Exploring history through its music uncovers stories left out in high school textbooks. This period was arguably the most defining era in American history: one that saw the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Westward expansion, the rise of slavery, and the removal of Native Americans from their homelands to make way for the burgeoning American commercial-agricultural machine. It also shaped the first man of humble origins to become President of the new nation and founder the Democratic Party.

In an election year in which the issues of race, immigration, class, gender, and regionalism are on every citizen s lips, many Americans may be asking themselves, how did we get here? Real history is in the spaces between things; it is in the dynamics, the electricity, the relationships between the moments, and people in history that really tell the story. It is visceral, multi-vocal, conversational; but rarely do we come face-to-face with history. Music reaches into the emotion of times past. The Atrocious Saint puts you right there, weaving together the voices and experiences of slaves and Indians, frontiersmen, and the Washington elite though enlisting their relics and descendants.