From the Cold Field

Track nine is the song that joins two album covers. Outside the Camp had a lone man standing in a cold field. Sing Anyway has that same field full of people. This song is the bridge between those two pictures, and it moves from one to the other right in front of you.

It opens in a minor-key hush, one voice alone. I was standing in a cold, bare field, cast out, and on my own. No steeple and no gathered crowd. And the first thing the lone man does is the thing the whole album is named for - he sings anyway. I lifted up my empty hands, I had nothing else to bring. And the cold did not stop the song from coming - a wounded man can sing.

Then verse three turns, and the song modulates from minor into major as it turns, because the discovery is that good. I thought that I had been the only one, the last lone voice to call. Then the field filled up with lifted hands, and we were not alone at all. The chorus, sung I twice, becomes we. The bridge anchors it in Elijah, who was sure he was the last one left, and was told I have seven thousand more. And it lands on the line that turns the whole cold field holy: the Lord went out that gate Himself - the cold field is full of God. A campless man lifts his hands alone, and finds he was always standing in a congregation.