The horrific shooting of nine parishioners by a white supremacist in Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015, left the entire country stunned, forcing us to confront ghosts that many preferred to leave alone.

For Jeremy Davis, a native of Summerville, South Carolina, and the leader of the Charlotte band Elonzo Wesley, it put him in a place so personal and so raw that he had no choice but to write his way out. The result was “Emanuel,” one of the best songs on Elonzo Wesley’s newest album Spec, released in November on the Concord-based Silent Uproar label, the home of Sinners & Saints and the Avett Brothers’ early rock incarnation, Nemo.