August 8

Tuesday night, August 8, 2006... These days pile up like lumber. Living in a bad house, waiting for it to fall down. I just read a story from the LA Times this morning about how the US soldiers who raped that 14 year old Iraqi girl went back out and cooked up chicken wings after killing her family. Kind of makes you numb...How do you respond as an artist? Most of the time we are told that politics and art don't mix. It's easy to believe – convenient in fact - because then you never have to risk losing an audience or a gig. Or getting punched in the nose. But it’s a lame excuse and doesn’t hold any water. Supporting the status quo and keeping your mouth shut in dreadful times is just like working for The Man. You might as well be on the payroll.

I remember years ago in Ireland when Christy Moore was doing the Moving Hearts - 1980, 81. Those were sharp contested days – things were heating up in the North. And the Hearts were a very political band. They played every Tuesday and Wednesday at the Baggett Inn (The Maggot Bin) in Dublin and the houses were always packed – people turned away at the door. I did a lot of gigs with them. One night I was sitting with a famous traditional singer and I asked her what she thought of the band. She said she didn’t like them, and when I asked her why she said, “Politics and music don’t mix.” I looked around and the room was completely full. Obviously politics and music were mixing very well that night…

I think the trick is to politicize the culture, rather than to dig into the deep trough of left wing ghetto art. I don’t really trust people who only do political songs – because we don’t only lead political lives. We play games and tell stories, we laugh and dance, we make love and argue, we travel and meet strange and wonderful people. To become a strenuous brick of nerves over it all doesn’t really help. Rather than stress about how to get more people to go to the Radical Utopian EcoFest maybe it would make more sense to infiltrate the greater culture at large. Every festival should have thought music.

Thought music.

This week is the national convention of Veterans For Peace, of which I am an associate member. They are a great group! Jim Hinde and I are singing at the banquet dinner on Saturday night. Jim’s a combat Navy vet. I call myself a “civilian veteran of the Vietnam War.” I was on the ground running scared, changing my name, heading for the east coast. Wars do that to people – everything gets warped. So Saturday is the dinner, then on Sunday I travel with a bunch of people up to the Peace Arch at the Canadian border. We walk to the border and meet with a bunch of draft resisters from the Vietnam days and we have a picnic. What a wonderful idea.