‘The People's Song’: Detroit Musician Rallies World In ‘Tears For Ukraine’

DETROIT, MI — “You’ve got 24 hours,” Eric Rhoads told Detroit area musician Billy Craig a couple of weeks ago.

“Make me cry,” he added.

Rhoads, a painter by avocation and publisher of the monthly Radio Ink read by industry executives around the country, wasn’t making a ransom demand. But his request that Craig lay down a track for the still-evolving “Tears for Ukraine” had the urgency and power of one. (Video at end of story.)

Like so many people around the world, Rhoads was haunted by the sights and sounds of war streaming into his Austin, Texas, home from Ukraine, which he said mirrors the United States in ways beyond sovereignty.

Its — and Russia’s — cities are like ours in many ways, with avenues of shiny, modern buildings teeming with people dressed in high fashion, chatting on cell phones and dispelling images of long-suffering eastern Europeans living through dark, despotic times, Rhoads told Patch in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Rhoads said, should shatter any sense of security here and abroad that we're insulated from war. “It could happen here," he said. "It’s been a good eye-opener.”

'We Need An Anthem To Unify The World'

That’s the urgency he wanted Craig to feel.

“We need an anthem to unify the world,” Rhoads recalled telling him. “We need to bring more attention to this, so maybe it doesn’t happen again.”

Rhoads has spent 50 years in the radio industry, starting as a 14-year-old, and can “count on one hand the times something like this has happened that unified the world.”

“We Are the World,” which opened the world’s hearts and minds to famine in Africa in 1985, had that power.

Rhoads lacked the connections to lure superstars like Michael Jackson, Lionel Ritchie and others who performed "We Are the World." But he did have a social media connection with Craig, a familiar name in Detroit music circles who joined Brownsville Station as its lead guitarist when the long-retired band started touring again about a decade ago.

For all that Rhoads — and Craig, too, for that matter — knew at the time, Russia’s war on Ukraine could be over as quickly as it started. That hasn’t happened, though. The Russian assault was relentless for a 28th straight day Thursday as world leaders gathered in Brussels for an emergency NATO summit.

‘Freedom Is Not A Guaranteed Thing’

Craig, who lives in New Baltimore about 40 miles outside of Detroit, fell hard for the idea.

Rhoads had written some of the lyrics and had a title for the song. But that’s all it was — a few lines on paper that Rhoads said didn’t begin to accomplish his goals for “Tears for Ukraine.”

Ukraine was on Craig’s mind, too.

For a couple of years, as one powder keg after enough erupted around the world, he has had a recurring thought:

“What if you were just in your house, just living, and all of a sudden you get this urgent knock at the door, you open it and there are three soldiers at your door?” Craig told Patch in a telephone interview Friday. “You’ve got your whole family, and you’re the father of three, and these soldiers drag you out with 10 other guys and they shoot you?”

On Feb. 24, the thought became less random when Russia invaded Ukraine.

“When this started happening, we’re sitting here in our houses, comfy, we’re bitchin’ about gas prices and that kind of stuff. Can you imagine?” he said. “All of a sudden a foreign nation decides they want to start bombing and attack us. I can’t imagine. We throw what we can in a suitcase and leave because bombs and armies are coming.”

Craig channeled the flood of emotions into the lyrics. He added some of his own, then called on his friend and Rock Island Records business partner, Matt Jacobs, who made enough money with plastics industry startups to retire early, and asked what he could do with them.

Jacobs, who lives in Grand Haven on the west side of Michigan, saw what Rhoads and Craig saw — a unifying moment for the world.

“We have not seen this,” Jacobs told Patch in a telephone interview Tuesday. “You have people who will take to the streets and say, ‘I will leave my family to fight for our freedom,’ and a president who will say, ‘I will not leave.’"

And, like his fellow “Tears for Ukraine” co-writers, he doesn’t see Russia’s invasion as an isolated border dispute between neighboring nations.

“Freedom is not a guaranteed thing,” Jacobs said. “If you don’t think it could happen here — we’ve seen the potential of that — but this really is about concern for what’s happening on an individual level in Ukraine.”

Jacobs and Craig worked on lyrics throughout the night, and within a day and a half, Craig had set the collaboration to a melody and recorded a scratch track for Rhoads.

‘Let’s Step Before This Song’

After hearing it — and wiping away tears — Rhoads pushed the song forward.

