Ben LaMar Gay - Open Arms to Open Us (Limited Edition Dawn Cherry Vinyl) Vinyl LP

Open Arms to Open Us traces its roots to a childhood memory on my great Aunt Lola’s land in Alabama, feeding pigs and listening together to the sounds around us—wind through pines, quail songs, distant voices. One day, she told me she could still hear her father’s hammer in the fields where he once worked, though he’d long passed. At seven years old, I didn’t know the term for it, but I was learning the first law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. The rhythm of that hammer, and the silence between its strikes, opened my ears to a lifelong curiosity—and to improvisation as a true freedom available to us all.

I began visualizing this music in the spring of 2020, when the pandemic and the collapse of societal facades made mortality and impermanence impossible to ignore. My thoughts turned to the young people in my life—my nieces, nephews, and the next generation of listeners—and what I could leave behind for them. I wanted them to know I was thinking about their futures, their curiosity, and their exploration. In Open Arms to Open Us, rhythm becomes an inheritance, like DNA: a truth that travels across time, survives the collapse of false structures, and carries messages from both ancient and future loved ones.

These compositions are intended as tools for navigating life’s loops—those man-made cycles of harm, control, and exploitation. The title suggests a gesture of understanding, an opening that can lead to touch or embrace. The music is meant for dancing, reflecting, celebrating, grieving, focusing, and decoding messages from beyond. Just as the space between my great grandfather’s hammer strikes revealed something eternal, this record is a reminder that rhythm endures—and that no matter the obstacles, we gon’ win.