History

G.O.: Ah, thank you for your good taste in music.

J.T.: …have you written a song about the War of 1812?

G.O.: Yeah. No, to those who think the anthem should be…To those who want to change it to a song that’s easier to sing. I never really thought of this until you asked it, but perhaps the difficulty of the singing is a metaphor for the fact that freedom isn’t free. And that being an American doesn’t mean that we are born to a life of ease. It means that we are called upon to do difficult things that other people on the planet have never been able to do. And so, perhaps, it’s very right and fitting that the song is difficult to sing because it’s not supposed to be easy to be an American. We should never confuse what it means to be an American citizen with what it means to be a member of Sam’s Club, you know? Our mottos, ‘In God We Trust’ and ‘E pluribus Unum,’ are very different from ‘Pay less and live better,’ you know?

And the other thing that I think is, you know, from just a music and poetry standpoint, I think, is provocative about these lyrics that have stood the test of time is the way that first verse, the stanza that we sing before every public event and football and baseball games, the way that it ends, I think, in a question. Perhaps people singing it think it’s a statement. You know, sort of an exultation of:

‘…say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?’

I think it’s a timeless question. I think it’s a question we ask each other and we ask of ourselves every time we sing that song. Is this still the land of the free and the home of the brave? Do we value our responsibilities and our freedom enough to understand the vital indispensable connection between the two, and are we willing in our own times to continue to defend, as others have, the reality of our being the land of the free and the home of the brave through the choices we make and the actions we take?

J.T.: So, have you penned a song about the War of 1812?

G.O.: Yeah, I wrote a song about the Defense of Baltimore. You know, having played in an Irish band, and the Irish, not unlike we Americans, have had their fights with the British. I penned a song called the ‘Battle of Baltimore’ that tells the story through the eyes of a young man, or a husband, leaving his love to go off and hunker down in ‘Armistead’s fort,’ and talking about what hangs in the balance.

J.T.: Which [O’Malley’s March] album is that on?

G.O.: That’s on the live CD.  I used for the sort of format, the structure, rather, or the device of it, ‘All around my hat I wear a tri-colored ribbon’—you know that Irish song? I used that device for that song. And we brought in a sort of techno-Disney-Studios sound effect of the church bells ringing, which was the signal for people to run to the trenches at Patterson Park or to the fort or the other various defenses. That was the signal. When the fleet showed up in the harbor, all of the church bells were to ring, and people were to go to battle stations. So, it has the church bells ringing at the end of it. The other thing was the signal cannon that would start firing from the fort to let people know. So the combination of the two—and you hear that happening.

To listen to a snippet of Governor O’Malley’s “Battle of Baltimore,” click here and select the play button in front of the last track on the album.

To view the print version of this article, which appears in the February 2012 issue of Maryland Life, click here

To purchase a copy of the February 2012 issue of Maryland Life Magazine, click here