When the Tennessee General Assembly decided to vote on an income tax on a Saturday when no one was watching, it was all but certain to pass. I got calls that morning from several people, a few I didn't even know, asking me to do something to stop it. My first thought was that little could be done by me or anyone else. The plan had been carefully orchestrated to take place when talk radio was off the air, cutting off any direct link to the people. The proponents of the tax were counting on the lack of resistance for their success. After an hour or so of agonizing over the situation, I felt it was our duty as a talk station to at least alert our listeners. We quickly coordinated an impromptu broadcast on Legislative Plaza in front of the state capitol building.
As we prepared to take to the air, the streets of downtown Nashville were desolate. There was no traffic. There were no people. Just us set up in front of a microphone. One of the legislative aides mocked us as he walked by just before the broadcast began for the fact that we were all alone. I feared no one would heed the call. I envisioned perhaps a handful of cars coming by to show their support. Within fifteen minutes of starting the broadcast there were a couple dozen cars driving by with horns blaring. Within the hour, there were hundreds of cars encircling the Capitol and the street was lined with protesters carrying homemade signs. All of the sound bites on this recording were from the first hour of our broadcast!

Our planned hour-long vigil in front of the Capitol turned into six hours. The vote on the income tax was delayed several times that day before being postponed until the following Monday. Eventually, the income tax was scrapped in favor of a budget which lived within the projected increase in revenue with no tax increase. But the battle was far from over. The governor had vetoed the bill and it was uncertain if the general assembly had the votes to override.

Eighteen days after that initial Saturday broadcast, during the final push, a passerby, frustrated with the days upon days of incessant horn blowing, asked me in disgust, "what's that noise?" I replied as I had on that first day, "that's the sound of freedom." Exhausted from the morning's special broadcast and dreading that I would have to be back again in the afternoon, I went home for a quick nap. I was unable to sleep from that phrase echoing in my head. What's That Noise? What's That Noise? Soon a melody began accompanying the phrase. I got up and went to my modest little home studio and began banging the tune out on the piano. As I worked, I received a call from the station with the good news that the governor had relented and the fight was finally over. At that point, everything seemed to click and within the hour I had completed the words and music and recorded a rough version of the song.

I took the demo to my friends, Bill Cuomo and Beeb Birtles, at Sonic Sorbet Records. They, too, had been awed by the people's response in stopping the income tax and immediately threw themselves into the project. After just three days in the studio we had a finished product. Everyone, from our drummer, Ron Krasinski, to the mastering engineer, Brian Foraker at Autumnwood Mastering, embraced the project with the same enthusiasm, each of us inspired by the passion of the people of Tennessee.

I must admit that few things have affected me in the way this most recent tax debate has. Not so much the intensity of the battle and our ultimate victory but the response of the people. Men, women and children, from all walks of life, dropped what they were doing and came down to demonstrate their support for our efforts. It restored my faith in a system where we possess the power to control our own destinies if only we exercise that power. This song is dedicated to those concerned citizens who took a firm stand and took their government back.

-Phil Valentine