Grumbeaux

“Now Is Near” is a new song written specifically for a documentary being made about the journey taken by Tim Z. Hernandez in gathering material for two books: "All They Will Call You" and "They Call You Back," books that tell the stories of the passengers who died in what was, at the time, the worst airplane disaster in California’s history, passengers who were not named in newspapers but called only deportees, passengers who were the inspiration for Woody Guthrie’s poem “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” which was later set to music and recorded by many major artists through the years, including Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and Bruce Springsteen. And yet, no one ever did the work of finding out who these people were. Enter Tim Z. Hernandez, who spent more than a decade tracking down leads until he’d found the passengers’ names and families and had documented their stories in these books. Tim wrote some lyrics about the journey and asked Grumbeaux to make them a song. “Now Is Near” is that song.