Media entities have been trying to contact Tom Busch, director of the Pulaski (WI) Red Raiders Marching Band, since last Tuesday, when my diary Pulaski WI Marching Band 'Sticking to the Union' in Rose Bowl Parade began to go viral.
He responded to only one of the many inquiries in person, and granted a single interview yesterday: with AnnieJo of DailyKos.
My story about the Pulaski band had picked up and gleefully expounded upon a rumor and video that I'd seen on Facebook: that the band had played Woody Guthrie's labor anthem Union Maid in front of the reviewing stand in the Tournament of Roses parade, a deliberate slam on Wisconsin's union-busting governor Scott Walker. Lots of others were just as excited as I! However, the comments soon took note that the title of the band's music was probably "Red Wing," the 1907 melody that Guthrie "borrowed" to carry his Union Maid lyrics. What a perfect cover story for the band director, my readers winked and nudged!
Then the story went viral, folks on the right started to get outraged about the purported protest, and the right-wing Media Trackers took it upon themselves to contact Pulaski School District Superintendant Dr. Mel Lightner -- who said just the kind of thing we expected would be said:
Dr. Lightner explained, “We refer to that song as the ‘Red Wing’ polka.” Lightner went on to say that the band director had never even heard of the pro-union song “Union Maid” and that “Red Wing” was a tribute to his grandmother who loved the song.
“This is simply hilarious” laughed Dr. Lightner, explaining further that “they [the Daily Kos] are just trying to spin it their way.”
Band director Tom Busch, however, didn't accuse me of a thing, not even spin.
The impetus to e-mail him came from a conversation I'd had in the comments of the Media Trackers story with a band parent who called herself Nessa. By her own account, Nessa is a union member, of International Paperworkers Local 482, and a "raging moderate independent" when it comes to politics. She shared some details about the decisions around the band's repertoire choice that really made a lot of sense. I composed a diary-draft based on her comments alone, but when I told her that, she requested that I fact-check with the director. So I did -- and he gave me the exclusive that he didn't give even to Time or Forbes!
When I asked him for the chronology, Tom told me that he first broached the idea of trying out for the 2012 parade two years ago. (Calling him "Tom" conveys the tenor of our conversation more accurately than the more formal "Director Busch" and is in no way meant to imply a lack of respect.) The band agreed to take on the challenge, complete with the work and fundraising it entailed, and set about preparing an audition tape for May 2010. The announcement that they'd been selected for the 2012 Tournament of Roses Parade came in September 2010, and repertoire planning began the month after. The song list was fully compiled by January 2011, before Gov. Walker's February budget bombshell. The approval process dragged long and complex, involving approval not only from parade officials, but also getting copyright clearance, at a cost approaching $3000 in permission fees and expert consultation.
The theme for their special selections was "Music from the Midwest." Among their many songs, they chose "Twenty-five or Six to Four" to represent Chicago, "St. Louis Blues" for Missouri, and the "Red Wing Polka" as a salute not only to Pulaski's polka heritage, but also as a nod to Red Wing, Minnesota.
Just last month, parade officials sprung a request and an honor that the Pulaski band be among three bands to do a "stop performance" at the grandstand. This added a last-minute wrinkle into the routine that they'd been scripting out for months, but they rose to the challenge. The song that segmented more neatly than any other into the time allotted was the Red Wing Polka.
It was only after sharing all this that Tom added the story about honoring his 95-year-old grandmother with this polka she loved, and commented on a long tradition of Busch-family polka bands.
When I asked Tom how many performances of the Red Wing Polka the band had done before Pasadena, he tallied up nearly twenty since they started rehearsal. Then I asked him whether anyone had ever brought up the Union Maid connection.
He told me that the first time he'd heard of the song Union Maid was when he got a text message from his brother in Madison the day after the parade, saying great job on the performance and mentioning Union Maid.
Tom texted back:
???
They went back and forth with several text messages until finally going to an actual phone call before Tom understood what his brother was talking about. Turned out that his brother had read a certain diary on Daily Kos!
"I was ignorant," Tom told me. He said he didn't mind the term "ignorant" -- it just means that one doesn't know. (I'd been ignorant too, entirely ignorant of the Red Wing version of the song.) Of course he knew who Woody Guthrie was, he said, but he doesn't listen to Guthrie's music. His musical interests are elsewhere.
I asked Tom to characterize the general reaction from the band about this controversy. He thought a second before choosing the mild word, "Perplexed."
I had seen a lot stronger words online. Nessa's word, for example, was "Betrayed."
Given the kind of flack that was flying around online regarding Tom's motives, I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been pretty agitated about how people were refusing to believe that the choice of music was politics-free. After all, people have essentially been calling him a liar from both left and right! But he came across as remarkably even-keeled and moderate. When I prodded him about it a little, he did mention some folks on the right in the community who were unhappy about this purported misuse of their tax dollars. He also mentioned hearing from someone on the left who had scolded him to "grow a pair" and own up to Union Maid! Both were, again, very mild accounts compared to some of the comments going around online.
I told him of the story I wish I'd written, after all I've since heard and read: I wish I'd written about the power of using familiar tunes to carry protest lyrics. That the coincidence of having the Red Wing Polka played at the grandstand, at this moment in Wisconsin history, enabled Guthrie to "occupy" the moment with a pro-union message that the musicians neither planned nor foresaw.
Tom chuckled at that. "Interpretation," he said, "is an individual's right."
I was struck by Tom's demeanor throughout. Here's a guy at the center of a hot-potato media story, with some folks on the right calling for his head on a platter, and others on the left wink-winking and applauding him for meaning something that he says he doesn't. Despite all that, he was laid-back and gracious through our conversation, unhurried. It felt good -- two polite common-sense Midwesterners, he and I, talking things through one-on-one after an unfortunate misunderstanding.
For those of you who have read this far, I thank you. There's a reason that corrections and retractions appear in small type on page A-20. By the time a correction comes around, it's not news. People don't much care, in general. Folks are on to new things -- and this is a story that's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, except to the band and their community. So I appreciate your attention.
If you've read this far and still want to believe that the Pulaski Red Raiders Marching Band played Union Maid on purpose as a glorious subversive protest, though, let me ask you something.
Have you ever tried to argue someone out of a conspiracy theory like, say, believing that President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States? And they're so FOX-washed and determined to believe what they want to believe, that no amount of evidence will convince them?
Because really, what we've created here is our own conspiracy theory that leaves Tom Busch no room to have done anything other than what we decided he did.
What would it take to get you to believe that this Union Maid thing was all a delightful coincidence, and that we should stop attributing motives to this hard-working band director that he, himself, proclaims he doesn't have?
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It's a small gesture of contrition, but I did make a donation to the Pulaski Music Boosters. I hadn't yet spent the check I got for Christmas from my own 102-year-old grandmother, so that's the amount I sent, in honor of Tom Busch's grandmother and her favorite polka. I'm looking forward to telling Grandma about it. I bet she knows both the Red Wing and the Union Maid lyrics, and will find this whole story fascinating.
Here, once again, is the donation link, for anyone inspired to make a similar gesture.
Pulaski Music Boosters -- Donate Now!