Folk Singer Utah Phillips Meets the Beachhead
Famous folk singer U. Utah Phillips
blew into town recently and met with Beachhead Collective members. The following
is an account of his visit and his performance at McCabes Guitar
Shop.
By Karl
Abrams
I was blown away –
permanently. Barely getting a back row seat, at the last minute, into the packed
house at McCabes Guitar Shop,
I was able to hear a rare performance of the
legendary folk singer Utah Phillips. The crowd was mesmerized. I was engulfed in
joyful goose bumps that will never really go away. I became a part of history in
that audience, and wept in folk song rapture. Who was this timeless patriarch
poet who inspired and affected so many people, of all ages, so thoroughly and
dramatically?
U. Utah Phillips was born
Bruce Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio. Utah is a well-known folk
singer and story teller. As the “Golden Voice of the Great
Southwest” his songs reflect his lifelong influences as an anarchist and
socialist, pacifist and poet, labor organizer and social activist, historian,
philosopher, hobo-tramp, and Wobbly (as members of the Industrial Workers of the
World, the IWW, are called).
This much
I had learned, for the first time, from an interview with this charismatic
earlier in the afternoon. before his standing ovation
performance.
Each of his stories
carefully detailed the struggles of labor unions; each emphasizing the power of
optimism and grassroots “Direct
Action.”
Utah has been around for
years, performing tirelessly across the country for almost a half century. His
calling is multidimensional.
To
express his views and philosophies,Utah once hosted a weekly radio show called
“Loafer’s Glory: The Hobo Jungle of the Mind.” He recorded a
variety of musical albums--among those were several about the idyllic era of
Steam Locomotives, inspired by his numerous travels on the railroad.
“Moose Turd Pie” and “Queen of the Rails” are among some
of his more famous songs.
Inspired by
his anger with the first Gulf War, he wrote in 1991 the song “Enola
Gay” about the US atom bomb dropped on Japan.
He is presently Grand Master of the
Mythic Fraternity of tramps, hoboes, and nare-do-wells known as The Rose Tattoo.
Made up of those who travel by freight trains and carry a tune, they might be
recognized as having a special rose, tattooed somewhere on their
body.
Utah Phillips was awarded the
Lifetime Achievement Award by the Folk Alliance and a Lifetime Service Award
from the American Federation of
Musicians.
Is Utah some kind of
reincarnation of Walt Whitman? How did it all
begin?
Utah left home as a teenager,
riding the rails and bumming with tramps. Teaching himself guitar, he wrote
songs about the Hobo life, supporting himself in any way he
could:
“My stepfather moved our
family to Utah where my mother raised her children to recognize racism and
sexism at an early age. As a young man, newly married with no skills, I was
assigned to the needs of the army and in 1954 was pipe lined for Korea. I went
to radar school, fried some very expensive equipment, and ended up carrying a
rifle in Korea. My learned sensibilities towards recognizing racism showed me I
was the wrong person to be in this
war.
I had seen the emaciation of
Koreans and the racism towards them. I ran away from the base a lot on a bike
and saw the Sea of Ruins and the crying babies. That made me mad. Were we their
friends or enemies? I knew I didn’t want to live in America anymore. So I
hit the freight trains again, made up songs and got back to Salt Lake to make my
stand.”
Utah’s experience
in the Korean War convinced him that nonviolence was the only way to live. After
serving for three years, he joined Ammon Hennacy from the Catholic Worker
Movement.
“It was there in Salt
Lake that I met Ammon, a pacifist anarchist. I worked with him at a
newly-founded mission house of hospitality called the Joe Hill House, set up for
transients and migrants that were mainly World War II
veterans.
Ammon, in his 70’s at
that time, was a one-man revolution who taught me how to be a truly peaceful
anarchist. He wouldn’t even take a job if there was any withholding tax.
Ammon was a moral bedrock and lived in poverty. What’s anarchy? I once
asked him. He said it was when you ‘didn’t need a cop to tell you
what to do...’
He also told me I
was too angry and brawled a lot, that I needed to work everyday and completely
on being a true pacifist and
anarchist.”
Working at the Joe
Hill House for the next eight years greatly influenced Utah Phillips’
sociopolitical thinking and helped shape his life and future work. Ammon Hennacy
had served time at the Atlantic Federal Penitentiary for objecting to World War
I and consequently spent many months in solitary confinement. Ammon was, like
Utah became, a one-man revolution who took Utah under his mentor wing. Utah
still believes that the Catholic Workers Party probably saved his life.
Political action and grassroots direct action are “two hands of the same
body” he told us.
“I was
still angry a lot and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Every
place I went I carried my anger. Angry at the State and those painful images in
my mind of what I’d seen that wouldn’t go away. I knew that what I
had learned from drill sergeants and field commanders was all lies. Ammon would
tell me how I was born into 20th century industrial America armed with the
weapons of economic and racial privilege. If you want to be a pacifist, put
down your knives and angry words. Ammon, to be sure, was a cultural compulsion,
and an involuntary cohesive combination of individual self-governing. I learned
from him that if we can all agree to take what we need and put back what we can
and not hurt anybody, we can get the Work of the World done...without the
bosses.”
Utah’s tireless
efforts includes much that he has been awarded for and much that just kind of
happens on its own. He ran a full campaign on the Peace and Freedom ticket for
Utah’s US Senate in the late sixties. He worked and organized in the
basement warehouse of the State Capitol Building, got 6,000 votes and lost the
election.
“I had run out of moves
in ‘69, so I left Utah with 75 bucks and headed East. I became a story
teller and song writer. I met other singers who took me in and have been a part
of it ever since.”
As a former
warehouse man in Salt Lake, Utah learned “yarning” from his boss
Earl Lyman, and elder Mormon who told anecdotes of early pioneer days. It was
here that he learned the art of story telling as a “way to avoid
work”. Along with his conversations with hoboes and cowboys, Zuni Chants
and Navajo songs, poetic lore from Father Liebler, a San Juan Priest,
Utah’s overall philosophy began to
mature.
“You see, outside events
create the songs, stories introduce them. They’re about tramps and
Socialism and the International Workers of the World. No passive humanism, but
Direct Optimism instead. I agree with Woody Guthrie. You never put other people
down. People should feel better when they leave the show.
“Like Martin Luther King, I have
been a devout prisoner of optimism because wherever I go, I see new and great
things. You know, there’s a Colossal amount of Socialist Energy beneath
the radar.
“I used to do 120 cities per
year. Now just once in awhile. I don’t need any congratulations for what
I’m doin’ at all. I’m simply going to do it. That, too, is
anarchy.”
We asked Utah about
Bush and what the next generation might do to continue his tradition of telling
the truth.
“We don’t need
to understand Bush. We need to understand economic analysis and Corporate
Capitalism and Corporate Fascism and how it divides the Working Classes through
deregulation, privatization, and the use of an imperialist army at public
expense. We need to resist from the bottom up! You guys need a radio station
here in Venice, round the clock. Kids don’t know what a Union is or what
class consciousness is. We need to understand the labor movement, direct action
and political action. We need to let the bosses know that we’re not in
their pocket. OK, I gotta get some sleep
now”
After the performance at
McCabe’s that night an entire audience woke up. We all knew, it seemed,
that all of us had more to do in contributing to getting “the Work of the
World done.”
Posted: Wed - March 1, 2006 at 05:39 AM