THE BADGER STATE RUN (Originals) An eleven-song cycle written as one piece of Midwestern work. Words and songs by Thomas Michael Thering. The record is a map you can hear. La Crosse bluffs, the Green Bay shore, 95th Street, Wausau, Eau Claire, Milwaukee pavement, northern loam — the places are the instrumentation. The writing keeps a few objects in hand: a furnace still lit, vows in a jar, a board carried down a block, a shield that does not hold, a dollar that stays in Wausau or leaves, a shop that still makes things. The sound changes with the object. Driving heartland rock for the road. Overdriven grit for the lift. Heavy acoustic for the kitchen. A power anthem for the gate. Stripped Americana for money and the screen. Dark drum-stomp for the badge. A slow ballad for fathers and veterans in the rain. Then the title song again, louder, as if the room showed up. Then the Academy. What the cycle argues, as art, is the same standard that governs the last song. This is not a syllabus set to drums. It is a blueprint for the restoration of a culture. The conventional school still tells a smaller truth than it used to. It prepares a student for the next institution. It extends childhood until the student is old enough to finance the extension. It trades the work of the hands for a credential that does not feed a household, and it calls the resulting dependence sophistication. The costs of that bargain are no longer theoretical: delayed family, unpayable claims on a smaller generation, and young adults who can sit for sixteen years without being able to stand. The Founders Academy — as the closing movement of this record, and as the charter the song is built from — is a specified alternative, not a slogan. Thirteen years. Three divisions. One question at every gate: does this cultivate free men and women of character? Childhood is analog on purpose — the Foundation. Early adolescence is the Crucible, where systems are taken apart. Young adulthood is the Forge, where morning thought is fused to afternoon labor and the student answers for work that other people use. Parents remain the first teachers. The school is the junior partner. The school does not pick the picture. It makes the picture possible. A graduate should be able to build a family, launch an enterprise, or master a craft without inheriting a handler and a lifetime of debt. Life readiness over college readiness. Producers, not consumers. Master the apprenticeable. You cannot forge free people using the vocabulary of dependent subjects. That is the last track. That is the plot of the cycle. Start at the road. End at the forge. TRACKLIST — Runtime 48:07 01 The Badger State Run — 3:39 Driving heartland rock. Stadium energy. Full tank. I-94. Keep the furnace lit. 02 The Heavy Lifting — 4:02 Overdriven grit-rock. The work that does not photograph well. 03 Jar on the Counter — 4:34 Heavy acoustic. Resonant baritone. What sits in the kitchen when the speech is over. 04 Force the Gates — 3:54 High-energy power anthem. Motion, not commentary. 05 The Sovereign Reset — 4:39 Grit-rock. Triumphant. Servant and master put back in the right order. 06 The Velocity of Money — 4:42 Raw Americana. A dollar spent in Wausau that stays in Wausau’s bounds. 07 The Cult of the Machine — 4:14 Raw Americana. The glow of the pane. Turn the screen off. 08 The Broken Shield — 4:49 Dark Midwestern grit-rock. Heavy drum stomp. Equal weight on the scale. 09 The Silent Weight — 5:04 Somber ballad. Fathers. Veterans. Third-shift rain. 10 The Badger State Run (Live Stadium Edition) — 4:43 The title anthem heard from inside a crowd. Not a twelfth thesis. Same song. Bigger room. 11 The Founders Academy — 3:47 Driving Americana. Resolute march. Anvil and plow. The Foundation, the Crucible, the Forge. Four guilds of mastery, then the names the song keeps: Agrarians, Artisans, Healers, Stewards, Logicians. Restoration of the culture as a craft problem. This playlist is the originals — Catalog A. A later remaster is a separate release. The form is old American: verse, chorus, spoken close. What is not old is the refusal to sand the grain. Friday fish fry and Sunday prayer sit next to anvil and plow. Cardinal and White. Green and Gold. Farm and city as one weather system. Read the charter as a tool. Argue with it. Take what you can use. Listen to the record the same way. Album: thomasthering.bandcamp.com/album/the-badger-state-… Artist: thomasthering.bandcamp.com/ YouTube: The Governor Reacts Facebook: www.facebook.com/61560768939511 Mail: badgerstaterun@proton.me Forward. Always Forward. #TheBadgerStateRun #TheFoundersAcademy #Wisconsin #HeartlandRock #Americana #OfficialAudio