Peter Yarrow
Jan. 11, 2001

I adore Anne Feeney not only because she's a wonderful songwriter, which she is, but also because she's a person who has lived her songs. In the same way that Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie are role models for the kind of spirit that Peter, Paul & Mary convey to audiences and, to some extent, Peter, Paul & Mary become role models to others, Anne is a role model for us.

When I first met her, she was young and idealistic and committed to folk music as a way of communicating ideas about community and social justice. Those were her dreams then and they remain the same dreams for her, although she's a little older now, as we all are, who grew up and came into our own in that cultural era of 30 or 40 years ago.

She became an attorney representing the underserved and people with disabilities. A few years ago, she became president of the local musician's union, and I remember performing at a campaign rally there in Pittsburgh. She came to the Kerrville Folk Festival and received recognition as a songwriter at this festival which I helped to found about 30 years ago.

She's a person who lives the spirit of music in the sense of the best songwriters, not simply as an entertainer. She participates passionately and with great compassion in struggles for justice. Her song "Have You Been to Jail for Justice" is characteristic of Anne's work not only because of its advocacy, but because it conveys a joyful sense of humor. Like Anne, this song looks at the world with a spirit of community, the spirit of an organizer, people who write and sing from a sense of enjoying people and participating in the life around them even as they recognize the great inequities that we have.

Peter, Paul & Mary have performed this song many places. At Wolftrap Farm Park in Vienna, Virginia, a place outside Washington that attracts people of all stripes. Janet Reno was there. We didn't know she was going to be there, and after the concert she came backstage with her mother. I was on tenterhooks. I didn't know what she was going to say. She said her mother loved the song, and she asked us to send her a copy.

Whenever Peter, Paul & Mary perform this song, people burst into applause and laughter at the end of the last verse: "So get courage from your convictions. Let them haul you off to jail!" It's as if they're marching in support of what the song says. The song evokes history and celebrates events we as Americans can be proud of in the context of our right-wing political climate -- the elimination of child labor, extending the vote to women, the elimination of slavery. These changes could not have occurred without changes in the law and the acts of people who were willing to take a stand that involved going to jail for their ideals of justice.

This is truly a patriotic song. I say this with pride in our constiution and that America is a country that allows people to go to jail for justice. It takes a strong country to do this. The song appreciates the right of people to be a loyal opposition and to express their opposition in the context of civil disobedience.I believe that with this song Anne is extending this tradition and contributing to carrying forward this sense of what America stands for in the best sense, and the song expresses that for the audience. It's an impassioned eloquent statement in the spirit both of laughter and heartfelt connection.

Today's folk music is filled with the influences of labor music. From Joe Hill to Woody to Pete, many of the longest lasting songs are songs of the working class and those fighting for them. While these influences are rich, the labor song genre has been lacking in the past decade or so. For many of this and the last generation the only songs speaking of workers' rights have been Joan Baez's "Joe Hill" at Woodstock or Rage Against the Machine. Even the venerable political trio Peter, Paul and Mary have had a limited voice to new listeners. Organizing music may have lost some audience but it has never lost its voice. It may be that torch that has been picked up by Anne Feeney, an unabashed union maid and self-proclaimed hellraiser. Her recent CD, have you been to Jail for Justice? is a powerful statement of workers' rights and a great folk music album. The title song, "Have You Been to Jail for Justice," is as powerful an anthem as civil rights has had in years. This song has been performed by Peter, Paul and Mary, as well as others. This song alone makes the album worthwhile, but there is much more. The second song, "Rebuild America-Keep Hope Alive!" is another anthem with a moving chorus that ends, "We've got to rebuild America, eyes on the prize/That dream we are building never dies." The song is a list of the ills of our society and a push to keep the vision. The third song, "C.E.O.s (The Plane Wreck at Tuzla)", is a parody of classic Woody Guthrie ballad, "Deportee (The Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" that substitutes corporate CEOs for the illegal immigrants. This is black humor applied to the labor protest model. It may not be for everybody. On "Who Da Bitch Now?" we get to see Feeney's rather biting humorous side as she sings this Eric Schwartz song. It speaks of one possible reward that the torturers of James Byrd, Matthew Shepard and Abner Louima may face in prison. Between the great opening title song and the finale of what else but, "The Internationale," Anne Feeney plays rock, swing, reggae, blues and folk as she tells us of poor working conditions, exploitation, courage in the face of alienation, child labor, corporate welfare, third world strife, slavery, hamburgerization, prison rape, genocide and throws in a great version of "Joe Hill." Feeney is surrounded by good musicians, including Jon Fromer, Jack Irwin, Charlie Chadwick, Sam Bacco, Mike McAdam and Jim Hoke. The vocals are exactly as they should be, an almost hootenanny-type sing along featuring Fromer, Rebel Voices (Janet Stecher and Susan Lewis), Kim and Reggie Harris accompanying Feeney. You might have to leave a few of your politics at the door, maybe not, but every folk fan should have this recording. In one CD you can not only find a true and spirited bow to the classics of the labor movement, but hear a fresh look at the state of the protest song today. You won't read tomorrow's paper the same afterwards.

Have You Been To Jail For Justice? is easily one of the best CD’s I’ve heard in a long, long time. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting from a labor songs collection but it certainly wasn’t anything this wonderful.

If you love the socially responsible aspect of the 60’s folk-revolution music, you will love this CD. Anne Feeney kicks out a song selection that has more social conscience than Joan Baez does, but without the ear-cramping high notes. Every song is a cutting social commentary used to either pierce the heart or cut people down to size. And in a few cases she aims a bit lower at what some might consider their point of pride.

Feeney bluntly and beautifully addresses the issues of racism, classism, homophobia, police brutality, and the maze of problems faced by the working class of the world. But don’t think for a second that this CD is depressing or simply a different version of the musical temper-tantrums that fuel the music-media’s hate fest these days.

Her songs are sad, funny, angry, and sarcastic, yet at the same time they are incredibly inspiring and motivating for the truth that they speak. Feeney gives voice to our anger but in a way that clarifies it even to us.

Labor singers have always written their songs to specific melodies and styles that were popular at the time. True to tradition Feeney has managed to incorporate an amazingly diverse array of styles including traditional Irish and Mexican ballads, Black spirituals, reggae, boogie, hip-hop, and ska into this CD. What’s even more amazing is that it works! Nothing seems out of place. It all flows together so well that I didn’t realize until the third listening that there was such an extreme variety of styles going on.

Feeney uses these different styles to form a kind of musical travelogue of the world’s condition that takes you from America’s heartland to a pub in Ireland, from the Nazi concentration camps of Europe, through Central America, and to a place I’m sure, lies somewhere near the soul of Birmingham, Alabama.

Have You Been To Jail For Justice? has already become one of my all time favorite CD’s. And with her wonderful and versitile vocals and passion for what she sings I definitely want to hear a lot more of Anne Feeney.