Bucky Halker is a critically-acclaimed scholar, songwriter, and professional musician. Drawing on his love of labor songs and his Midwestern roots, Halker has produced a number of fantastic albums including Welcome to Labor Land, Don’t Want Your Millions, and Passion Politics Love. He has also produced a 4-CD set of songs from Illinois and written a well-received book on labor song-poems of the late 19th century entitled “For Democracy, Workers, and God: Labor Song-Poems and Protest, 1865-95.” He continues to teach, write, and perform throughout the Midwest and beyond.
Recently, I asked Bucky Halker a number of questions about labor songs, his involvement in the labor movement, and his thoughts about the future of the labor song tradition:
1.) How did you originally become involved in the labor movement, and what led to your interest in studying and performing labor songs?
My first serious involvement with labor started while I was in graduate school at the University of Minnesota. I’d been politically involved even in high school, but my only direct experience as a teenager was supporting local teachers in their struggles in my hometown of Ashland, Wisconsin. In grad school I started getting calls to perform labor music, which I had just started to study and perform, and then it went from there. Music has been a kind of back door entry for me into political activity ever since I was a teenager, so this direct move toward labor was very natural for me. Also, I came from a family that was always talking politics and involved in politics in an old-school mainstream way. Discussions of labor were part of our family dinner and news-hour conversations. My grandfather was a stockyard worker from Chicago and he and his wife had a very New Deal outlook on politics and they had a huge influence on me. My dad, by contrast, had been pro-labor and then went to the other side and that too had an influence as well.
As for studying and performing labor songs, that was really the result of me trying to find something I had a passion for while I was in graduate school. I had been interested in the intersection of music and politics ever since I had a rock band in high school and began writing political music. I also got interested in folk music as a teenager, in part because of the politics of many in the folk revival and also because I liked the idea of performing as a solo acoustic artist and not relying on a band. I played all through high school and college and when I got to grad school I just organically moved toward studying labor and the role of poetry and music in the movement. I have to say I was wandering in the dark and on my own in doing this. Nobody in the history department knew anything about it and the folklorist on staff could have cared less about working-class culture and music. In addition, other than Archie Green, nobody was really researching labor music. The labor historians were turning toward working-class culture, but music and poetry was off their radar for some reason. For that matter, those subjects are still off their radar. Of course, it didn’t take long before I just started adding some of these labor songs to my set lists for gigs and, well, I’ve been doing that now for thirty five years!
2. In your well-received book “For Democracy, Workers, and God,” you investigate labor song-poems of the 19th century and the cultural, political, and religious influences on that genre of working class expression. What led to your interest in this area of study, and why do you think 19th century labor songs have not been studied more?
I took on the Gilded Age labor music and poetry because I was looking for the origins of labor music in the labor movement. I started with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and just kept digging deeper and pretty soon I was back in the nineteenth century. Of course, you can actually go back to the colonial period if you want, but it’s really about the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction that labor song and poetry blossoms, at least in my mind. I would never call the New Deal era the high point of working-class protest music and poetry, though that is clearly the image most people have, including historians. I’m not sure why other historians haven’t taken up the cause exactly, but I think there’s a bias for what you might term more muscular subjects in labor history, even among female labor historians. Folklorists, generally have stayed away from the working-class throughout the history of the field and I think that bias continues to the present. Whatever the reasons, it’s most unfortunate. There are some great books waiting to be written about working-class music and poetry and other art.
3. Much of your recorded music blends contemporary rock and roll and country sounds with traditional folk music structures. What artists and/or musical experiences prompted this creative melding of genres that is prominent in albums such as “Passion Politics and Love” and “Welcome to Labor land”?
I’ve always been a very eclectic songwriter and performer. I don’t like boundaries in my subject areas or my music. Good music is good music, period, and I don’t care if it’s country, jazz, blues, folk, or Tin Pan Alley. Labor music was popularized by a group of professional musicians in the New Deal era who saw folk music as a political tool. I don’t want to argue with that ideological position, but I think the unfortunate result is that folk music, or what gets called folk music, is the genre where you’re supposed to go if you play or write labor music. I think that’s a bunch of fucking bullshit. Yip Harbug wrote great Broadway and Tin-Pan Alley music and he was never afraid of political lyrics. Listen to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with your left-wing ears on and tell me that isn’t a brilliant piece of melody meets chords meet utopian sentiment. I love Pete Seeger, but on most any given day I’d rather put on the Clash or the Ramones and listen to them. Ditto for Coltrane or Monk or Hendrix or Broonzy. For my money, they offer us other musical models. I grew up listening to country, polka, big bands, rock and roll, blues, and folk. Writing and performing material that is influenced by those genres and carries a political message seems natural to me. If you can get a labor or progressive message out to people by non-folk music styles, then why not do that? Labor and political music isn’t meant to be a private club for folkies.
