Gathering of the Hominids; Family Tree’ is a CD with eleven tracks of performance poetry, music, and song featuring Jack & Billie Shields.

The Shields "create campfire intimacy and bonfire abandon in their concerts,” (Expose’) and their new CD, ‘Gathering of the Hominids; Family Tree’, manages to capture much of that live warmth and energy.

"The poetry is rich & complex…universal…steeped in history & mythic lore…music, image and idea are scored in perfect rhythm…little cinemas…” (Bookmark)

"Gathering the Hominids: Family Tree’ is a folk opera, an epic that lives in the moment in mind that exists out of time and moves with ease between the Paleolithic past and the present, from “burying our dead, carrying their tools” to cities where “pillars of gray and black smoke hold off the sky.”

"Jack & Billie Shields are 21st Century griots and troubadours mixing world music, history and myth into an intoxicating brew with a long view of life on our small planet." (Stepanie Johnson Entertainment)

The tale of hominids is a history of mysteries, language, leaping frogs, inner & outer worlds intersecting, strategy over strength. Memory and imagination spark creation, the long memory, mythic imagination. In the old ways that survive we find the ideas and images that still hold sway over mind and emotions and remind us of our common ancestry and actual kinship.

Reviews

"Jack & Billie Shields have just released a much-anticipated collection of music and poetry that is epic in scope and thoroughly dynamic. The CD, "Gathering of the Hominids, Family Tree,” has great significance, strength and at times even achieves the qualities of a semi-ceremonial folk march…The recording resonates with insistent and compelling voices. Stunning visual imagery coupled with pacing reminiscent of great rock albums, like Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon,” will leave the listener breathless. "Gathering of the Hominids” is elegant in its restraint, and powerful when it counts..."

Jason Simmons (Calaveras Enterprise)

“Jack’s poetry combines myth and history to create a modern tribal oral tradition, connecting us with the common roots of our ancestors. "Gathering of the Hominids‘ is brilliant, like a star, one of the absolutely beautiful stars in the late night when workaday consciousness has taken rest and the mind dreams & dreams.”

Preston Chase (Out & About) Mariposa Gazette

THIS BEAST YOU SEE

This beast you see can be seized by a song
with eyes for shooting stars or clouds drifting by the moon
every mother’s fruit of the womb born to fall and be consumed
animal of meat, mind, minerals beast of breastbone, marrow, sorrow
breathes moist air, waters dust with salt-sea-cells
& long memories, you same as me, dust and dew
grave grasses
ashes on the sea

Green grain grass overgrows graves and ash and bone
and bones older still, hills of fossils covered clover like
clouds, shrouds, mists myths blown away, waves
wind is motion is mystery mountains tumbling tranquil
trees tremble twisted roots wrapped round wrinkled rock
and bones and groin-seed served up to the sun
and long ago undone will feed sons and daughters
who in their turn of earth and ash
offer up the roots and worm
the blessed earth eats
green, grain grass,
waves over graves

Bones buried with grave gear covered with pollen of flowers
picked thousands of years gone by among the oldest bones known
bones of old people, elders someone else to hunt and forage for them
crippled in youth or born with birth defects, yet cared for into old age
from the thousands and thousands and one nights of tales and ceremony
for man, mammal, survival of the fittest means something different

Survival of the fittest means something else something other for us
in homes of mammoth tusks covered in hides
of rock outcroppings and shallow caves
yawning dark mouth, long rock overhang
just deep enough to make a home
for fire-making hominids
or out in the day in the tens of thousands of years
in the nights, the stories and stars the tools of daily life turn on art
sitting round, dancing round fire wearing the masks and antlers

Men in the cool damp dark miles deep womb of the mother mountain
drinking from the fountain wellspring of waking dream
down, down, deep along miles of dark entrails
to the black belly of the earth, womb of rebirth to manhood
drumming on stalactites, stalagmites and ribbons of calcite pictures of beasts and trancing shamans
dancing on walls, torch-lit, shadowy, alive
man animal emissary born of both worlds
the feathered mask, bird face, bird staff, cock stiff
the urge down, down underground

the soulsurge

between twin worlds sliding
crawling out of the birth canal
back among the moon and sun

Home hearth
Earth Madonna’s in circled stone altars feet stuck direct in dirt, ground of being
home hearth where woman's magic
births and blesses the tribe
where everyone is recognized
Mitochondrial Eve mating in the dizzying dawn long gone
when three races of hominids shared the garden and the
serpent's bride joyously picked the fruits of the tree

Man a million years living cold in the dark
naked no tools animal hearted love
stone hand ax, chipped flint
Sparks fly

Flaming mind

Fire in the Snow!

