WATCH: Roger Street Friedman Shares Poignant Video for “I Think We Know”

New album from revered Long Island songwriter, Long Shadows, out Jan. 2025

October 22, 2024 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2024, Americana, Long Island, Long Shadows, New York, Roger Street Friedman

Roger Street Friedman (Image: Missing Piece Group)

Long Shadows, the new album from Long Island’s own Roger Street Friedman, finds the singer-songwriter continuing to transcend the Americana handle with a new collection of songs that offers a North Shore blend of rock, blues, country and folk as only he can deliver.

Recorded in his home studio in Sea Cliff, Friedman began working on the LP as a means of combating post-tour depression after leaving the road. Obtaining the help of a crew of prominent musicians, including drummers Justin Guip (Levon Helm Band) and Jim Toscano, bassists Andy Hess (Gov’t Mule, The Black Crowes) and George Rush, and keyboardist Jeff Kazee (Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes) the new album began to take shape with Friedman behind the producer’s board for the first time.

“I didn’t have any expectations,” Friedman says. “It was no stress. I said, ‘Let’s just have some fun and a good hang, and we’ll see where it goes.’”

Roger Street Friedman Long Shadows, self-released 2024

Long Shadows doesn’t come out until Jan. 24, 2025, but Rock & Roll Globe is honored to premiere the poignant video for its latest single, “I Think We Know,” today on the site.

“I wrote this song right after October 7th, 2023. I was overcome by the senselessness of that brutal, murderous rampage and the response I knew was sure to reign down on the people of Gaza,” Friedman explains of the song’s emotional impetus. “I had a visceral feeling of hopelessness that was amplified by Putin’s ongoing war in Ukraine, the Climate Crisis, and the ‘Alternate Facts’ of dictators and wannabe dictators who seem to be priming the pump of autocracy by sowing doubt here in America and in many other parts of the world. It was one of those songs that just flowed out of me and turned into a kind of prayer that we will all, somehow, ‘make it through.’ The writing process was actually cathartic, as you can hear in the lyrics, in that I went from feeling a deep sense of loss and disillusionment and a poignant mix of fear and longing, to a desperate hope for resilience and unity.”

Keep up with Roger Street Friedman online at rogerstreetfriedman.com for more news about the release of this timely collection of songs that are aimed like arrows straight to the human heart.