The April Single

Sergiyev Posad is a Russian city 2 hrs northeast of Moscow, the closest town to my wife, photographer, Anna Azarov’s, family country home, or ‘dacha’. Sergiyev Posad is a saint in the Russian Orthodox church and, true to its name, the city is the site of a large walled-in monastery.

If you enter the monastery gates and it will be like traveling back in time. Russian priests with their dark beards and even darker robes walk the smooth gravel paths with their hands clasped behind their backs. Local merchants sell kvass, a lightly fermented dark malt beverage (like rye bread soda), out of wooden barrels, along with honey cakes, candies and votive candles. If you enter one of the cathedrals, you may fond yourself momentarily blinded as you go from bright sunlight to and interior lit only by candles…

Relics, candles, and iconography fill the naves and apses. The faces of Jesus and his disciples are painted on inside of the onion domes, looking down at you as you look up at them. All along the walls and pillars are painted flowers and twining vines of green leaves, as if the Garden of Eden itself were reclaiming the cathedral.

You may hear women’s voices echo along the smooth stone pillars, “la la la, la la la, la la la la la la la la la…” If you approach the altar, you will find a choir of darkly dressed women, some old, some older, singing a hymn in Russian. The melody is beyond haunting. It sounds like the oldest melody ever sung. It sounds like music the trees and ferns made in the deepest forests before humankind walked over the roots and leaves. It was the song of the creek babbling over smooth pebbles that tumbled down mountains that once stood. The song of the living forest. It was a universal melody and you will know it in your blood.

If you don’t speak Russian and cannot make out the words the women are singing, your mind may join in harmony as images of nature and sacrifice fill-in the blanks:

The way the earth drinks the rain
This is how I fall in love with you
I swallow every drop I can
This is how…
I…
fall…
in…
love…
with…
you...

listen

lyrics

In a wood beyond the peaks
This is how I fall in love with you
Beneath an endless sea of leaves
This is how I fall in love with you

There’s something living in this green
This is how I fall in love with you
It whispers “dig”, my shovel sings
This is how I fall in love with you

Where I dig, I dig deep
This is how I fall in love with you
Beneath the roots, beneath the trees
This is how I fall in love with you

At last the earth, she finally speaks
This is how I fall in love with you
“That’s deep enough, my son,” she pleads
This is how I fall in love with you

And so I climb the walls so steep
This is how I fall in love with you
I climb for days, I climb for weeks
This is how I fall in love with you

I drag a simple box of pine
This is how I fall in love with you
I lower you down, down, down, down, down
This is how I fall in love with you

The way the earth drinks the rain
This is how I fall in love with you
I swallow every drop I can
This is how I fall in love with you

credits

released April 30, 2021
Upright bass - Jeremy McDonald
Cello - Ward Williams
Violin - Michael Hunter
B3 Organ and Piano - Todd Caldwell
Classical guitar - Alec Gross
Lead and harmony vocals - Alec Gross
Female backing vocals - Laura Hankin and Martha Harms

Artwork by Anna Azarov

Recorded at Mason Jar Music, Bushwick
Engineered by Jeremy MacDonald
Mixed by Will Hensley
Vocal Direction and Recording by John McGrew
String Arrangements by Ward Williams