The hunt begins at birth

The gathering all within
Survival of the fittest means something else
Something other for us We are the acrobats that can raise our own reality
Create the creature we become

Earth

Wheeling, working, creating conditions that support life
Adjusting to maintain temperature and atmosphere
Elements
Fire pulsing thru veins, boiling up from the core erupting
Cloud covers, salt seas, cleansing rains
The geology of bones & silky soil

“Glaciers grind
Ground acids dissolve
Granite cracks
Continental shelf, shape-shifts
Lifts mountain ranges
Oceans appear, disappear, re-appear
Water seeps, water tables topple
Spill underground streams
In new directions”

Earth mortal mother, embryo earth, mortal and many sistered
Rounds a middling young sun, our one and faithful life star
This the heart of who we are

Sunrays fishtailing thru a bubbling brew
Of deep dark waters
Struck through with lightning-electricity
Boiling up hot spring muck
Bursting into being
Single cell ceremonies
Spirit spasm, protoplasm
Life force tossed from the chaos sauce
Of primordial soup
Amniotic fluids of our planet

The human embryo goes through all the stages of evolution in the womb
And back through the seed and need of every ancestor
Back way back before even life forms,
to Matter, Mother, Ma,
Empty and then

Music of the womb, the soft murmurs of underground streams
The quick pulse of an infant’s heart beating in syncopation with
The slower, stronger, deeper beat of the mother’s heart
Floods of blood rush through her arteries
And stream through both their veins.

Squatting hunkering, inhaling, hot spring steam
Wiping warm mud all over our bodies
A rush of blood aroused body heat
Lips looser, larger, pupils of the eyes
Dilated completely
Two black pits direct to the soul
Heart beats faster, muscles contract
Muscular contractions comfort
Release healing hormones
Mystery medicines, primordial moist Your fluids flow, flood my drought dry soul
Relaxed arousal, lasting longing sexual silk on silk,
We anoint the night with the oil and slime of love
With our own warmth and weather

Water, flowing, streaming
Falling, cascading over stone
Bathing in our own hot springs
Carnivorous juices, naked mud ooze
Scrawling cryptic signs on your body
Central alter of the earth
Mud dripping, drying, caking, cracking
Us cracking up
& back up
To stand under the waterfall

HAH!!

Cold, cold steep creek
Dripping cliffs, rain rippled rock

Standing, steaming, shivering, shaking
Goosebumps and grin
Shimmering in a halo of mist and spray
Dressed in a living lattice work
Of lacy, leafy shadows and milky moonlight
You are beautiful Soft, round, six months pregnant
Luminous with inbeing radiance
Frog goddess of fertility

Squatting, hunkering inhaling hot spring steam
Wiping warm mud all over our bodies
A rush of blood, aroused body heat
Fire, desire, burns away pain
And in the cool morning an everyday miracle
Renewed in the innocence of passion
Wading, splashing, diving in the stream
Back out with a shout, baptism by deluge
Reborn, not born again
Risen with new flame in the flesh

Long sleeping, returning with the rain
Water woman, wart woman
Who fetches the golden ball
From the bottom of the well
Night singer, night singer, croaking, soaking
Sound all around
And in the morning mud & creek grasses
Along the stream bed, squatting, legs spread wide
Long strands of pearls, long strings of eggs
Little pearls, Frog Goddess, bleeding golden fertility
Seeding the earth in color, the sky with light
After a night of shared blessings
Bathing in our own hotsprings

Holy ghost gods and goddess's
come before your eyes, the old gods long gone
glad to see you again, glad to see you
The ghost bones call…

No control over the dead ever in the dark of day
Or prayer by the cobweb covered bones in the skeletal crypt
Not even ownership of dust and dew
Whose spirit sails at the helm of that burning grave
Floats out to sea and sinks
Whose spirit at the helm of that burning grave.

You are the child set adrift in a reed boat
In an ark of osier and sedge on a river of rocks rapture
The sheer drop certain death
Out of the matrix of the mother
Lifted from her lap folded in her arms
Lips turn to her breast flowers to the sun
And our little boat of life sets sail on the sea
Where it will sink

Holy ghost gods and goddesses
Dream dance dissolve
The universe evolves we
Only open ever out, who refuses to give up the ghost
Tho gone to ash and dust all the live long lay &
Wild winged wishbone play of thought and dream
Ever wrought in the light of day, of dark places
Where shadows feed on themselves
But, we are of the earth, will sink back to her soil
Food for the great worm
Sustenance sucked from root to tree

In the gapping jaw, in the teeth of vision
Where you can't tell who's eating who even
On a day like this where you can look up
And see forever beyond the blue-white distance
Wispy clouds disappear blown by the breath
Behind the teeth that continue to chew you
Until the void retches and spews you out empty
And now all you can see is what’s in front of we

