Folk Roots, Today's Struggles
I am a union carpenter, former river deckhand, and lifelong music maker based in Minnesota. Drawing deeply from American and Irish folk roots, with an ear towards global musical connections, I work to carry on the “long memory” of working class movements both in generations-old ballads, and in new songs springing from today’s struggles. Whether melancholy, defiant, sardonic, or– ultimately in the end– hopeful, my music is always honest. I strive to, as the Riot Folk Collective once said, "make folk a threat again".
My music is informed both as a participant in and in dialogue with organizing campaigns and resistance movements, ranging from labor struggles, to land and water defense, to community self defense against racism and state violence. I have extensive experience playing at protests, picket lines, rallies, benefit shows, and educational events. In addition to my social music, I am an accomplished performer of traditional and folk revival songs and tunes, and can play any variety of venues and events. I am a good fit for a pub, coffee shop, or festival. I play the bouzouki, five string and tenor banjos, guitar, bass, mandolin, balalaika, bodhran, fiddle, and pennywhistle. My musical style draws mostly from Celtic, American Old Time and Country, and Blues, while mixing these roots together in new and unorthodox ways. I also work in dialogue with influences from other musical roots, including Eastern European, West African, Latin, and the music of the Middle East. An evening of music with me can take you through world-weary blues, rousing rebel songs, haunting murder and disaster ballads, and intricate fingerstyle tunes of love and loss. Outside of my folk work, I have played in punk and reggae bands, such as the Stepping Razors. I have written several hundred original songs, and also translated and adapted dozens of songs from social struggles around the world. I am available for live performance, studio session work, songwriting commissions, recording commissions, music lessons, and artistic collaboration. |
A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over."- Joe Hill |
My first solo album, Rust Belt Ballads, focuses heavily on life, transformation, and struggles for blue collar workers in Middle America. It serves as a meditation both personal and political on the rural farmland and industrial cities he comes from as a worker and artist, and seeks continuity with and a rebirth of working class pride and power in places that have been left behind or written off.
My songs take you on a journey from the Farm Crisis of the 1980s and its consequences, through mechanization and the changing face of quarrying towns, to a letter to a soldier deployed in Afghanistan, to a satirical take on the billionaire space race. Songs highlight issues like Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, homelessness in the Twin Cities, the repression of anarchists and antifascists in Belarus and Russia, the need for community self defense against white supremacy, and the problem that union bureaucracies pose to rank and file militancy. The 1934 Teamsters Strike, the 1983 P9 Hormel Strike, the 2021 John Deere Strike, and the 1992 Southern California Drywallers strike all are celebrated in ballads. The deadly 2013 Sartell Mill explosion is commemorated, as is the East Palestine OH derailment, in a song written in response to the unfolding news while the recording was underway. There's even a moonshining ballad about the MN 13 whiskey distilled in my hometown during Prohibition. The album features my performances on almost every instrument I play, as well as Mattie Ernst on the concertina and fiddle and Charlie Bruber on the bass. My work as part of an ensemble can be found through the Wooden Shoe Ramblers, which was the house band of the Twin Cities IWW and GDC at its height. I am also the bassist in the reggae band, the Stepping Razors. |
Artistic Achievements
I have performed at pickets lines and rallies for the United Auto Workers, Starbucks Workers United, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Industrial Workers of the World, Association of Flight Attendants, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, International Association of Machinists, the Minnesota Newspaper Guild, Half Price Books Workers United, and other unions, as well as community organizations such as the IWW General Defense Committee, the Anarchist Black Cross, the Red Pine Collective, the Workers Defense Alliance, and more.
I have played at major historic commemorations including the 100th Anniversary of Blair Mountain, the Joe Hill 100 Road Show, the plaque laying ceremony for the 80th anniversary of Bloody Friday during the Teamster Strike in Minneapolis, and the Twin Cities Irish community's 40th anniversary of the H Block Hunger Strikes.
I have played at major historic commemorations including the 100th Anniversary of Blair Mountain, the Joe Hill 100 Road Show, the plaque laying ceremony for the 80th anniversary of Bloody Friday during the Teamster Strike in Minneapolis, and the Twin Cities Irish community's 40th anniversary of the H Block Hunger Strikes.
My music has raised money for the IWW General Defense Committee, International Antifascist Defense Fund, Anarchist Black Cross, UAW strike fund, water protector legal defense, Occupy ICE legal defense, Lac Megantic rail workers defense fund, Kurdish Red Crescent, Solidarity Collectives in Ukraine, Bangladesh Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation, North Country Food Alliance, and other causes.
My song Frack Sand Song, recorded with the Wooden Shoe Ramblers as Sand Hills, was published in the Driftless Reader, an anthology of art celebrating the Driftless Area in Wisconsin.
My poetry has been published in the Twin Cities area socialist poetry journal, On The Left Bank
My music has been featured in MN-area podcasts such as Socialist News and Views and Unbalanced.Mn
My lyrics have been incorporated into works by the anarchist illustrator, NO Bonzo.
My poetry has been published in the Twin Cities area socialist poetry journal, On The Left Bank
My music has been featured in MN-area podcasts such as Socialist News and Views and Unbalanced.Mn
My lyrics have been incorporated into works by the anarchist illustrator, NO Bonzo.
Get In Touch
I am available for live performance, studio session work, songwriting commissions, recording commissions, music lessons, and artistic collaboration.
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