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Back to the Sea

from Shapeshifter by Violet Bell

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about

To me, this song is the selkie slipping her skin back on and reuniting with the ocean, her home. Lines like “one or the other, water or land” explore the human tendency towards duality that the selkie experiences while she’s trapped in the fisherman’s land-bound world, while the bridge is the voice of the ocean - “child, do you think that you know / where you come from and where you might go?” - setting the record straight. I loved writing and singing the ocean as a cosmic force of creation and destruction that is beyond human categorization and classification. It’s a wild force that exists within and without each of us, where we come from and to which we all return.

lyrics

Walk to the water while you’re asleep
Put on my skin and go back to the sea
Me and my mother, lovely and deep
Taking me in, back to the sea

One or the other, water or land
Servant or lover, monster or man
One or the other, captive or free
Give me my skin and I’m back to the sea

She says “child, do you think that you know
Where you come from and where you might go?
If you want, I can show you – let me show you -

Walk to the water while you’re asleep
Put on my skin and go back to the sea
Me and my mother, lovely and deep
Taking me in, back to the sea

credits

from Shapeshifter, track released October 7, 2022
Lizzy Ross - lead vocals, vocal harmonies
Omar Ruiz-Lopez - fiddle
Tatiana Hargreaves - 5-string fiddle
Joe Troop - banjo
Joseph Terrell - acoustic guitar, vocal harmonies
Libby Rodenbough - vocal harmonies
Sinclair Palmer - upright bass
Joe Macphail - percussion
SOUND ENGINEER: Jason Richmond
MIXING ENGINEER: Jason Richmond
MASTERING ENGINEER: Jason Richmond
PRODUCER: Jason Richmond, Lizzy Ross, Omar Ruiz-Lopez

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Violet Bell Chapel Hill, North Carolina

✨harmony + folklore + queer + de-homogenizing the americana roots music narrative ✨ Our new album Shapeshifter is out 10/7/22. It tells the ancient story of the selkie, a seal who can take off her skin to become human, as medicine for social norms that would keep us small. ... more

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