ROD MacDONALD
Later That Night
Blue Flute Music 107
Every few years the mainstream media drives a lame stallion
out of the stable to see if he'll gallop. All of a sudden there will be a spate
of articles on the disappearance of protest music and every explanation except
the right ones will be trotted out to tell us why there is no Dylan, Ochs, or
Seeger in our midst. I think it was Holly Near who incredulously responded to a
journalist's question of where all the idealists have gone by remarking,
"You must be hanging around with the wrong people." Anyone who doubts
Near's wisdom should check out Ron Olesko's excellent piece on David Rovics in SingOut! 55:4 (Spring 2014). Or maybe
listen to Holly's music instead of asking her stupid questions.
There are some big differences between now and protest
music's heyday in the 1960s. Unwilling draftees don't staff American wars for
one; the civil rights movement battles for justice more in courts than on the
streets for two. Plus, as folks like the late Utah Phillips observed, liberal
uses of humor and irony go down better with post-Baby Boomers. And let's not
forget that performers draw upon personal as well as public events for creative
inspiration and that they need to make a living. Need I remind you that one of
folk music's greatest gifts is capturing the universal human condition, not
just the evening news.
A young musician looking to strike a balance between
righteous anger, bemused irony, and just plain old good songwriting should
check out folk vet Rod MacDonald. Later
That Night is Rod's fourteenth album and it finds him in well-tuned wit,
voice, and melody. He takes down religion's nasty social uses on "Hole in
the Bible" and gives the same treatment to the G.O.P. on his hysterical
calypso/reggae/folk mash-up "Young Republicans in Love." If you
wonder if humor can change things, check out MacDonald's six-minute narrative
ballad, "White Flour," which recounts the 2007 tale of how clowns
took down the Ku Klux Klan in Knoxville, Tennessee. MacDonald is no shrinking
violet. Although it's quite different musically from Cheryl Wheeler's rap "If
It Were Up to Me," MacDonald's "Joe Public" similarly refuses to
excuse working-class louts who cite all manner of excuse and imagined enemies
to explain why they act and vote against their own interests. That's not to say
that he's unsympathetic. Every union hall in American ought to be playing his
"Last American Worker," the best pro-worker song I've heard in over a
decade. MacDonald names the real enemies, including banks, Wall Street, global
capitalism, the health care industry, and greedy shareholders. His refrain,
"He's the last American worker/And they've got him dead in their
sights/They've taken away everything that he worked for/Somebody turn out the
lights."
But if you think everything is angst and gloom, it's not.
"That's Why You Play the Game" is a series of vignettes of those who
were declared down for the count and got up for a few more rounds–"That's
why you play the game/Because you never ever know/What you can't do till you do
your best/Till you put yourself to the test/And win or lose or show/You stood
tall just the same/My little darling/That's why we play the game."
Optimism also shines through on songs like "Raven," with its catchy
guitar lick in the vein of "Here Comes the Sun," and the
bluegrass-influenced "To My Dearest One." Even more impressively,
MacDonald makes us hopeful when he takes on a tough subject such as mental
illness ("We're All One").
Sometimes MacDonald gets out of synch. "Big Time Record
Contract" is an anachronism in the age of downloads that pay musicians a
fraction of a penny; and "Don't Come Knocking" has a fun soul/blues
groove, but the subject matter is a tired old sex joke. But call these two the
defects in an otherwise sparkling gem. And the next time someone asks you where
good protest music has gone, make that person listen to this CD.
Rob Weir
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