Category Archives: Wilco

There Once Was a Union Maid Who Never Was Afraid

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“Then more settlers trickled West, they said in search of elbow room on the ground, room to farm the rich topsoil; but, hushed and quiet, they dug into the private heart of the earth to find the lead, the soft coal, the good zinc. While the town of people only seventeen miles east of us danced on their roped-off streets and held solid weeks of loud celebrating called the King Koal Karnival, only the early roadrunners, the smart oil men, knew that in a year or two King Koal would die and his body would be burned to ashes and his long twisting grave would be left dank and dark and empty under the ground – that a new King would be dancing into the sky, gushing and spraying the entire country around with the slick black blood of the industry’s veins, the oil – King Oil – a hundred times more powerful and wild and rich and fiery than King Timber, King Steel, King Cotton, or even King Koal. – “Empty Snuff Cans” from “Bound for Glory”

(Since this week marks the 100th anniversary of Mother Jones being hauled to jail at age 86 for protesting mining conditions in West Virginia, seems like a good time to finally write about visiting her grave in Mt. Olive, Illinois, last July.)

July 3, 2012 On the eve of our nation’s birthday, I did the most American thing I could find: I drove by myself through rural Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, in search of Woody Guthrie at a Wilco concert with my friends Sam, Brianne, and Paul. I’ve made lots of drives north on I-55 through the sprawl of crops and wind farms. It’s necessary to get to Chicago, and to my in-laws in Michigan, friends in Peoria. And this time, a town on the Illinois-Iowa border. In nearly 15 years of making these drives, I’ve never followed the signs near Mt. Olive, indicating the Mother Jones memorial. Mostly because I had no idea what it meant or who she was beyond the brief biographies in my feminism books – badass old lady who gave what-for to people who needed it. Which, really, should be enough for me. Hell, Congress called her “the grandmother of all agitators,” so I have no excuse for slacking on my Mother Jones learning.

By this point in the Guthrie project, I knew enough to realize that Mother Jones was the original union maid, fighting for the same workers rights years before Woody was even born. Without Mother Jones, there might not have been a Woody Guthrie. And there would have been fewer miners and workers; her fight for safer, humane working conditions saved more lives than we can begin to fathom.  Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Woody

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By Robin Wheeler

I’ve been thinking about what to write all day. Nothing will be enough. Or it’ll all be way too much. But today, on the 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie’s birth, I can’t not at least articulate why the arrival of an infant a century ago means so much to me.

Lately I feel like I have to tell people that I’m not obsessed with Woody. I’m not. And no one’s accused me as such. This project has taken me into a deeper focus than any writing project I’ve ever done. I’m not completely sure why. Maybe I’ll know by the time I finish. Even though my Guthrie travels and research mean that my friends and family have been neglected (I’m sorry), I haven’t picked up my knitting in over a month, I’ve only read five books so far in 2012 (I’m usually up to 15 by now), my house is a mess, I can’t remember the last time I cooked a meal for my family, and it’s been well over a month since I’ve taken on any paying freelance work … okay, in that perspective, maybe I am obsessed. But I think I need to be right now. Not just in a fangirl way, but because learning about Woody has taught me things about myself that I don’t think I would have learned otherwise.

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California Stars

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By Robin Wheeler

“California’s mortally loaded down with stuff to ride along an’ look at, ain’t it?”

 

“Long on climate out here! But still, it costs ya like th’ devil ta soak up any of it! the boy who was driving said.

 

“All you folks one family?” I asked them. - “Extry Selects” from “Bound for Glory”

Woody made friends when he went to California. Lots of kind people who made brief but loving appearances in his time of need, never to be seen again.

I hope the latter’s not the case with the friends I made in California. Some will be, of course. Many won’t. Reading “Bound for Glory” and Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” drives home just how amazingly connected we are today. Meet someone half a country away? Swap email addresses, phone numbers, friend each other, follow each others’ digital footsteps. It doesn’t guarantee a life-long connection, but it’s certainly potential for more than Woody had with his lumberjack, fellow train-jumpers, family in the orchard.

We grow up learning that friendship is supposed to last forever. This must be a new concept. Or a very old one that predates the wonders of human mobility of the past two centuries. One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned – am still learning – is the finite nature of friendship. I’m trying to accept it as it comes to me, nurture it as I can, and accept its fleeting tendencies.

While I was in California for the John Steinbeck Festival, I gobbled up the connections that came to me with no expectations beyond those days.

In order of appearance, here are the friends I had during my California trip.

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“The Scribbling Really Did Stay” – Billy Bragg on Songwriting

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By Robin Wheeler

I shook hands with the lumberjack and we went our opposite ways. I never did get a real close look at him in the clouds; and when he walked away, his head and shoulders just sort of swum away in the fog of the morning. I had made another friend I couldn’t see. And I walked along thinking, Well, now, I don’t know if I’ll ever see that man again or not, but I’ll see a lot of men a lot of places and I’ll wonder if that could be him. “The House on the Hill” from “Bound for Glory”

While strangers might not have been so friendly (or interesting) in the hotel bar on Friday night, my decision to do some time in there was a good one in the long run. The emotional prophylactic of that sterile environment prepped me for the heart-bursting level of emotion that was Saturday.

Saturday morning, none of the issues that plagued my travel attempts to Lincoln Square on Friday night reappeared. Pretty sure the universe really wanted me to stay put that night. Arrived at the Old Town School of Folk with plenty of time to stake out a good spot for Billy Bragg’s workshop: “Why Write a Song?: Protest Music in the Digital Age.” Not that there was a bad spot; the audience was kept at around 100 people, hosted in an acoustically-perfect room, going 90 minutes instead of the allotted 60.

All that for $35. And I never would have known about it had I not called the box office, begging for concert tickets two weeks ago. Sometimes it pays to be a pest.

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Watching “Man in the Sand” on the Eve of Billy Bragg’s Woody Guthrie Tributes

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There’s no reasonable excuse for me taking 11 years to watch “Man in the Sand,” the documentary about the making of “Mermaid Avenue.” It’s been on Netflix streaming for years. The 3-CD “Mermaid Avenue” re-release that I bought in April includes a DVD of the film.

I love music documentaries. Why haven’t I watched the one about the music I love the most? Because I’m avoidant. That’s the only excuse I can conjure. Fear that it’ll disappoint, or ruin the myth.

But today, I’m watching it, since I’m leaving for Chicago early in the morning. On Saturday I’ll be seeing Billy Bragg performing Woody Guthrie songs at the Old Town School of Folk. That morning? A songwriting workshop with Bragg.

I need to brush up.

In the first few minutes of the movie, Nora Guthrie narrates that she asked Bragg to do this project to “look for the man behind the myth with me.” And then she utters what has become my favorite words from Woody: “My dad would only say, ‘All you can write is what you see.”

Okay, I’m in.

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“Walt Whitman’s Niece” and “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again”

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Mermaid Avenue

Lest you fall into the trap of thinking Woody Guthrie is all political seriousness and no fun, spend a little time with “Walt Whitman’s Niece” and Joe DiMaggio.

Guthrie wrote the lyrics, but never recorded the song. Organized by Woody’s daughter Nora, Billy Bragg and Wilco collaborated on “Mermaid Avenue” in 1998, the first of two albums of previously-unrecorded Guthrie compositions. It opened with the tale of a bawdy tale that may or may not have included the great poet’s niece.

Two years later, with a second volume, Guthrie wrote the second best baseball poem in American history – after “Casey at the Bat,” of course, with “Joe DiMaggio Done it Again”.