"No Contact":  Here's a sneak peek from the upcoming album by Hollow G (Teddy), produced by local Christian producer Loc Saint (complete lyrics below).

01 No Contact (rough draft)

 

For the last five years, Chris Hoke has gone with Bob Ekblad to the Skagit County Jail in northwest WA where they read the Bible and pray with men of all races and criminal levels. Inmates, especially the young Chicano gang members, have been vocal about how much they appreciate Chris' singing and guitar playing before the dialogical Bible studies. One particular young gang member would sing all the new raps and rhymes he'd write in his solitary confinement cell to Chris when they would have one on one visitations. "One day, Chris," he'd exclaim, "we're gonna record together. You and your white boy guitar with my gangster raps!"

That day has come. Only the song, "No Contact," laments that the original homie who had the idea is still locked up in prison, along with most of the young men Chris has ministered to in the jail and gangs. The vision came to fulfillment with another young survivor of the gang life–who goes by Hollow G–who has grown alongside Chris, the Tierra Nueva community, and the Holy Spirit bringing G into God's family. Hollow G is working on a full album about the life of an American alien growing up into the gang life, "Raised By the Streets." 

The album will be coming in 2011, but this preview track combines the perspectives of a jail chaplain and a fellow comrade of the streets, naming the forces that separate us–on both the systemic and spiritual level.

Here are the lyrics:

NO CONTACT

This is for the homies who’re locked up in there

Your faces hang on our walls

Your names they hang in our prayers

CHORUS

There’s no contact

(for my G’s…for my homies…for my family)

 

Missin’ my homies cuz we go way back

They’re now in the pen and there’s no contact

Cuz they’re stuck to the system and they can’t get unattached

And I’m wishin’ we could just all kick back

Like back in the day when we all had a blast

Chasin’ some rucas or makin’ some cash

Or getting’ laid in the back (where we’d laugh,

With some girls) of the parties that we’d just crashed

Can’t even count all the guns we stashed

But, as they say, That’s all the past

Cuz I’m tryin’ to live my life right

For my kids and my future wife

And I want you right there by my side

Even though it’s gonna be a struggle to walk a straight line

Even though it’s gonna be a struggle, just know your homie is thinkin’ about you

Like all the time

 

We used to embrace when we’d meet in the jail

Now we gotta wait until someone posts bail

The guards only allow handshakes

Or a pat on the back, touchin’ the ink of your namesakes

No contact—even out on the streets

With grudges between old friends and family

They’re thicker than prison walls of concrete

CHORUS

This goes out to all my gente:

Big Neaners, Travieso, Pelon and Muerte

I love you and miss you hasta la muerte

And praying to God for all my ese’s

For the ones that are straight stressin’

From trials, phone calls and visitations

They get out but go back in due to all them bad temptations

Walkin’ back and forth, impatient

Tryin’ to figure out their next destination

And reminisce about when we were chamacos

But don’t trip out cuz I’ll see you arratos

Writin’ you letters, doin’ whatever

To keep in contact with all my pinteros

 

I see you wavin’ to me through the glass

Like the funeral’s already passed

But the light in your eyes makes me a believer

Like the sound in your voice, the quick “I love you” before you blow in the receiver

I wish you could hear the songs he sang to me in a visiting cell

How he flowed and made the room hum just like a bell

But I’m the only one our here now who’s livin’ to tell

When there’s no contact…

CHORUS

No contact, they say you feel forgotten and dead

Well Jesus he said even the dead

In their graves will hear My voice

Well do ya?

Do you feel that love?

Do you feel that touch?

Are you seein’ the people He’s bringing back into touch?

 

(Even when) There’s no pardon—that’s the tragic order

Of this world of pain and separation

It’s like Satan’s the warden

But we’re fightin’ back with some love in this chorus

Packin’ forgiveness

Like a flashlight when you’re lost in a forest

It shows

the way

out

CHORUS