About
On February 27, 2010 Phillip Rogers performed on the stage at the one-year anniversary of the emergence of the Tea Party movement at the Georgia State House.
Michael Beck was also there to photograph the event. The two struck up a conversation over the guitar that Rogers plays (Beck plays guitar as well) and a fast friendship was started. As time passed and the commonalities between the Rogers and Beck began to accumulate there was one that stood out above all others. They were both at the September 12 rally in Washington D.C. in 2009.
A couple weeks after their acquaintance in Atlanta they came together with the purpose of giving visual impact to Rogers’ deeply powerful composition “Can You Hear Us Now?” With the addition of Beck’s photography as well as shots taken by Rich Hauschild (a Georgia Resident who was also at the rally) video shot by Rogers and voice over by 11-year-old Sierra Phillips, the piece became something more than a song. Comments like “It gave me chills…” and “I am Speechless…” began to emerge.
Once work was done on the project it became obvious that it deserved more than to just be injected into the vast homogenous arteries of YouTube and Vimeo. So Rogers came up with the idea to create a website that would bear witness to what really happened on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol on “9/12”.
However, it can’t end with that one event, immense though it was. Every day experiences are taking place both large and small that the Left, its lapdog the mainstream press and the highest levels of the government choose to simply dismiss as insignificant or deny as having occurred all together. It’s their way of seeking shelter from the light that falls upon them when the rock they hide under is removed.
Through their humble efforts, Rogers and Beck intend to use this website to cast righteous light on those who would choose for their motives to be seen by all. This will be a gathering place for musicians, singers, song writers, photographers, videographers and writers who would choose to be counted despite living in a born again culture of McCarthyism that says, “You can’t don’t count if you’re not one of us.”
It is a place where the silent majority will be silent no more!
From Michael Beck:
Because of some physical issues I’m dealing with, I was in a pretty good amount of pain after the two days I’d already spent shooting in Washington. So it was mercifully decided that I would not march with the group from Freedom Plaza (about a block from the White House). Instead I would go directly to the rally point at the base of the Capitol Building. However, the march got off to an earlier start than expected. So while I was watching the morning news, the “angry mob” was fast descending upon the Capitol. The weight of what I saw when I got there was withering. It was a sea of humanity spreading in all directions. I was a bit daunted by the fact that I had to get through this crowd to the stage!
I had a press pass and about thirty pounds of camera gear hanging off my vest so it wasn’t too tough to get people to understand that I wasn’t just trying to cut to the front in order to be closer to the action. I really did need to get there. When I got through the crowd I saw my recently made buddy, FreedomWorks Campaign Coordinator Nan Swift, who had been crying for joy for most of the morning. “Who could have imagined this?” she asked. Several people spoke of the bad dream they’d all had the night before of no one showing up. But as it turned out, it was just a dream.
There was no time to groove on that now though. I was late and there was work to be done. Lord only knew how much I’d already missed. So I started shooting straight away. There were several TV cameras set up on the media riser and I really couldn’t get the shot I wanted from there. So I said “hang the riser” and snuck around on the grass in front of the cameras minding to stay out of their shot.
For each speaker I would try to get a shot from the grass and then another one from behind the stage with the crowd as a back drop. This made for a lot of running back and forth. At some point in the day I was backstage (as it were) and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbee came up to me with another gentleman whose name I can’t remember just now. “This is the man,” he told the guy pointing at me, “He is the one to take the shot when you’re ready.”
Huh? What shot? Oh well, I assumed I’d figure it out when the time came. Sure enough the time came. The man Matt had pointed me out to grabbed me and told me to keep an eye on Georgia 6th District Representative Tom Price. When Price was done speaking he was going to walk three other people and me up to the balcony of the Capitol Building. The idea was to get a shot of the whole crowd. Where we were going is a highly restricted place and the only way we could get up there was with a congressional escort.
The congressman finished his remarks, the introduction was made and off we went. It turns out that Dr. Price is from my home district and we struck up a conversation. As we went through the heavily guarded gate and began to ascend the steps I was deeply stricken by where we were and the fact that we were the only ones who would get this opportunity. The burden to not waste this occasion was heavy upon me. I kept telling myself, “Don’t screw this shot up.” About half way up to the terrace where inaugural speeches are given, a woman named Nicole Darland stepped to the microphone on the stage now far below us and began to sing the National Anthem. As she sang the boisterous mass of people began to join in as loud as they could. We stopped talking and stood silently in the shadow of the dome of the Capitol with a giant American flag waving over our heads.
Congressman Price, who was one step above me, leaned over and said, “What a perfect time to be in this very place.” Perfect indeed! The emotion of the moment was breathtaking. I kept thinking of all the people I wished could have been with me at this very moment starting with my wife Carolyn who was somewhere down in the crowd. The photographer in me wanted to sneak a shot up at the dome and the flag. It really would have been a great picture. But I knew the image couldn’t have accurately conveyed the entirety of the experience. So instead I listened to the romantic in me that said, “Respect the occasion. Drink this experience right down to the bottom of the glass because you will never be here again.”
Sometimes it’s best to just silently watch and let the moment do the talking.
