Imagine the most beautiful day of your life becoming the beginning of your deepest trauma. That is what happened when Dustbowl Revival leader Z. Lupetin took his wife Taylor to hospital to give birth to their daughter July in early 2022. That experience, and the subsequent events, are what inspired Lupetin to complete ‘Be (For July)’, the most intimate and personal song by his group to date.
Lupetin explains that “one minute I was tearfully texting the grandparents across the country, "IT’S A GIRL!”, but the next thing I knew, our lives became a horror film wrapped up in an episode of House inside an outtake of The Twilight Zone.”
Immediately following the delivery of their healthy baby, Taylor began experiencing severe, undiagnosable symptoms and was rushed into emergency surgery. “At first, the doctors had no idea what was happening, and in the process her kidneys completely shut down and blood began clotting everywhere,” Lupetin recalls. “They couldn’t transfuse her fast enough. Even in Cedars Sinai, one of the best hospitals on earth, I saw the fear and confusion on their faces. The situation was dire until they were able to stabilise her.”
On a ventilator at times over the following month and often unable to move or speak, an infection filled her lungs, with Lupetin told that he may need to start thinking about his wife not coming home. “When I sing the line ‘Didn’t I bury your body, and write your epitaph’, it’s hard for me not to picture that exact moment,” he says.
Taylor was eventually diagnosed with the extremely rare condition atypical hemolytic uremic disorder (aHUS), which affects about 400 people in the entire USA. The odds of childbirth activating the condition were a million-to-one. A life-saving medication was administered – and she responded. After an intense battle, she is winning.
“This song is important to me,” continues Lupetin. “It tries to tell the story of how we got here. I would go home after spending gruelling days at the hospital watching Taylor battle this sinister sickness, and when July fell asleep I would play this song over and over on our piano. It got me through. The chords comforted me. It is about the fear I was experiencing but more about all the hopes I had for my daughter and the time we could spend together as a family – if my wife came home to us.”
