings is recently preceded by a 2020 album of cover tunes called Take Cover that the two friends put out under the band named Hondo Jenkins (an alias Flynn once played bars under). Take Cover required Flynn – a self-professed technical Luddite – to learn the basics of rudimentary home recording while challenging him to develop previously unsuspected vocal chops. (Contravening the old saw “do not attempt this at home” Flynn found summiting, for example, Brian Wilson’s high harmonies to be easier in the privacy of one’s domicile – think singing in the shower but with ProTools!) In fact, unlike most preceding albums, Flynn provides a lion's share of background vocals on this record). The unpretentious joy of the Take Cover project is continued on Wild Beat the Wings with an audacious interpretation of the John Lennon/Beatle’s classic “And Your Bird Can Sing”.

In recent years Flynn has split his time between music and New Beginnings-Next Step, a non-profit he created in order to help incarcerated and returning citizens avoid recidivism in the State of Delaware. This work garnered him the prestigious Phil Ochs Award as well as a Champion of Justice/ Humanitarian Award from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (former recipients include Stevie Wonder, Julian Bond and Sister Helen Prejean).

Far from diluting his musical game, Flynn's years of re-entry work with those whom our society deems the most disposable has only sharpened his considerable tools, and Wild Beat the Wings is evidence of this honing. It is beautiful, meaningful work by a master craftsman who has lived up to his gift and stayed true to his calling.