USING HER VOICE

In her latest work, singer-songwriter and cancer survivor Quincy Coleman ’90 creates an anthem for

climate change—BY BROOKE HAUSER

Quincy Coleman ’90 made her solo debut in kindergarten with “All You Need Is Love” by The Beatles, and she has been singing ever since. You might know her song “Baby Don’t You Cry (The Pie Song)” from the movie Waitress, starring Keri Russell. Or maybe you haven’t discovered her yet. Either way, the singer-songwriter who Dolly Parton once described as possessing “all the goods, a beautiful voice, such sweet emotion and tenderness” today shares a lot in common with the kid who belted out that all you need is love all those years ago.

“It’s so interesting that the first word, over and over like a mantra, that I sang as a performance was ‘love,’” Coleman said on a recent Zoom from her home in California. Raised in a “very creative, artistic family” by actor-parents Dabney Coleman and Jean Hale, she was 16 when she moved to the East Coast to attend Williston. “I believe that was the first time I sang with a band…it was very exciting,” Coleman recalls. “We did ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ by Joni Mitchell and a couple of other songs, and it felt really right.” She still keeps in touch with an old boyfriend, who is also a musician and introduced her to The Cure.

Coleman has eclectic taste musically. “I’m a big jazzhead,” she says, citing Billie Holiday and Fats Waller among her influences, along with classical and world music. But there’s a consistency to her messaging. “What’s coming through me to deliver is all about unity and hope,” she says, “and, also, knowing that moving through the shadow is part of embracing the light. It’s absolutely a necessity to hold the space for both.”

Coleman knows about the dance between light and shadow as a cancer survivor. In 2009, she was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a life-altering experience. “While I did not consciously step away from music, I was just stepping into my healing and stepping into, like, not dying,” she said. “The diagnosis really brought me back home to my soul.”

It was several years later before she came back to music, and, at that point, “I picked up my guitar, and I wanted to write a prayer for the world to be able to resonate with and sing,” says Coleman, who delivered that prayer in her song “I Am That I Am.” “It was an amazing experience for me as a songwriter. I loved not being in the spotlight. I loved that it was about something bigger and more of a collective offering of music.”

Now she’s giving fans another collective offering: Based on Greta Thunberg’s “Our House Is on Fire” speech, “We Can Do This Now” is an anthem calling attention to the threat of climate change. It’s also about the power to heal. “Greta really inspired me,” Coleman says. “I was conscious, but I was not a radical environmentalist, and I’m still learning. I need this song too.”

ANNOTATED LYRICS

Based on a speech by environmental activist Greta Thunberg, Quincy Coleman’s new song debuted on Earth Day (hear it at quincycoleman.net). Below, she breaks down the lyrics for us.

I’d written down Greta’s speech, and I plucked out the lines that felt like they could be poetic or lyrical. Then I weaved in a few of my own moments just to keep a rhyme and a flow, but “I want you to panic” is straight from her. I found that to be a very powerful message because obviously we never want anyone to panic about anything, but when your house is on fire, it’s a good time to start gathering your survival instincts and do something to save yourself and the planet, in this case.

Voting is a huge way to take action, locally as well as nationally. Recycling, turning your faucet off. Turn your lights off, keep the doors closed, open the windows, you know, move with the weather, get on your bike more, compost at home, create a home garden, grow your food. Go meatless one day a week.

“Noble” is me, just a poetic, lyrical way to rhyme the message. When she says, “I don’t want you to be hopeful,” what I understand that to be is, those are just words. You know, don’t tell me that you’re hopeful—take action and make a change. [In the music video], we image the house on fire, just textbook: the pipeline. The power of that, the glacier melting, the Amazon on fire…they describe it as the lungs of the earth.

That’s me. Greta is very, very intense and sort of slapping us on the wrist, which I love…but when I was done with the song, for me, the way that I like to message things is to always bring in hope or the light…a solution or mantra of some sort. “We can do this” felt like a very important, anthemic cheer for everybody to get on board and know that we can.