He sent an email blast to the radio executives who read Radio Ink and said, in so many words, “Let’s step before this song,” Craig said, adding the endorsement was atypical: “He doesn’t do that.”

Rhoads also convinced Joel Denver, the founder of the radio and music news and promotion site All Access, to get behind “Tears for Ukraine,” too.

“When you have an entire industry saying, ‘We’ve got to get behind this message,’ it comes into the mainstream and is no longer our song,” Craig said. “It’s the people’s song. People in America have a lot of heart in the way they support Ukraine.”

Within a week, the official “Tears for Ukraine” video with Craig backed by the Detroit-based Elsie Binx band was picking up viewers by the thousands. This week, the song is trending on Spotify and is getting airplay around the country, including at the Detroit rock legacy station WRIF.

The Currency Of Goodwill

Along with making sure the song packed emotion, Rhoads had one other condition for Craig: The currency of the song is goodwill. Any financial gain will go to verified charities supporting Ukraine (they’re listed on various websites promoting the song).

That settled an argument Craig had been having with himself.

The idea for the song was good, as good as any in a decades-long career where he has flirted with stardom but never quite broke through. “Tears for Ukraine” could be that song. Still, the idea of profiting from it, financially or in personal capital, didn’t sit well.

“People might view that as opportunistic, self-promoting,” Craig said. “My whole thing is absolutely in support of the people of Ukraine.”

On the other hand, Craig said, “no one ever said [Alan Jackson] was expletive or opportunistic” with “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” the country singer’s anthem to 9/11. “It was pure heart.”

The song earned Jackson his first Grammy Award for Best Country Song. It also won multiple awards at the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association Awards, including Song of the Year.

Scroll through the sites on which “Tears for Ukraine” is available and posted, and you’ll find comments sprinkled with phrases like “song of the year” and “Grammy.”

“It’s growing legs,” Craig said, but he is quick to point out the attention the song has gained isn’t in that league.

It wouldn’t be a bad turn for a guy who’s been at songwriting as long as Craig has. He holds his exact age close, citing an industry that can favor artists appealing to younger concertgoing and music-buying fans, allowing only that he’s “not a kid.”

The road mapping his career is as long and winding as the Beatles song, he said, with a few brushes with fame. “Tears for Ukraine” came along at a point in Craig’s career when he thought he was done writing lyrics.

He has recorded six albums that have garnered “a ton of airplay,” he said, “but it’s still been tough to break through and make an honest-to-god career, to be honest with you.”

When Rhoads got in touch earlier this month, Craig had been focusing on Rock Island Records with Jacobs in a partnership that came out of the blue.

Both Craig and Jacobs grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan, though they didn’t know each other and graduated from high school several years apart. His older brothers knew Craig, though, and they reconnected on social media.

‘Make Me Cry. And He Pulled It Off.”

Jacobs had been retired for a couple of years when the pandemic hit. He had plenty of time in quarantine to decide what to do next. His choice surprised everyone around him.

“I’m a business guy,” he said. “I’d never played music in my entire life, not one ounce.”

He picked up a guitar and wasn't very good. He tried singing and wasn’t any better — not a huge surprise, Jacobs said, because he was that kid in church whose voice the choir director always tried to subdue. His wife, Tracey, prodded him and wouldn’t let him quit. He found a guitar teacher and vocal coach. His greatest promise was as a lyricist.

As a self-made businessman, Jacobs understands the power of impossible goals. He wants to record a minimum of five original songs in a studio. He’s given himself three years to win a Grammy.

“People in my family can’t believe it,” he said. “I didn’t listen to music or understand it, but if you’re that person with zero ability can at least get five original songs done, you can prove that anyone can do anything.”

Is “Tears for Ukraine” a song that will make them famous?

“I don’t know where it will go,” Craig said. Besides, he said, “it’s not what it does for Billy Craig. We lose tears when we see this kind of thing going on, we stand up and we support in every way we can.”

Craig isn’t a superstar, as Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie were when they led a coalition of artists in “We Are the World.”

“I hope this helps him become one,” Rhoads said. “I think that would be really a sweet way to return the favor. Out of the blue — we know each other, by email — I reach out to him: We need to do this, we need an anthem, we need to unify people. Write a song called ‘Tears for Ukraine’ in no time at all.

“Make me cry. And he pulled it off.”

Listen to the song here: