Milwaukee Record is proud to present Public Domain. The video series features Milwaukee musicians setting up at Colectivo’s new Back Room performance space at its Prospect Avenue cafe to adapt some of the world’s best-known songs in ways they’ve never been heard before.

This installment features Hello Death performing “Just Before The Battle, Mother.” Perhaps the most popular of George F. Root’s 30-plus wartime standards, the 1863 composition is a somber song of longing and homesickness that’s sung from the perspective of a soldier on his way to battle. Given the date of its publishing, the song is closely associated with the American Civil War, and was a favorite on the Union side. That said, “Just Before The Battle, Mother” could be heard on both sides of the battlefield, as well as countless other conflicts in a number of other countries in subsequent years.

The video was shot, recorded, and edited by Cheston Van Huss of Effigy Media (with additional camera support by Michael Swan and Willie Fields). Grant Steskal engineered lighting. Travis Whitty produced the opening sequence. Public Domain is sponsored by Colectivo Coffee Roasters.