Once we got into position the sight of the crowd was awe inspiring. I’d seen huge crowds in my life but never anything like this. Everything was against getting this shot in its totality. I’d never done a panoramic shot. I was having trouble focusing my eyes. I was severely light headed. So I did the only thing I truly believed would see me through this; I prayed. Just as promised, God showed up and got the job done. The result was an image that captured the moment in the most commanding photo I’ve ever taken. I am aware that a lot of other photographers could have taken that picture. But the fact that looms large in my mind and heart is that I’m the “one in a million” who was asked to do it. To me that knowledge is more powerful than the image itself.
I am indeed a blessed man…
By Michael A. Beck
From Phillip Rogers:
Just like millions of other Americans, 2009 has pretty much been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for me.
I don’t belong to any political party but I am one of the now not so silent majority who have had it with the ruling class in Washington, DC. The elite group who has somehow concluded that common sense is something that makes sense only to common people.
Unfortunately, we minions have been asleep at the wheel for way too long and have allowed the people who make our laws as well as the ones who control what we see and hear in the media to convince enough Americans to surrender their common sense and on January 20th, 2009 we the people handed over the reins of our freedom.
But it didn’t end there. Nine months later on September 12, the ground shook inside the beltway as somewhere between one and two million people threw caution to the wind and converged on the steps of “We the People’s” house.
We were greatly discounted by all news outlets, ridiculed and called outrageous names by the leaders of Congress, but it didn’t phase our convictions or our momentum. We know what happened. We were there.
My friends Randy and Ken Frost and I cheated death the night before by flying up in a tin can with four seats. After getting a little bit of sleep and a breakfast that was so bad that it deserves its own song we were a few of the first to arrive at Freedom Plaza which is located on the White House end of Pennsylvania Avenue around 8:00 AM.
There the organizers had put up a small stage with what at first seemed to be ample sound reinforcement for the size of the expected crowd. But it soon became apparent that this party was a lot larger than anyone anticipated. And by 10:00 AM or so we heard over the PA that the Metro Police were insisting that we start the march early since the crowd was getting too large to manage in that location.
As we peacefully strolled toward the capitol I would occasionally hold up my video camera, which was attached to a fully extended seven foot unipod for the best areal shot I could get. But since I couldn’t see the view finder, it was a couple of days after I got back home and started editing the video before I realized just what I had.
At first, my intentions were to create a simple ten minute video with the “best of from my eighty minutes of footage, upload it to YouTube and share it with my Facebook friends. However, once I started scouring iTunes for some sort of genuinely appropriate music to lay down behind it the songwriter gene that had been lying dormant for several months started kicking in and pretty soon my focus landed on the song and not the video.
Ten years ago when I first started seriously writing songs I, like so many who find their way to Nashville, toyed with the romantic idea of one day landing a publishing gig and writing for radio. Fortunately, reality kicked in and I soon understood just how talented those staff writers really are. Although I have friends who do it every day, sometimes two or three times a day, I’m not one that can sit down and write a song about any topic and at any time. I need to have a really good reason to work that hard.
I learned two things early on about songwriting that would save me a lot of grief. First of all, if I’m going to write, I need to write around my voice and genre. The fact is that if any of my songs are going to get heard it will be because I recorded or performed them myself and not because some publisher worked hard to pitch my tunes to the labels of all the famous acts of the moment. This first lesson saved me from myself.
I also have to write about subjects that I actually know a little something about, which is probably why I don’t write any more than I do. There’s not a big market for songs about racquetball, stand-up jet skis or going bald. But there is one thing that I recently came to know a fair amount about and that is the emotions and excitement that every one of the contemporary patriots who showed up in DC felt that beautiful day in September. So after a couple of weeks of experimenting with different melodies, studying my own video as well as dozens of others on YouTube and the websites of fellow patriots. I finally got around to the most important ingredient; I humbly asked God to help me stay out of the way. Then I sat down and started writing “Can You Hear Us Now?”
After weeks of being consumed with every spare moment I could find, finally on Friday, October 23rd I put the pen down and declared myself finished.
The next day all by myself I stepped into my make shift sound stage, set up three camera angles and started rolling both audio and video. I recorded a guitar/vocal demo of the song using my Boss RC-50 on the vocal track so that I could layer a stack of live background vocals on the chorus and not have to fake a background track.
I spent a couple of days editing both audio and video then uploaded it to YouTube to share the link with my Facebook friends then for the first time in weeks, I finally got a good night sleep.
On Monday morning when I got around to firing up my Mac, there was a message from Julianne Thompson of the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots asking me if I would perform it at the “One Year to Judgment Day” rally at the State Capitol building in Atlanta on November 2 which I quickly confirmed. Over the next week I was overwhelmed with emails as well as Facebook and YouTube comments from people all over the country who were finding my YouTube video and relating to the story lines behind the song.
If I never make a dime, the song already has enriched my life more than I could possibly ask by the people it has introduced me to from all over America who were there that Saturday and were as much a part of the story and song as I was.
Each and every one has become one more line on my list of many reasons why I am so proud to be an American.
By:Phillip Rogers
