Load of Trouble - Grand Hotel Garden Recording by Claire Bates Music

I wrote this song in response to the story of Shannon Bigley. This woman about my age was experiencing homelessness in summer 2019 and was killed during a CalTrans clearout of a homeless encampment in Modesto, CA.

Shannon had been sleeping in a cardboard box. CA had recently accelerated disassembling of homeless encampments, and CalTrans employees had complained that their role in this dismantling did not fit their backgrounds and job descriptions.

According to news reports at the time, Ms. Bigley went by the nickname Sunshine. I imagine her story in this song. The story shared in the song is in part also my own, as I myself was living near Modesto at that time and experiencing housing tenuousness exacerbated by a brain injury and a brush with Lyme disease.

To learn more about the Grand Hotel Garden Recordings, of which this is part, visit this blog post: https://clairebatesmusic.com/2019/07/21/what-are-the-grand-hotel-garden-recordings/.