Premiere: Secret Emchy Society offer apocalyptic send-off with new song, ‘Dance Like the World is Ending’

When we come out the other side of this worldwide pandemic, live shows are likely to feel very different. Even now, as countless musicians turn to live streaming intimate shows on Instagram and Facebook, there is an eeriness to it all ⏤ almost apocalyptic in nature. Certainly not written about COVID-19, Secret Emchy Society‘s new song “Dance Like the World is Ending” emerges as a timely tribute to the magic of live shows, and Americana band lead singer Cindy Emch pours out every ounce of heart for a moving performance. “We dance like the world is ending / Dance like we’re never alone,” she crows on the chorus.

“I’ve got a poet on my mind / Someone else’s words in my heart / Tom Waits, Buck Owens, and Nick Cave sing the drunks to sleep,” she sings. Alongside players Tolan McNeil (backing Vocals, lead guitar), Mya Byrne (mandolin), Michele Kappel (drums), Hans Winold (upright bass, harmonica), and Carolyn Mark (backing vocals), a surprising melancholy descends upon the listener. It’s a raucous, late-night, and boozy celebration but also a reminder to hold tighter, love longer, bask in the moments more.

“Dance Like the World is Ending,” premiering today on B-Sides & Badlands, is the kind of song that soothes the soul. The world might be going down in flames, but at least we have bands like this for a collective last hurrah. “As a touring musician I’ve played a million dive bars it feels like ⏤ but everyone once in a while you play a place that just feels like magic,” explains Emch over email. “This song is about my pal Steve Heck’s bar up in Doyle, California and a crazy night that went into morning and ended up with the true soldiers of the night still dancing around with an unabridged joyfulness at 9 am after no sleep and a whole bunch of Bloody Marys.”

Typically “an old school rowdy place,” she says, she brings a similar ambiance to the song’s core mood and structure. “I lean towards old fashioned arrangements anyway, but I wanted this one to feel like David Lynch and Ennio Morricone had met out on the West Coast mountains for songs around the campfire. Just a classic cowboy tune that feels just as at home around a campfire with one guitar as it does on a stage with fancy lights and three soloists.”

The show in question was actually never “supposed to happen,” as she remembers. “We were on tour in Reno, and my bass player Hans was like, ‘Hey it’s only 10 pm! Let’s drive up to my pal’s bar in Doyle about 45 minutes away. It’s his birthday, and maybe we could have some whiskey and play some tunes.’ So, off we went! When we arrived, the hired musician was on her fourth hour of playing cover tunes for rowdy desert rats and was ready for a break. We plugged in the instruments and played for an hour? Two hours? I’ll never really know. This is the sort of bar where time stops.”

A roadhouse joint since the 1930s, it is rumored Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings, among others, stopped in for drinks in the ’60s whenever they had shows in Reno “since they would get recognized too much down there. It felt like time had stopped there. There is a slow cooker always on so folks can have dinner, and at least one old couple is always shouting that they want us to play a cover of ‘Kansas City.’ After that first night, where I slept a couple of hours in the car and then just headed back to the bar in the morning for Irish coffee and Bloody Marys, the song was already writing itself in my head. We’ve been back there to play many times now ⏤ and I gotta say ⏤ there’s no better time or place than 8 am at The Buck Inn.”

“Dance Like the World is Ending” samples the band’s new album, The Chaser, expected May 15.

Listen below:

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