March 26 2026

Cold Dawn
James Kahn (Single, 2026)
By Grant Britt

James Kahn is a cold warrior, a soldier fighting a battle with a foe that keeps shape shifting, morphing from one horror into another. The battle lines are fluid, the battleground shifting underfoot, a deadly game of Whack-A-Mole with new enemies popping up as soon as the current one is quashed. Kahn's weapon is his voice, beating back the onslaught of global disruption.

Kahn's latest release is “Cold Dawn,” a fifty-second protest song with the raspy-voiced troubadour
warning of the tough times ahead: “They say history rhymes/I can hear it humming/
All its comedies and crimes, broken verses and curses/And now here's dark times coming/.
so you better hold on, hold on/Going to turn this thing around in the cold dawn.” The accompanying
video is a montage of images of suppression, featuring hate mongers unleashing their vitriol on the
populace. But it's not all gloom and doom, with snippets of protest marchers fighting back peacefully to try to turn back the tide of oppression.

Past efforts from Kahn include 2021's “In The Covid Times,” a Celtic-flavored grim recap of the
pandemic: “And families broke, and children’s cries/ You talk to your friends across a screen /You try to
reach out, then another one dies.” Kahn's release is featured on the podcast Cool Tunes for a Hot Planet, in Episode 35. That project is
created by The Third Act Creatives Working Group, whose mission is to “inspire action for climate and
social justice.”

Kahn's latest is somewhat gloomy, but still inspires hope for the justice so badly needed in these rough,
uncertain times..

Grant Britt (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) has been writing about music since the earth cooled a while back. A staff writer for No Depression, his work also appears in BluesMusic Mag and the Greensboro News and Record. 

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