“Banks Of The Brazos” is the continuation of a sobering, real-life tale Roger Street Friedman first documented on 2022’s “The Ghosts Of Sugarland.” That song addresses the 2018 discovery of the remains of 95 laborers in Sugar Land, Texas, about 20 miles southwest of Houston. All were discovered to be victims of a barbaric, bigoted 19th-century prison system.
“They were all African-American men trapped in a brutal pattern of re-enslavement based on a loophole in the 14th Amendment that said those convicted of crimes could be used for forced labor,” says the Long Island, N.Y.-based singer, songwriter and activist. “Many of the so-called crimes were based on laws specifically written to ensnare recently freed black men looking for work in the post-Civil War South. A person could be arrested for loitering and sent to work in the cane fields, where they’d die of ‘heat stroke’ within a month or two.”
Issue-oriented songs have been a Friedman forte ever since he resurrected his music career in the 2010s, putting out a series of self-released albums that have connected with critics and listeners in the roots/Americana scene. “Brazos” is a standout track from Long Shadows, his fifth album, which is due January 24. A TikTok clip of Friedman telling the story of the Sugar Land 95 has racked up nearly a million views.
“I wanted to write specifically from the perspective of the men to try and get a sense of what it must have been like—how brutal it was,” says Friedman. “This history had been hidden in the clay and sand of Texas. The wealth generated from this labor literally helped rebuild the South, but these men and their stories have been mostly lost to history.”
We’re proud to premiere Roger Street Friedman’s “Banks Of The Brazos.”
—Hobart Rowland
