See the Griswold in Old Lyme for American Impressionism

Florence Griswold Museum

Old Lyme, CT

 

 

Old Lyme, Connecticut, is one of the premier centers for American Impressionism. Unless you’re an art geek like me, you might be surprised to know there were any American Impressionists other than Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), and she hardly counts as she moved to Paris in 1874, and spent the rest of her life in France. You can be forgiven, as you’ve been inundated with posters, t-shirts, ties, and other paraphernalia of French artists such as Degas, Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir, but when was the last time you saw a coffee mug with a John eHenryHenry Twachtman or J. Alden Weir (1852-1919) image on it? (In case you’re wondering, the latter is no kin of mine; my family came over from Scotland just in time to fight for the Union during the Civil War.)

 

Impressionism is so thoroughly associated with France that it’s easy to forget that it spread across Western Europe and was even found in unlikely places such as Australia, Egypt, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, and Slovenia. If there is such a thing as the dean of American Impressionism, it would be Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Hassam was based in the Greater Boston area, but when American Impressionists gathered, it was in places such as Cos Cob and Old Lyme.

 

Why Old Lyme? There’s a reason why we joke about starving artists. Unless one is born into money or is one of the few to attract notice or better yet, a wealthy patron, it’s sadly the case that most “famous” artists only become so after being rowed across the River Styx. Luckily for a bunch of American artists, Florence Griswold (1850-1937) lived along the Lieutenant River in Old Lyme. She was born into wealth, but never married and when she approached 50, found herself the owner of a sprawling columned mansion in need of repairs, but no steady income. About the same time, Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916) had the idea of forming an art colony. Griswold began taking in paint-splattered boarders and from this the Old Lyme colony was born.

 

Ranger was sort of a semi-Impressionist who called his work tonalist (whatever that means), and Griswold’s home attracted a variety of artists. It soon became a place where American Impressionists such as Hassam, Weir, William Chadwick, Bruce Crane, Harry Hoffman, Edmund Greacan, Lawton Parker, William Robinson, and Everett Warner dipped their brushes. Chadwick, Hassam, and Robinson even built studios on the site, though only Chadwick’s remains. From Old Lyme, they practiced their particular form of American vernacular.

 

Vernacular is the proper word. Impressionism has been called painting with light but of course, the light along the Connecticut coast isn’t the same as that in Provence or the Loire Valley. Nor is the weather. Benjamin Eggleston built a portable cart to work in Old Lyme, convenient for New England’s changeable conditions, not the least of which is her snowy winters. Impressionism is also marked visible brush strokes that make images “impressionistic” rather than “realistic,” and by its preference for ordinary subjects. “Ordinary” is also culturally determined. Neither the Seine nor Rouen Cathedral happened to be close at hand, so Old Lyme artists painted things such as the marshes and Bow Bridge, a humped stone structure that once spanned the Lieutenant. It is also interesting to see how the light changes when Old Lyme artists ventured overseas and painted in places sch as Venice.

 

You can get a fine introduction to American Impressionism by touring Griswold’s home and the separate Krieble Gallery on the grounds. If you need a break from art, there’s also a picturesque trail along the Lieutenant, a barn repurposed as a landscape photography center, well-kept gardens, a small orchard, and (on occasion) environmental education programs. Below find a sample of art on display at the sites. (All photos are mine. You can click on them to see larger images.)

 

Rob Weir

 

Hassam, Ten Pound Island

Chadwick's studio

 

 

 

Lawton Parker, Laurel

 

Warner, Studios Behind Griswold House

Will Foote, Fish Houses Maine

Hoffman, Bridging the Lieutenant

 

Hassam's Studio by Hoffman

Metcalf

 

 

 

 

All Adults Here an Ironic Title

All Adults Here (2020)

By Emma Straub

Riverhead Books, 368 pages.

★★★ ½ 

 

 

 

In books with titles such as All Adults Here, smart money is that grownups will be AWOL. In Emma Straub’s new novel, most of the characters are legally adults, but it speaks volumes when an 8^th grader is more mature than most of them.

 

All Adults Here opens with two crises. Widowed Astrid Strick is jolted into rethinking her golden years priorities when she witnesses a school bus fatally strike Barbara Baker. It rattles her even though she didn’t even like Barbara. Shortly thereafter, her granddaughter Cecelia is sent to live with her, after being bullied at her Brooklyn school by a former friend and her rich parents. Cecelia actually did a good thing, but add those rich parents to the list of adults behaving like children. Cecelia loves her “gamma,” but she doesn’t know anyone her own age in Clapham, a close-knit Hudson River town north of Poughkeepsie. (It’s fictional, though it bears similarities to Rhinebeck.)

