Pride 2021 inspires the best of queer singer/songwriters to produce new music to mark and celebrate the occasion. Here’s TOM GOSS, and he explained to us who he came to create his Pride
The idea for the song was sparked by a cross-country road trip my husband and I took last summer. We stayed in rural areas, ate sandwiches in our car, and kept to ourselves, with one exception, We stopped off in Reading, Pennsylvania to visit our friend Ben, who had recently lost his partner, Rich.
Rich and Ben were cornerstones in their local LGBTQ community, working hard to make Reading a loving, welcoming, and tight-knit city for all. Upon Rich’s death, the city hosted a rainbow flag raising & memorial service in front of City Hall in his honor.
Their story inspired me to think about all of the other people who have fought tirelessly to make being gay something to be celebrated. People like Rich and Ben, living and loving quietly but heroically in small cities and towns across the country. The world may never know their names, but that doesn’t make their stories any less important.
I hope ‘Pride’ and its music video encourage people in the community to stop and reflect on how we got to where we are today. We owe so much to our forefathers and mothers. We cannot begin to imagine the hardships they endured, and that’s by design. They wouldn’t allow it. They wanted a better world for us, so they created it for us.
It’s important that we pay homage to and respect those who fought for us and continue fighting for the generations to follow. That is Pride.
http://tomgossmusic.com