A Modern-Day Son of Joe Hill Keeps the Tradition of Championing Working People Alive

Labor’s Punk Songman

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Kirk Kelly: Musician, songwriter, organizer

American labor has always had its troubadours, most of
them writing and singing away in the same obscurity as
the working people they’ve championed. Legendary
songwriter and organizer Joe Hill was an itinerant
laborer in the early 1900s when he turned an otherwise
harmless ditty about an engineer named Casey Jones into
a pro-union anthem, and transformed the pious "Sweet Bye
and Bye" into a stinging satire on preachers who ignored
their congregations’ suffering ("You’ll get pie in the
sky when you die"). Hill understood that, when it came
to agitating, flyers and pamphlets get tossed aside, but
a good tune burrows inside the brain and won’t let go.

But Hill had to become a martyr-executed in a murder
frame-up-before his reputation soared. And even then,
his fame was boosted by a genuine mass movement that saw
songs as a weapon in class struggle.

Although there’s hardly the same mass movement around
today, there is still plenty of agitating going on-
everything from organizing drives for janitors and
sweatshop workers to hold-the-line efforts against the
loss of decent-paying manufacturing jobs. And there are
more than a few organizers who understand Hill’s maxim
about the tune-brain connection. Unfortunately, their
work remains largely unheard and unseen outside of
rallies and occasional pub dates.

One of the best latter-day troubadours who has made
labor’s cause his own and turned politics into music is
Kirk Kelly, a hard-driving singer and guitar and
harmonica player who has been around New York City for
more than 20 years, performing his own work in the mold
of the early Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. Kelly, 43, who
will be playing at a St. Patrick’s Day benefit, is a
union organizer who has brought a strong pair of lungs
and a poet’s sensibility to picket lines and
demonstrations. But unlike a generation of activist
musicians content to strum through

the chords of "Which Side Are You On?," Kelly has
incorporated the backbeats of rock and roll and punk,
fusing Joey Ramone with Woody Guthrie.

It’s the kind of thing Britain’s Billy Bragg has made a
fine reputation doing. But Bragg’s burning focus on
social struggles also raises the question as to the
whereabouts of America’s own radical music makers.

The answer is they’re right here, something Kelly proves
every time he picks up his guitar and mounts a harmonica
stand on his neck to perform an updated version of
Hill’s "Rebel Girl" ("It’s great to fight for freedom
with a Rebel Girl") at a blazing rhythm, or his own
anguished, post-9-11 "American Patrol" ("I am on
American patrol/Searching for survivors/Of a land that
lost control").

Born on Long Island and weaned on the revolutionary
songs of the Clancy Brothers, Kelly made the same trek
as so many before him to pay homage to the remnants of
the folk music scene in Greenwich Village in the early
’80s. But while Kelly and others were adapting the
sounds of the Ramones and the Clash to their idea of
modern folk music, they smacked up against the dominant
ethos of those who saw them as distorters of true folk.
Kelly and his friends argued that both were legitimate.

"What you had in the ’60s was these people interpreting
what they thought the sound of folk music was like, and
they were still running things. They didn’t think that
the music that came later-punk, rock, hip-hop-had a
right to make any other interpretations," says Kelly.

That message was clearly delivered the night Kelly was
banned from the open mics at the old Gerde’s Folk City
for handing out flyers for a performance at an East
Village venue.

Along with other like-minded young musicians, including
Cindy Lee Berryhill, Roger Manning, and Lach, Kelly and
his pals started calling themselves "antifolk," an idea
that eventually blossomed into a small but intense
movement.

But while others focused fairly exclusively on the music
itself, Kelly aimed to put his sound to work in the
service of the causes he believed in. "I’ve always
wanted to use music to move people," he says. To that
end, he began performing at union rallies and got many
last-minute calls to show up at picket lines. The songs
jibed with his own workaday world. He spent time as a
fruit picker on Long Island’s East End, prompting his
tune "Working in the Vineyards" ("Put in an honest day’s
work for half a day’s pay"). He later labored as a
white-collar member of the machinists’ union in an
airline’s reservation office. "I was there a month and
they made me the shop steward. I was the one who
couldn’t keep his mouth shut when something was wrong."

He stayed at the job for several years, until the day he
spotted an ad in his union’s paper for an AFL-CIO
organizers’ training school. He applied and was
accepted. For Kelly, the training was an eye-opener. It
launched him on organizing campaigns around the country.
"I was all over. For a while, I was on the waterfront in
Seattle, organizing for a teamsters local."

He also kept churning out a steady stream of songs,
offering caustic takes on everything from strikes to
censorship. He even wrote an ode to the "Service
Economy," bemoaning the rise of McDonald’s-style
employment.

Not that he hasn’t written his share of love songs. His
"Waltz of Time" mourns a love lost amid the New Year’s
Eve crowds in Times Square: "All the city one dance
floor, all waltzing to a magic score/ The madcap chaos,
laughter, mayhem, is causing me to dance with them/But I
can only play the waltz/That time has played for both of
us."

"I write about things that affect me-a romance gone bad
or what corporations do to working people. These are
wounds and I feel them; they affect my friends, my
family. You don’t have to look far to see signs of the
pain it causes."

His first CD, Go Man Go, came out in 1988 on the tiny
label SST, which also included the punk group Black
Flag. "I was thrilled to be on there. Here I was putting
out this solo acoustic guitar album. I thought, this is
where folk belonged."

Kelly also kept knocking on the door of major record
firms, and did his own dance with a large company, which
in exchange for a piece of his music-publishing rights,
commissioned an album in the late 1990s. Shortly before
it was due to come out, however, the label went bust. "I
realized then I had to do it myself. The entertainment
industry is organized the same way that the old robber
barons organized the railroads," he says. "There’s no
middle ground for alternate culture."

He issued the album on his own label, Mugsy Records
(mugsyrecords.com). Called New City, it included the
prescient song "Hooray We Won the War," which, since the
invasion of Iraq, Kelly and his trio, Paddy on the
Railway, have played to acclaim at peace rallies.

There is always a call for someone to belt out the old
songs of the Irish revolution around St. Patrick’s Day,
he says. "But I don’t want to stop there. It’s always
amazed me that we Americans don’t have more songs about
our own revolution. I’ve got one about the patriot
Nathan Hale I’ve been reworking since I was a teenager.
It’ll be on my next album."

— -

Songs in the Key Of Strife

’Hooray, We Won the War’

The deep and ugly scars of a war-weary nation
Are borne by every race and generation.
Somewhere the paths of glory got crossed.
I’d hate to see where we’d be if we lost.
The ones who claim victory won’t bear the cost.
But they’re the ones that you’ll hear the most, saying

Hooray, hooray, hooray, we won the war.

When you see the broken bodies lying all around,
And the buildings and bridges and schools a-tumbling down.
Just remember we did the right thing.
It’s the price that you pay to let freedom ring.
So as we enjoy what victory brings
We’ll all join our voices together and sing
Hooray, hooray, hooray, we won the war.