“Here come the lawyers and the landlords, and you can’t tell which is which
And the Mission is on fire, and there’s some people getting rich”
Released in 2023 after more than two decades of life in the rapidly transforming Mission District, 24th Street Blues (the sixth solo album by Tom Heyman) is folk rock doing what it does best: capturing a real person’s stories and feelings from a particular place in a particular time.
The opening title track sets the scene with a blend of the good, bad, and ugly, as Heyman sings of September summer days, late buses, and encampment sweeps. Later on the album, “The Mission Is on Fire” reflects on the tragedy of residential fires in the city, made doubly tragic by the fact that when dozens of people lose their homes, the capitalists stand to benefit.
On the same collection, there are also songs telling simple, plain stories of youthful tenderness, desperate yearning, and hard life working and living on the road, from Watsonville and Monterey to Humboldt. They are songs of experience, tenderly remembering younger days of innocence while resolutely bearing witness to the unsung calamities of the present.
