Peep This: Bob Bradshaw “The Wearing of The Black”

Over the years I have known him Bob Bradshaw has again and again proven himself as an artist, completely, direct to the heart. Case in point, he not only dreams up vivid stories and pours them into his songs, but he is always thinking of the next step. How to fully portray that story in other ways and with this latest video for “The Wearing of the Black”, he worked with Laurie Bousquet and Aaron Sugar to take his music and dovetail it with visuals that lay out a narrative in a beautiful way. And as with most of Bob’s work, he is joined by an absolute monster cast of some of the most talented 

Where some of Bradshaw’s last video efforts were more cinematic, almost like short movies that could have been submitted to a handful of film festivals and landed high on the balloting list, this one takes a more illustrative approach. Puffs of digital smoke unveiling scene after scene, following the story that Bradshaw is singing. An animated feature that propels his words and hoists them up.

It states in the videos description, “State-funded, church-run, ‘Mother and Baby Homes’ darkened the outskirts of many Irish towns in the first half of the 20th Century. This story takes place in Tuam, Co. Galway.”

Bradshaw sings the closing line of the song, “And how much rainbow is left inside? How much color did you hide? Outside the gates she broke into a run “I want my son. Give me back my son” you can feel a palpable despair that meets with light. Questioning what is left and the hope that perhaps there is something. And as his voice lifts, you can feel that the fight is still there.