M. Lockwood Porter's THE DREAM IS DEAD Video Premieres at Billboard

M. Lockwood Porter is set to release his fourth LP, Communion In The Ashes, on March 29, 2019 via Tulsa's Black Mesa Records. Delivering some of the most engaging and electrifying songs of his career, the album addresses our modern-day social problems from a perspective of hope, encouraging those who listen to focus on activism and community-building rather than despair. Porter announced the forthcoming release today, along with a string of spring tour dates and the music video for the "energetic" first single, "The Dream Is Dead." In an interview with Billboard Magazine about the track, Porter explains, "For me it's a hopeful song, a hopeful sentiment...When a lot of people realize that the American Dream they thought you might achieve may not exist, it's traumatic. But afterwards you're kind of freed up to imagine all sorts of other ways of living. It's kind of like a first step to imagining a whole new way we could organize society."

Porter was born into a working-class family in rural Oklahoma, graduated from Yale University, and then moved to San Francisco to teach in an inner city school system while launching his songwriting career. There, in the nation's most expensive real-estate market, he had a close-up view of the growing class divide and its many symptoms, including poverty, gentrification, and homelessness. "The tech boom of the last 10 years has totally transformed the whole Bay Area and essentially made it a playground for the rich," Porter divulges. "Working-class folks and artists aren't welcome there anymore and this has manifested in rising housing costs, closure of music venues, and the proliferation of homeless tent cities." After three albums and thirteen years in Berkeley and Oakland, CA, Porter wrote 2019's Communion In The Ashes and returned to Oklahoma with the goal of contributing to a growing artistic community and, hopefully, affecting social change.

With Communion In The Ashes, Porter crystallizes a sound that is uniquely his own: one that gatecrashes the borders between indie rock & roll, singer/songwriter folk, and Americana. There are furiously strummed power chords, pounding percussion, vocal harmonies, and 80s-inspired synthesizers, shot through with a voice that's urgent, compelling, and quick to incite. These are songs about revolution and rebuilding, and Porter sings them accordingly, his voice echoing and rattling its way between the electric guitars and upright piano. Throughout the 11-track set, Porter's electrifying "dystopian gospel band" explores how frightening our world can be, which is depicted on the record's enthralling cover art designed by William Schaff of Songs: Ohia fame. However, with its Springsteen-sized catharsis, Communion in the Ashes offers listeners a soundtrack with which to RISE up, rebuild, and renew. Packing the strongest punch of Porter's career, it captures not just one man's reaction to the present day, but an entire community's opportunity to better their own tomorrows.