Meet the finalists in our 24 Hour Song Challenge – Philly Anthems Edition

We here at WXPN are nearly ready to select a winner for this year’s 24 Hour Song Challenge – Philly Anthems Edition. But before that, we want to introduce you to the five finalists in the running for our biggest prize yet.

We tasked musicians in the WXPN broadcast region to write, record, and submit an original song in 24 hours with the prompt “freedom.”

More submissions came in than ever, and our panel of judges whittled them down to 12 semifinalists. WXPN listeners then cast thousands of votes to determine the five finalists. From those finalists, our in-house judges will decided who will win $5,000, a spot to perform their winning song live at the XPoNential Music Festival and Philly Music Fest, inclusion on WXPN’s Philly Anthems vinyl album, studio time, and more. The four remaining finalists will each get $500 cash, $100 gift cards to Russo Music, and a year membership to WXPN.

So, let’s meet our finalists.

Mackenzie Johnson — “Feather”

Johnson, who is now a two-time finalist in our challenges, said the prompt “freedom” was “sort of loaded” and wondered which direction she’d take the song: patriotic? Anthemic? Something different? The latter won out.

 ”I kind of went inward,” she said.  ”The song’s really about following your intuition to me. I kind of used some sort of bird imagery, so that’s why I called it ‘Feather.’ And I felt like there’s the spiritual significance to that for me and my family because we’re Native American. I kind of just was thinking about America in that way.”

Her song, recorded on a dock in the summer heat by her cousin after, is also about releasing  burdens that you don’t need to carry anymore, something she admits to being guilty of at times.

“ I am a worrier, so this is sort of like a mantra for me to just be more flowy with the universe and trust the signs and trust the timing,” she said.

She also said including avian imagery and symbolism was a bit of a cheeky way of shouting out the Philadelphia Eagles. “ This is my roundabout way of saying, ‘Go Birds,” she said.

Other submissions she found intriguing were  Max Davey, KOSER, and Best Bear.

Best Bear — “Big Dog”

Best Bear is the indie rock project from Blue Barnett, who is also a two-time song challenge finalist.

Their song “Big Dog” is about “ living on my own terms and not really waiting around for someone to tell me I can do, what I want to do.”

Barnett first began strumming some chords on their guitar, then hummed a melody over top of it. “ Then some words just kind of came out of the ether,” they said.

It wasn’t that simple, however.

“Timing-wise, I just had a jam-packed schedule — and I think a lot of people did — but I was working the day of the announcement, and working the next morning, as well,” they said. “So I got home from work and stayed up all night working on the song.”

With a handful of roommates to consider when recording the song, Barnett took their guitar to the coffee shop where they work and recorded their submission there before opening up. They didn’t sleep over the 24-hour period, but being employed at a coffee shop proved to beneficial.

“ I feel like 10 years ago I could have [had no sleep] and it wouldn’t have been a problem,” they said. “I will say working in a coffee shop is helpful, because I just got to drown in coffee all day and have a nice excuse for it.”

Barnett shouted out Johnson (the two are best friends), Heather Hurlock, and KOSER as standout submissions.

Jackson Craig — “What’s That Word Again”

Craig’s inspiration came from George Orwell’s 1984, with his song wondering what a world would look were the word “freedom” to disappear from our collective language, and who has a say in that.

“ I think it’s unfortunately something that we see all the time, where history is kind of altered based on who is in power at the time,” he said.

With that in mind, Craig said his song’s second verse touches on “monuments or statues being put in the basement” and things that people don’t recognize anymore.

 ”[Philadelphia is] historically a place where a lot of that was kind of figured out, and there’s so many remnants of the past there that can be interpreted in different ways,” he said. “I think the structure of the city is pretty important to the song.”

The most challenging aspect for Craig was nailing a one-take recording.

 ”I feel like it’s easy when you’re performing a song on a stage and you just kind of have to get through it and buckle down,” he said.  ”There’s something about playing something to a camera and then watching it back which is just really still foreign to me.”

On the flip side, cranking out a song in that small time window made for a fun challenge.

 ”I’m usually one to start writing songs and make one draft and then come back weeks or months later and tweak things,” he said. “I think just having the pressure of having to finish something within a few hours is exciting sometimes.”

The Flying Vees — “Workman’s Song #1”

 Hannah Taylor, Shannon Vasile, Brechyn Chace, Caitlin Ramsey of The Flying Vees said they’re experience with the challenge was a blast.

“ I think the Flying Vees have a very magical chemistry that makes things happen easily and joyfully,” they said. “ So it was all very fun. [The song] came so organically and quickly.”

Written within the span of a few hours, “Workman’s Song #1” is  about how working people in America often must defer their experience of freedom because they have to work so hard just to get by.

 ”We don’t talk about anything explicit about Philadelphia, but I still think that it embodies the spirit of Philadelphia, which is a community of working-class people,” Vasile said. “No snobs, no phony balonies. That’s what this song is really about:  having to to work hard and putting off your leisure time to another day.”

Vasile said she had the lyrics down in about half an hour, and the band put the melody together quickly, too.

All the while, The Flying Vees were preparing for a show that night near Gettysburg. Taylor and Vasile hashed out some of the song’s details while en route to the performance.

 ”We pulled up [to the gig] and we were super excited,” Taylor said. “To Brecken and Caitlin, we were like, ‘we figured it out, we figured it out!”

Backstage, the four worked out more of the song, performed, had a band dinner (and some drinks), then went to Chace’s house to record the song.

“By then we were loose as a goose,” Chace said.

“I listened to that video [of the song] about 52 times before I fell asleep, Valise said. “I was just so proud of it.”

Karlia — “No Limits”

At this point in her life, Karlia Gutierrez has been faced with “fork-in-the-road” decisions, and said “freedom” led her to focus on choosing a path for herself, and maybe being a little selfish even.

“I’m starting to think about making decisions more for myself rather than my family or my friends,” she said. “That’s kind of what freedom meant to me.”

She and her collaborator, Nathaniel Lemisch, started the writing process with instrumentation.

“He came up with this little guitar riff, and then from there I found the melody, and then I worked on the lyrics, and then we started to work a bit collaboratively on the lyrics,” she said.

After about four hours, she and Lemish had the song down.

 ”Typically I’ll usually write lyrics by myself, so it was a big challenge in that I had to open up a little bit and allow somebody else to write with me,” she said. But the collaboration helped her progress in the process. “ We kind of took the song chunk by chunk. The chorus came first, then the verses, and then after that it was kind of just like a double chorus, added some embellishments.”

Overall, she said working quickly was a breath of fresh air, as her typical songwriting process can take time.

 ”It was really fun to challenge myself to kind of work quickly and efficiently and maybe not overthink so much,” she said, calling the 24-hour window freeing in a way. That’s not to say the process didn’t have some drawbacks.  ”Because we were on a bit of a time crunch, some of the lyrics weren’t exactly what I would have liked them to be. But then it’s that double-edged sword.”

The WXPN 24-Hour Song Challenge – Philly Anthems Edition has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.