4. One of your best albums (in this writer’s humble opinion) is “Welcome to Labor Land,” which includes some great modern renditions of little known labor songs from Illinois. A refreshing aspect of this album is that there are a number of wonderful blues tunes about working-class issues. Can you talk a little bit about how the blues has influenced labor song writing and your own playing?
Blues? Oh, I love blues so much as an art form. I always say that America has given the world two great things. First, the promise and template of democracy outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Second, the blues and its offspring, jazz and rock and roll. I listened to all kinds of blues and still do, from Otis Spann to Robert Johnson to B.B. King to Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith. For my money, it’s a beautiful form for understanding life itself—dissonance-resolution-dissonance-resolution and so on. You can’t win in the end, but you can “swing” through life as long as possible. In particular, I can’t say enough about Mississippi John Hurt and his influence on my acoustic finger-picking and B.B. King and the Chicago players like Albert Collins and Buddy Guy on my electric playing. Truthfully, I can tell when guitar players are not influenced by blues and I generally don’t care for them all that much. There’s no life without the blues, so how can you play music without including the blues? If you don’t, there’s some emotion that will be absent from your work.
5. Recently, you performed in Chicago with Jon Langford from the Mekons as part of the Celebration of May Day and the Haymarket Affair’s 125th anniversary. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of May Day to you?
In Chicago, May Day has a special importance because of Haymarket, the Eight-Hour Movement, and the call for May Day as a day for workers to rise up against injustice in 1885-86. I think it’s important to remember Haymarket and the role of the Eight-Hour movement in world history. That said, I try to do something every May Day. This year was especially important because of the 125th, so I felt we ought to do something bigger. My role was to put together the concert at the Old Town School of Folk Music, but lots of people joined together in special events to commemorate. It was great to be part of this.
6. The last year has seen some prominent musicians come out in public support of union labor. From Steve Earle and the Dropkick Murphys to Jon Langford and yourself, there seems to be a host of pro-union musicians writing contemporary songs about the struggles of working class people. Do you think we are going to see more musicians singing “labor songs”? What do you hope for the future of labor music?
I do think we will see more people doing labor music and they will be doing a variety of styles, which is great. In my perfect world, we’d see jazz, hip hop, electronica, punk, speed metal, emo, folk, bluegrass, jazz, polka, Mexican son, tamburitza, salsa, spoken word and a host of styles from around the world all serving as stylistic vehicles for labor music. That would make me very happy and that would be my hope for the future.
7. Are you working on any new albums or current projects that might be of interest to people reading this blog?
I’m going to be recording a double CD this fall that will feature songs that have some relation to Woody Guthrie. It may include a couple of Woody’s songs, but the rest will be originals. It’s going to be a very-stripped down recording that I’m doing with a friend who toured Europe with me last year. I’ve been running around with Woody Guthrie in my head since I was in grade school, so I figure it was time to finally take him on as a subject. I know everyone else is running to the archives to get a set of lyrics of his to write a song, but I decided to just write original material that has some analytic thread that connects to Mr. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. I’m also working on a Volume 5 in the “Folksongs of Illinois” CD series I’ve been producing. These CDs document the history of folk and ethnic music in the state and really highlight the contribution of Illinois musicians to our nation’s music history. To be honest, it’s a tribute to workers and working-class communities in the state. They produced the vast majority of songs on the CDs.Volume 5 is on Chicago since 1970. I’m also hoping to start the actual writing in 2012 for a book on Woody Guthrie. I’ve done a lot of the research, but finding the blocks of time is hard to do when you are a musician and have to constantly hustle a buck to stay alive. Finally, I’m currently documenting ironworkers from locals 1, 63, and 136 of the Iron Workers Union here in Chicago. It’s a mix of photographs, recordings, and film that will end up at the Library of Congress on their website. I was fortunate to get the Archie Green Fellowship from the Library of Congress-American Folklife Center to do this. There are other projects, but that’s enough. Yup, I’m keepin’ busy and I never get enough sleep.
To find out more about Bucky Halker’s music and scholarship, visit his website at: http://www.buckyhalker.com/
Don't Mourn, Harmonize! 