Blackie and the Rodeo Kings – “Beautiful Scars” (video) (premiere)

Canada’s Blackie and the Rodeo Kings released their latest alternative country/Americana album Kings and Kings earlier this year and it features the band pairing up with their favorite male vocalists, including Fantastic Negrito, Buddy Miller, Keb Mo, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Eric Church, and Raul Malo. This LP is a companion of sorts to their 2011 effort Kings and Queens that featured the group working with their favorite females vocalists.

Today we are sharing the new video for “Beautiful Scars”, which features Dallas Green from City and Colour, and is inspired by novelist Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows. It’s a stunning song told from the point of view of a mother in the most empathetic of ways. The female narrative feels natural and affecting, while the video is so sympathetic and sad, that it will leave you in tears if you have a good heart. “Beautiful Scars” is a serious accomplishment in songwriting and the band should be proud. Tom Wilson tells PopMatters that it took him 56 years to write, “unlike most of my material ‘Beautiful Scars’ came to me along with the mystery of my adoption being solved, the discovery of my nine brothers and sisters and my Mohawk heritage.The song is inspired by my own mother’s journey through darkness and my belief in our raging human spirit. Co-written with my son Thompson Wilson the song begins a journey that is being continued in the writing of my first book that shares the same title and will release in November.”