 

Astrid, 68, has been having a closeted relationship with her hairdresser Birdie and has been contemplating coming out to her three adult children. It might have happened sooner had they not been so deep into extended adolescence. Oldest son Elliot is married to Wendy Chan, a lawyer, who put her career on hold to care for their twins. He is a developer with megalomaniacal dreams who immerses himself in work, and is hellbent on proving his manhood. Daughter Porter has a goat cheese enterprise but no partner, so she decides to have an in vitro impregnation. Astrid’s youngest, Nicky and his French wife Juliette, are Cecelia’s parents. Nicky is a heartthrob who was once in movies, but now he and Juliette are quasi-hippies who are more like friends to their daughter, who’d actually like less empathy and more help in growing up.

 

Other important characters include August, whom Cecelia befriends, and whose parents are a bit like Nicky and Juliette in their laissez-faire parenting skills; and Rachel, a past and renewed friend of Porter’s. Clapham also functions as a character. It is insular, but in a way in which locals fret over preserving its uniqueness rather than closing the gates. Such places lend themselves to a soap opera treatment; locales seeking to put a cloth over the clock generally have things going on under the covers. In addition to Astrid’s relationship with Birdie, Porter has been sleeping with Jeremy, her high school boyfriend who is married with two children; Rachel’s husband left her for a younger woman; Wendy is losing patience with Elliot, who seems perpetually pissed off at everyone. At times it feels as if All Adults Here is an updated Peyton Place.

 

The novel has been branded as a mother-daughter book and women’s literature. It is certainly true that Straub celebrates female resourcefulness and that men often appear as predators, libertines, or jerks, but this is not a work one should derisively dismiss as “chick lit.” Straub has something a bit weightier in play. Her female characters don’t have their lives in order either. Porter is a wonderful aunt to Cecelia, but her own life is a shamble. Astrid is conflicted over things to the point of paralysis, Wendy was content to act as a perfect bourgeois wife before she cracked, Jeremy’s wife Kristen is anything but a walking poster for sisterhood, and her daughter Sidney is a little shit.

 

My major criticism of the novel is that Straub mechanistically ticks politically correct boxes, even if they’re not crucial to the novel. Vivian is Chinese American, Birdie is Latina, August is gender fluid, Porter’s obstetrician is African American, and Astrid and Birdie are lesbians. One way of looking at this is to note that even small-town America is diverse; another is to say that Straub undermines the world she built. Much of Clapham’s insularity vanishes in a matter of weeks, which is not the way change usually occurs. There are dollops of tokenism throughout, as the novel’s diversity is surface deep. Vivian could have been Australian, Birdie Icelandic, August a burly football star, and the doctor green with yellow polka dots and it would not have mattered.

 

All Adults Here is a coming-of-age tale for its central characters. Who says that such a story must be about adolescents? Can Astrid’s brood come to terms with their lives? She gave each what she thought they needed but apparently, she bred hurt and/or resentment–except for Nicky, a man-child, whom everyone loves in the way they’d love a large puppy. Even cute puppies must eventually become dogs. Straub suggests that until adulthood happens, parents risk passing their failings to their offspring.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Small Towns: Old Saybrook and Old Lyme, CT

 

Only a bridge separates Old Saybrook and Old Lyme and most visitors to the Connecticut shore will likely spend time in both, so it makes sense to talk about them in the same column. They lie about 45 minutes southeast of Hartford and about 35 minutes due east of New Haven.

 

This is a part of Connecticut known for its wealth, though the median family income of both towns is slightly below the state average of $76,348. This puzzling statistic is due mainly to the huge gulf between those who make their living on the water versus those who simply by the water and only venture offshore in pleasure craft rather than rusty fishing boats. If you’re of liberal persuasion, note also that each town is about 97% white, Republicans outnumber Democrats in both places, and you’ll see giant Trump flags flying from the sterns of boats tied up in private marinas. If you can stymie your gag reflexes, you can spend a nice day out in the region.

 

Old Saybook’s population of 10,242 makes it the larger of the two. It’s where you’ll find some elegant old homes in and near the center, and downtown is where you’re most likely to find food options. Other than nearby beaches, there are two major attractions in Old Saybrook, the first of which is the ruins of Fort Saybrook. It was destroyed by Pequots during King Phillip’s War (1636-37), a devastating conflict between English settlers and a confederation of Native Americans in which roughly half of all English settlements were attacked and many were destroyed. The destruction of Fort Saybrook resulted in 20 English deaths, but colonists responded disproportionately by setting fire to the Native settlement at Mystic, killing more than 500–nearly all of whom were women, children, and elderly, as the warriors were off fighting the English.  

