🎤 Here, Still - New Song from GEAR GIRLS

The GEAR GIRLS are back...and they completed the full album!

Jaime Buckley 💎

Mar 17, 2026

I received an email this morning.
Couldn’t wait to share.

Jaime,

I’ll keep this brief because the music says everything better than I can — and you know how rarely I admit that.

Three weeks after the Bellows Gearworks tragedy, Philburt came to me directly. Not through his people. Not through a letter. He walked into my office, sat down without being asked, and told me he wanted to find the GEAR GIRLS.

I told him I’d make the call.

You have to understand what Philburt Bellows is, for those who don’t know him the way we do. His factories are the only reason half the lower Clockwork Districts still has working families instead of broken ones. He doesn’t invest in businesses. He said that to me once, years ago, and I never forgot it.

I invest in people.

That’s Philburt.
All of him, in four words.

When the fire took his factory…his people…he didn’t call his lawyers first. He called his foremen. Made sure every surviving family had what they needed before the ash had finished settling. Then he went quiet for two weeks. That’s how I knew it had broken something in him. Bellows does not go quiet.

When he came to me about the girls, he wanted to do something real. Something that belonged to the workers, not to the press.

A private concert was held in what remained of the east loading dock of Bellows Gearworks…the only section of the building still standing. Philburt had it cleaned, not rebuilt. He wanted it to feel like what it was. Over five hundred folding chairs. No stage. No lighting rig. Just Ezra, Juno, and Katt with their instruments, and the families of those who survived …and those who didn’t.

I don’t attend many things anymore, as you know, but I attended this.

There is a moment in a performance when the room stops being an audience and becomes something else entirely. I’ve seen it happen perhaps a dozen times in my career.

It happened that night during Here, Still.

There wasn’t a soul in that dock who wasn’t on their feet.

Workers who had lost colleagues. Spouses who had lost partners. Children who were too young to understand why they were there but old enough to feel it.

Here. Still.

Philburt stood in the back the entire time. When it was over he didn’t applaud. He just nodded…that small, private nod he does when something has confirmed what he already believed about people.

What you are about to hear is the recording from that night. Not a studio version. Not a cleaned-up mix. The real thing …the room, the voices, the drops in sound out of respect, the moment the chorus became a congregation.

It belongs to the workers of Bellows Gearworks first.

It belongs to everyone else second.

— MS

P.S. — Yes, I’m still working on getting more of this music to your side of things. Some doors take longer to open than others. But they open, Jaime. They always open.

🎵 Here, Still

[verse 1]

Six months ago I couldn’t find my footing
Kept reaching for a hand that wasn’t there
Kept waking up and having to remember
All over again
Every morning
Like the first time
Every time

[verse 2]

They said take a break
They said give it a moment
They said grief needs space and time will do its work
But time just kept on moving without asking
And I had to keep on moving
Or get buried in the hurt

[pre-chorus]

I’m not going to tell you that I’m over it
I’m not going to dress this up in something clean
I’m just going to tell you that I’m standing
And some days
That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen

[chorus]

I’m here
Still
With everything they put me through
I’m here
Still
Not graceful
Not renewed
Just breathing
Just moving
Just refusing to be through
I’m here
Still
And that is all I have to prove
(Hold the line)
(Keep the flame)
I’m here
Still
And I will say it till it’s true

[verse 3]

They changed the rules when we were almost winning
Rewrote the terms and called it due process
Painted over everything we’d built here
And dared us to come back and ask for less
I came back
Not because I wasn’t broken
But because this district still has people in it
Who need someone standing at the front
Who need to know
That broken doesn’t mean the end of it

[verse 4]

I think about him on the mornings that are hardest
The way he never needed to be asked
He just saw what needed doing
And he did it
And I keep trying to be worthy of that
Keep asking myself
What would Derrin do right now
And every single time
The answer is the same
Get up
Go back
Stand up for the ones who need it
And do not let them make you small again

[pre-chorus]

[chorus]

[bridge]

Katt is still here
Juno is still here
Every face I know from the lower district
Still here
Every name they tried to erase from the record
Still here
Every voice they called too loud
Too angry
Too much
Still
Here
We are not what they reduced us to
We are not the verdict of their contempt
We are still standing in the wreckage of the thing they built to break us
And we are
Still
Here