A friend of mine recently released an album - he's done about 60 in the last 20 years, but what struck me about his new release is how populist and relevant it feels to the present day.
His name is Bill Mallonee, and he's played under the moniker of the Vigilantes of Love in the 90's for Capricorn, was an Americana folk hero in the early 00's, and has become a friend of mine over the years.. Label and band woes have plagued him since day one and now he's firmly in the DIY workethic and album distribution..
He's been rooting for Bernie Sanders on FB, and writing about the Dust Bowl, and the hard scrabble terrain we've been walking on for some time, but this latest album "Lands and Peoples" reminds me of what Robert Reich, and most of us have been saying for some time.
The middle class is hanging on by a thread, and I think most of us feel emotionally overdrawn (if not in the checkbook too) - and it's like there's a boot on our throat that we know is there but we can't see who it's attached to but we're all aware of the pressure.
However, there's optimism and hope too - I'm thinking of a historian during Ken Burns's "The Roosevelts" who said something to the effect of "When America really needs a leader, a good one, in really bad times, we manage to find one" Thinking hard on that as we come up on 2016
I think music and narrative are important to us still today. I know personally I can target a personal shift in my political thinking to Bruce Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad" - following up on the stories and books that inspired those songs, I was reminded as a young 20-something Religious Righty that not everyone's lot in life is due to laziness and not everyone struggling is looking for entitlements but just a hand back up and a safety net between the good times. Sometimes you need a better tool than preaching to send that message home. Sometimes you need art.
As for Bill, I know the DIY work ethic has been hard. I've never posted about one of his albums before, BUT this one in particular, with the race ahead of us, feels really relevant to me.
I will post the bandcamp and FB links and if you have 5 minutes, go check it out, and if it speaks to you, I hope you'll consider getting a copy.
to quote Steve Earle - "Come back Woody Guthrie, come back to us now - tear your eyes from paradise and rise again somehow" - We need another one now more than ever.
http://billmalloneemusic.bandcamp.com/...
https://www.facebook.com/...