Monday, March 10, 2008

Music Review

On the Way to Iris; Met Sarah Lee and Johnny

Eric Green

A funny thing happened on the way to see Iris Dement at the Irvington Town Hall; we met Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irons. What a great surprise!

Iris Dement has become a legendary folk, traditional singing star with an uncompromising devotion to working class themes including, life as a worker, a woman worker and family values.

In 1997 she wrote and sang an angry song, "Wasteland of the Free" which captured her rage against the hypocrisy in religion, her resentment against the oil barons and phony politics in general. See below for incredible lyrics. In her concert on Saturday night at the reconstructed Irvington Town Hall, she stayed to her more modest family themes. She was strongly embraced by the packet house audience. The Town Hall venue was recently rebuilt to iron the small, yet generous Ford Theater in Washington, D.C. where the in famous John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

But, the very pleasant surprise that evening was the opening act was Sarah Guthrie and he husband of 10 years Johnny Irons. The Guthrie/Irons family was joined for a couple of songs by, banjo player, Tao Ridrigues-Seeger, a threesome that once toured as RIG.

PA readers will not need a reminder to know that Guthrie is the youngest daughter of Arlo Guthrie the son of the singer and icon Woody Guthrie. Sarah Lee was born in Massachusetts in 1979 and Irons, in South Carolina in 1968. Their first born, Sophie, joined them on stage for one song; but their three month old was only available at the CD table after their opening set was concluded.

They sang a number of songs, which were all carefully musically driven with very close attention to high quality guitar pickin'. Irons also played the harmonica and piano.

Sarah Lee made one reference to her grandfather's music when she told the audience that she was asked by her Aunt Nora; Arlo's sister and head of the Guthrie archives, to write music to one of Woody's lyrics. Remember, one of the goals of the Archives is to put life to the hundreds of lyrics uncovered over the past decades after the passing of Woody.

The lyrics to their project was to the a song called, "Folk Song."

Oh! In case you are wondering, to finish the circle to RIG, Tao is Pete Seeger's grandson. Tao were the popular T-shirt, "Arrest Bush" and was joined by his girlfriend, outside, with the complementary theme of "Arrest Chaney First."

Wasteland of the Free
Iris Dement

Living in the wasteland of the free...

We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
and their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ's disciples
but they don't look like Jesus to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got politicians running races on corporate cash
Now don't tell me they don't turn around and kiss them peoples' ass
You may call me old-fashioned
but that don't fit my picture of a true democracy
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got CEO's making two hundred times the workers' pay
but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
and If you don't like it, mister, they'll ship your job
to some third-world country 'cross the sea
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

We got little kids with guns fighting inner city wars
So what do we do, we put these little kids behind prison doors
and we call ourselves the advanced civilization
that sounds like crap to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got high-school kids running 'round in Calvin Klein and Guess
who cannot pass a sixth-grade reading test
but if you ask them, they can tell you
the name of every crotch on mTV
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we win
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he's standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free

NOTE: REMEMBER Iris Dement wrote and performed this song a few years BEFORE the Bush era.

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