‘Love and War’ by The Four Fathers

As of September 2015, ‘Love and War’ was available to download – or on CD – from Bandcamp. Also, in July 2016, The Four Fathers released an online EP, ‘Fighting Injustice’, in two versions (for the UK and the US), featuring reworkings of three songs from ‘Love and War.’ In November 2017 we released our second album, ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?‘, featuring ten original songs, and in October 2018 we released a new online single, ‘Grenfell.’ To stay up to date on our activities, please like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

‘Love and War’ is the debut album by Andy Worthington’s band The Four Fathers. Featuring ten tracks — seven originals, two covers and a radical reworking of an old folk song — ‘Love and War’ is available to buy, as a CD, for just £7/$11, plus postage and packing (£1.25 in the UK, £2.95 for Europe and £3.65 for the US and the rest of the world). Copies can be sent anywhere in the world.

The album, recorded, mixed and mastered in south east London from November 2014 to June 2015, features six of Andy’s original songs, including ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’, which is featured in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, the campaign calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, which Andy established with the activist Joanne MacInnes last November — and see here for We Stand With Shaker’s open letter to President Obama for US Independence Day. Andy has been researching and writing about Guantánamo and campaigning to get the prison closed down since 2006, and there was wonderful news on October 30, 2015, when, in large part because of the strength of campaigning, Shaker Aamer was freed from Guantánamo and returned to the UK. I’m very pleased to report that the investigative journalist Kevin Gosztola featured ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ on his website Shadowproof (formerly FireDogLake) as his ‘Protest Song of the Week.’

Also included are other new songs Andy wrote recently — ‘Tory Bullshit Blues’, which was made available via SoundCloud just before the General Election in May, the love song ‘Sweet Love and Ever After’, and ‘Fighting Injustice’, a storming roots reggae number that also fulfils the band’s description of itself as playing “Rock, folk, blues and roots reggae. Not afraid of political engagement.”

Another new song of Andy’s is ’81 Million Dollars’, about the Bush administration’s torture program, $81m being the amount that the architects of the program, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were paid by the US government to develop the cruel, pointless and illegal covert program for which no one has yet been held accountable. The song is a rallying cry for campaigners calling for those who authorized and implemented the torture program to be prosecuted.

The album also features the London country blues number ‘City of Dreams’, which Andy wrote while living in Brixton in 1987 — and completed last year! — and ‘Rebel Soldier’, an old folk song that he first set to a reggae rhythm in Brixton in 1986.

Guitarist and backing singer Richard Clare’s love song ‘Sea Shanty for Helena’ is also included, as are versions of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ and a folky, groovy take on the disco classic ‘I Will Survive’.

The Four Fathers are: Andy Worthington (lead vocals and guitar), Richard Clare (guitar and backing vocals, lead vocals on ‘Sea Shanty for Helena’), Bren Horstead (drums, bongos and percussion), Andrew Fifield (flute and harmonica) and Louis Sills-Clare (bass). Please contact Andy if you’re interested in having us play. We have played London festival gigs this summer, and are now looking to play gigs in pubs, to play at political events — and parties — and to book festival gigs for next summer.

See below for the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, which features the first verse and chorus of ‘Song for Shaker Aamer.’ Please also check out — and subscribe to — The Four Fathers’ YouTube channel:

To order ‘Love and War’, please click on the drop down menu below, which provides costs for the UK, Europe and the US and the rest of the world. Postage and packing costs are included in the totals below.

The account is set up for pounds sterling, but PayPal will convert it from whatever currency you use to pay — and you don’t need to have a PayPal account to use it. For the US, the cost works out at $16.60.

If you’re in the UK and want to send a cheque, please send a cheque for £8.25 to:

Andy Worthington
164A Tressillian Road
London
SE4 1XY

Feedback

“It’s a great CD. My daughter and I have been dancing to Tory Bullshit Blues! Well done all involved.”
Rachel Taylor-Beales, singer-songwriter

“Your album not only met with my full, enthusiastic, approval, it also exceeded my expectations — the writing strong, passionate and beautiful; the performance tight and pretty damned good.”
Jan Strain, Seattle

“Two thumbs up, Andy. I enjoyed your CD, especially the final song, 81 Million Dollars!”
Michael S. Kearns, former U.S. Air Force SERE instructor (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), anti-torture activist and author of the novel Broken! (with Ronald Solomon)

“I am ordering some extra copies of your CD immediately and hope others do as well. Unfortunately, music and art have been so self-neutered or self-censored that one no longer hears outrage against the perpetual warfare now carried out by the U.S. and Israel — with all the war crimes they are committing as tactics to terrorize civilian populations — so that your own excellent work must be especially appreciated. Andy, you’re right there with Roger Waters in raising consciousness of the crimes we are committing with our wars of aggression, which are made even worse with the sanctimonious motives we claim for them.”
Todd Pierce, former military defense attorney for prisoners at Guantánamo facing military commission trials

“I was listening to your CD today for the first time, ironically while writing a letter to Fayiz [al-Kandari, the last Kuwaiti prisoner] in GTMO. I just wanted to tell you that your CD is pretty damned good, albeit a bit on the dark side.”
Barry Wingard, military defense attorney for Guantánamo prisoner Fayiz al-Kandari

About ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’:

“This is a wonderful song on every level and has been with me since I heard it this morning. It gives me a genuine sense of happiness to realize what you, Joanne [MacInnes, co-founder of We Stand With Shaker] and so many others accomplished with your campaign to free Shaker. It opens the mind to possibility, something that so often feels out of reach. Thank you.”
Laura Lance, USA

“[What] perhaps makes [the song] so enduring is how it pays tribute to the man who dissented and resisted from within Guantánamo all throughout his detention … Aamer’s words punctuate the song, giving it more gravitas and affirming why he is one of the more inspirational men to have been detained at Guantánamo.”
Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof (as ‘Protest Song of the Week‘)

Note: Please also follow us on Facebook, and, as noted above, for those wishing to download the album, or individual tracks from it (or even just to listen to them), please visit our Bandcamp page, where you can also buy the album on CD.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers). He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the co-director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).