Holy ghost gods and goddess's
come before your eyes, the old gods, long gone
glad to see you again, glad to see you

The ghost bones call with talk as dry as chalk
chew you with vision teeth with newly moistened mouth
The ghost bones call
to summon spirits
to sing seizing songs
to hold the soul by its body
to hold with healing hands
the pierced heart by its hooks
look inward
an open door at the core
Pain is Permanent
Bliss is Forever

WORLDS WEAR AWAY

In the garden with all our restless relatives
all beings that move on the earth
dark earth of our birth
great mothering earth will die
as sure as I and I in times long place
the long clocks tick and toll time-space
this place, this planet, this changing season
this passing generation, in this moment
this beast is released in sudden seizure
the summoned soul, consumed whole
awake aware, share the single eye
spiral dancing, swirls of blue & white
this whirling world pictured from a satellite

A new moment of mutation is at hand
connect, reconnect, wisdom, now knowledge
Ancient in our souls & cells
Self-preservation the whole self beyond dead
& passing generations…

Wounded wail of the last dinosaur
Worlds wear away as waves wash the shore
The radio roars, the humming horn soars
Drowned in drunken drums keeping time
The many masks' hand made, worn, torn
Washed away by the tides
And the tides beat against the beach
Beating out time in eternity
Born, buried again
In a rhythm of silent stars
Keeping time

There in the cities
Where pillars of gray and black smoke hold off the sky
The metallic breath of the worm driven machinery
The whirring and whining wires
Kilowatt-hours, bartered days, lost nights
No return minutes
Real memory can't replace space
Time is all we have to spend
ALL we have to spend
Waste no space trying to avoid
The VOID

NOT to step on the treadmill
NOT to march to the goosestep beat
NOT to walk to the tick of the clock
NOT to turn back pillar of salt
Not a world of man driven machines
More a world of machine driven men
Mad monotony, ruinous routine
Time divided exactly
Hours, days, weeks, years
A lifetime driven by mechanical clocks
To endless repetitive labor
Never a truly free moment
Never naked N O W
But always
Just a few ticks

Between

Where you've been
And where you must go
Crucified on our own cleverness
Driven to inhabit the clockworks of

T i c k i n g t i m e

Rock dropped as matter
Clocked in time
BIG BOOM BANG
An expanding universe
Everything moves farther and farther a p a r t
Boomerang
It all draws back together

Inhale Exhale
This Moment
Immediate
Immense
Blink & Gone

Walking On

Wounded wail of the last dinosaur
Worlds wear away as waves wash the shore
The radio roars, the humming horn soars
Drowned in drunken drums keeping time
The many mask, hand made, worn, torn
Washed away by the tides
And the tides beat against the beach
Beating out time in eternity
Born, buried again
In a rhythm of silent stars
Keeping time

Keeping time

Keeping time

BEYOND DEAD

We all want beyond dead
Thats what she said, Beyond dead
We don't know what dreams are
Thats what I said, I said we don't know
What we don't know is what we fear
She said, isn't it clear
Fear of the unknown
The bone of contention
Never mentioned
The skeleton in the closet is dead
That’s what she said
No rest in rigid conformity
The buried from their bed
The awake shake free

And dream

We inherit the Earth
We the offspring of the ancients
We the ancestors of unborn generations
We grow up knowing
We're going to end in our graves
Knowledge of death
Paves the path of the soul
No longer eternal, time enters the mind
Sharpens the imagination
Wanting a happy hunting ground
Hunting for a happy hereafter
Wanting beyond dead
Is how we got to who we are

Burial gear, they say first sign of symbolic thought
Religion, science, art start here
Where the heart of death sounds silently
Startles we to attention
Pulls the many tenacles
Of far flung thought together
Tethers mind tight to heart
Waste no part of the animal
No part of the plant
With the sacrifice of seed
Death and decay lead to rebirth

Day of the Dead
Catholic funeral, bagpipes of pagan pan
All night picnic in the village graveyard
The dead participate in life
The living enriched by eternity
We want to hold our dead want to let them go
Spread our blankets with food & wine
Introduce new babies, husbands, wives
The dead like news
Like to share the daily bread of our lives
We their seed, their progeny
They substance of our souls dance in our DNA
Make them welcome they visit your dreams

We this seasons seed need
The long memory, mythic imagination
We don't live beyond dreams
We want beyond dead, beyond kings
Want to stop time
Want eternal
Want forever
Want to take IT with us
All we take to the grave is the life
We've led, the love we gave
The life we live, the love we give

We all want beyond dead
That’s what she said,
No rest in rigid conformity
The buried from their bed
The awake shake free

And dream