“So come back Woody Guthrie
Come back to us now
Tear your eyes from paradise
And rise again somehow
If you run into Jesus
Maybe he can help us out
Come back Woody Guthrie to us now
….
So come back, Emma Goldman
Rise up, old Joe Hill
The barracades are goin' up
They cannot break our will
Come back to us, Malcolm X
And Martin Luther King
We're marching into Selma
As the bells of freedom ring”
Steve Earle, Christmas in Washington.
In a world where music could be easily classified into a small number of genres Steve Earle would be labeled a “country” artist. But in our musical landscape, country means Nashville, and Nashville means knee-jerk patriotism, nominal Christian religiosity, and utter vapidity.
Alt-country star Steve wrote the above song in 1996, on the night he held his nose and voted for Bill Clinton (Earle claims his politics are “slightly to the left of Mao”). I suspect that Earle, like many of us, now think of Clinton as “the good ‘ole days”.
But the point of this post is to argue that Steve’s prayer has been answered. A few months back, I was fortunate enough to see this guy in concert.
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