I wrote and recorded "No Countries" to express my feelings about nations, borders, flags, and patriotism. They are illusions created by humans, sometimes to protect, but more often to control, dominate, intimidate, and exploit our differences. There are no national borders in the natural world. Animals have survived without borders for millennia and humans can too.
As part of the process of recording this song, I learned how to use the Japanese vocaloid software Hatsune Miku by Crypton Future Media. It was an exciting creative challenge to learn a musical tool that was outside of my normal skill set, and it underscored the idea that all human artistic expression lives and breathes inside of and apart from language and culture.
I also used an AI video creation tool called Hedra to make the video, with the same intent of diving into a process that is completely modern and current and foreign to how I usually work. Both the Miku vocaloid software and the Hedra AI video tool were ways to reconcile with the forces at work in our world that I find alarming and fascinating. I believe the only way forward is to understand the changes happening, so we can harness them to propagate values of peace, unity, decency, fairness, equity and tolerance.
This week brought the devastating news of the death of my friend Rick Froberg. Rick was and is one of my generation’s greatest (hard rock, punk, rock and roll, whatever you wanna call it) singer-songwriters, period. 
Pierre Pressure Podcast episode 28 is out now with Kurt Wagner, mastermind of the band Lambchop.
Come celebrate the release of Bad Reputation V.3 on March 31 at Barbes! Order now from
Explaining Socialism: All music, lyrics, and instruments by Pierre de Gaillande.