from Whup Music, released February 1, 2019
Words and Music by SHAKE YOUR PEACE!

“The Walking People” is dedicated to my father, the original “Walking Man.”
The story: The original version of this song is entitled “The Walking Man.” I wrote it in 2002 as a gift for my dad, to give him a song to sing while he was out walking - in a walking cadence - and to celebrate two of his lifelong passions: the physical act of walking, and the spiritual-social act of collectively striding toward liberation, joy, and justice. In the years that followed, as I began performing the song out in public, the embrace of the song began to expand to include its expanded audience, and I began adding the refrain: “the walking woman — walks!” right after the original “the walking man — walks!” That was the working version of the song up until I was about to step up to the mic to record it for “Whup Music.” At that moment it became crystal clear to me that I couldn’t leave the lyrics only at just walking men and women. What about everybody else!? What about the rest of the walking people? Folks in wheelchairs? Folks who don't identify as men or women, and folks who reject the gender construct altogether? The song wanted to open its embrace up even more. So with a new set of lyrics, the song evolved again, still moving in the same original direction, but now with a crowd of people surrounding The Walking Man on his sojourn. It’s fitting that a song about my Dad, whose life work has always been about “drawing the bigger circle (of inclusion),” would similarly be ever-expanding its embrace to include every ear that might hear it. My dad has taught me and many others, that in order to behold “The Beloved Community” as Dr. King called it (or: “The Kin-dom of Heaven” as my dad might call it, or: “ecotopia” as I might call it) in our midst, we need only ask the questions: “Who else’s voice needs to be heard here?” “What more is at stake that we’re not yet considering or that we have a blind spot to?” “How do we meet and exceed the expectations people have arrived with for how much love is available for us?” Through asking these kinds of questions, in life and in songwriting, “The Walking Man” becomes “The Walking People.”