Song To Get You Through The Week: Kevin Kvein Gallops On with Worcester-centric video – Worcester Mag

Before you even get to the song, the music video for singer-songwriter Kevin Kvein's Gallops to Nowhere acts as a sort of time capsule of Worcester right before the pandemic, each shot catching moments of urban beauty amid near-constant construction. Shooting on the Common and in front of City Hall, outside The Hanover Theatre, amid the construction on Main Street and even making brief stops at the Raven Music Hall and George's Coney Island Hot Dogs, Kvein and director Patrick McGowan catch a glimmer of that moment of transition, as the city seemed poised to transform from one thing to another.

Now, that future seems more uncertain than ever, which makes the video even more timely, as the song itself is very much about uncertainty, about wanting some sort of change but not being certain what's true or not. The horses are galloping to nowhere, sings Kvein at the song's start, And the mayor proposed a bill to gun them down,/We ain't got no time for cowboys and outlaws,/And we ain't got no time for running around.

It's hard to ignore the juxtaposition of Kvein's Wild West imagery with the shots that capture both the city's development and wild, creative undercurrent. But I hear we got time for private corporations, Kvein continues, Digging up sacred Indian burial grounds. It's not really a protest song, in the strictest folk music sense of the phrase, but it conveys a sense of wrongness through both lyric and tone, not so much lamenting what's being built as he is mourning what could be lost.

And indeed, the portrait becomes a little hazier as the song progresses. Kvein sings of polling for a politician, Who some of us believe will make a difference,/As for the rest, they're galloping to nowhere,/Cuz they don't recognize the grass they're standing on. It reads like a shout out to Bernie Sanders, but honestly, it could resonate with anyone's political beliefs and candidates. Political beliefs may differ, but sometimes the manners in which people pursue their beliefs are remarkably similar.

When Kvein sings a lyric such as, And if you speak up,/You'll be called a whistle blower,/Cowboy or outlaw,/No one cares, it conjures images of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, maybe even Julian Assange their roles as heroes or villains depend largely on where you're standing. And when Kvein sings of an Iraq War vet marching to North Dakota, even though he could've sworn,/The war was over, it's unclear why he's marching. It feels like the Standing Rock environmental protests, but that's not made explicit. The song finds a sort of weariness in constant protest, and in a world that constantly provokes protest. Still, the song's soul can be found in one simple lyric: And who am I to say what the truth is?/Since the dawn of time,/It's been screwed with.

Indeed, but as Kvein's chipper tone and understated guitar roll forward, it becomes abundantly clear that sometimes the world is exactly what it appears to be, and those are the moments you miss the unpredictability of the cowboys, outlaws and wild horses the most.

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Song To Get You Through The Week: Kevin Kvein Gallops On with Worcester-centric video - Worcester Mag