When I released the album No Wicked for the Rest, I kept one song back, not knowing if it would be at home with the others. The song is called Orange Ribbon, inspired by a silent act of courage during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, by a journalist named Nataliya Dmytruk.
In a shaky democracy where acts of courage in defiance of the state are rewarded with threats, imprisonment, or worse, Nataliya decided to use her position as a sign language interpreter on state-run channel UT1 to lay bare corrupt election results. With an orange ribbon on her wrist, she deviated from the official script followed by the national news anchor, and signed to her deaf viewers, silently saying, "I am addressing everybody who is deaf in Ukraine. Our president is Victor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the central election committee. They are all lies.... And I am very ashamed to translate such lies to you. Maybe you will see me again."
As stated on Wikipedia: "Her silent rebellion sparked a stop-work meeting by 250 of her newsroom colleagues who made a broader stand for truth. Hundreds of her colleagues at UT-1 who were inspired by Dmytruk's action confronted the network's owners, chanting: No more lies! Within days UT1 had changed to a balanced reporting style. Following her act, many other news reporters in the broadcast media run or controlled by the state or the oligarchs supporting [Viktor] Yanukovych refused to participate in the production of the doctored news reports. Within a few days the overall political climate in Ukrainian media changed dramatically towards a more balanced coverage ..."
So in 2011, I found myself in a hotel room in Lviv, Ukraine after concluding a family roots tour with my long-lost cousin Dave. The tour was dubbed "Dave and Nathan's Excellent Fishing Trip", since that was its original intent.
Dave's half Finnish, and half Ukrainian, and I'm a "full blood" Ukrainian. We expanded our mission statement a bit based on the fact that since our grandparents came to Canada, no one had been back to either country. So we started in Finland and toured through Eastern Europe, ending up in Ukraine. Dave left the tour a bit early to catch trout in Germany, and I woke up at 5:30am the morning he was leaving thinking "What the hell am I going to do for two more days in Lviv ... oh yeah, I wrote that song ... I should find some Ukrainian musicians and a studio and record it."
That's a nice thought to have, except I didn't know any Ukrainian musicians. But there was Wifi in the hotel, and I had a smartphone. About an hour later, I identified a band called Sample Rate, checked out their tunes online, noted they liked The Tragically Hip and Nickelback, and saw that several of the band members ran a recording studio in Lviv. My sun-up email to them started with "Hi I'm Nathan Sloniowski, you don't know me but I"ve written a song about your country ..."
After I pressed "send" on the email I felt somewhat ridiculous. Perhaps I could have planned this?? So, feeling very ... unplanned ... I went to take a shower, and think about what I'd really do over the next two days.
When I got back to my room my device went "bing", and there was an email. It was Taras Terletsky (vocals/guitars). He said "sure" and that he, Vitaliy Lityagin (keyboards/arranger) and Paul Ilnytskyy (lead guitar), were hard at work on a couple of projects, including a hip-hop album with a fantastic band I met called RIZUPS, but could fit me in.
We worked hard the next two days, and had a helluva lot of fun, and I returned to Canada with a cool arrangement by Vitaliy and Taras featuring the screaming-great guitar solos you hear on Orange Ribbon by Paul. The song wasn't done, but it was well started! I took the tracks to my brother Chris's Broadcast Lane Studios in Pittsburgh PA in the fall of 2011, where we added backup vocals by Morgan Erina (Broken Fences), a killer rhythm section that mingles with the Euro-electro bass and drums recorded by Vitaliy, and some tough-sounding foundation tele work by my 18-year-old son Gabe.
And here it is. Orange Ribbon. From Almonte to Lviv to Pittsburgh and home again. Hope you like it, and hope it inspires more people to do the right thing, no matter what the situation. Thanks Nataliya!
Nathan