 

 

 

There’s not much left of the fort except foundation walls and the park in which it is located is nothing special, so why would one wish to visit it? Mainly, because it’s located at the mouth of the Connecticut River, where it empties into Long Island Sound. (See top.) The Connecticut is
New England’s longest river and is often impressive along its 410-mile length, but nowhere does it rival its estuary at Old Saybrook, where it turns into a saltwater bay. That’s worth a look. Plus, you are near Fenwick Point and the Saybrook Breakwater Lighthouse. You can’t go onto its grounds at present, but you can drive nearby and see the side of the town that drives up the median family income. If you

know what you’re looking for, you can see the back of thehome where Katharine Hepburn once lived. It recently sold for a cool $15.5 million. That’s a bit obscene, but Hepburn’s name is all over Old Saybrook, including the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center and Theatre. It has a museum to the divine Miss Kate but, alas, it too is off-limits until the COVID crisis passes. 

 

Old Lyme (7,603) is artier than Old Saybrook, as it was once the home to the Lyme Art Colony, which I will discuss in an upcoming piece. As is often the case of famed New England art colonies­–including Cos Cob, Dublin, Mantunuck, Monhegan, Ogunquit, Rockland, Rocky Neck, and Seguinland–artists continue to congregate in Old Lyme long after the colony evaporated. Works from up and coming artists (and some of modest talent and dreams of grandeur) can be viewed at the local Old Lyme Art Association and you can park there to see a nearby sculpture garden. Overall, Old Lyme is leafier and more quaint than Old Saybrook. Tune in soon to see my review (and pictures) from the Florence Griswold Museum, the region’s biggest non-beach attraction.

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Random Autumn Thoughts 2020

 

Every now and again I like to clear out my bookshelves, my reviewing backlog, and my brain. This column is one of the latter. Call it, if you will, a list of musings and low-level rants.

 

☛ Literature seems to be the first place we notice that women are outstripping men in the brains department. The academic achievement level of girls has surpassed that of boys, too many of whom are shuttled into the brawn side of things. Visit a bookstore and you’ll see what I mean. The vast majority of new fiction titles come from female authors.

 

☛ In a related vein, although I applaud women’s intellectual accomplishments, there are too many books from young female writers written about the same subjects. Two in particular are those dealing with motherhood and/or trying to settle into a career. The first is, for obvious reasons, not a subject to which I can relate; the second is way too often expressed from a whiny privileged Millennial POV. It’s not like Millennials invented 20s-something career anxiety. I miss having more male fiction writers on my to-read shelf. It would be nice to read some male scribblers who aren’t sportswriters or political pundits.

 

☛ The guy who mows and plows for me has kids of various ages that he and his wife having been trying to help with their online schooling. He told me recently that they had no idea how hard it would be and would never again badmouth teachers. I hope others remember this the next time they’re tempted to vote down a school budget or use ludicrous statements such as, “Teachers only work six hours a day and they get their summers off.”

 

☛ Thanks to all the folks who’ve been making home concerts available during the lockdown. One thing, though; for heaven’s sake, take Jim Henry’s advice and don’t start playing until you get the sound right. You won’t keep listeners if the vocals are as muddy a frog’s living room and the mix as lumpy as cookie dough.

 

☛ I know people are getting antsy and feeling housebound. Here’s some easy advice: It’s October! If you can’t appreciate the beauty of fall foliage, you deserve to be cooped up. Go for a walk. Take a drive. Hike. Getting “out” means more than driving to the mall.

 

☛ Is anyone beside me sick and tired of fools who think it’s their “right” not to wear masks? Who the #%!&$#! do you think you are to risk my health? Your “right” does not extend to endangering others.

 

☛ I’m also exasperated with government officials and college administrators whose idea of protecting public health is to “educate” the public, perhaps even hire someone to “remind” people they need to wear masks. Educate? Jaysus, Mary and the goat! There are just three things to know: (a) wear a mask, (b) maintain at least six feet of distance from others, and (c) wash your damn hands. Anyone too dumb to do these things shouldn’t be allowed outside without a keeper. I suggest they sit inside with weak-kneed politicians.

 

 ☛ I typed the comment above before Donald Trump came down with COVID. I do not wish this virus on anyone, but there is an old adage that if you play with fire, you will get burned. Trump has consistently ridiculed the ideas of masks and social distancing by holding meetings and rallies in which he practiced none of the above precautions and made no demands of those around him. Another adage: Science is true whether you believe it or not. Enough said. 

☛ Since when did a “church” become a building? Shame on ministers who fan faux discrimination flames, defy public meeting guidelines, and spread both hatred and the virus. Being a good Christian should mean respect for humankind. Insisting on opening the building doors just means you’re a jerk and a technophobe. Take a spoonful of WWJD and get a teenage parishioner to show you how to do online services.

 

☛ Nine members of Tennessee’s NFL team tested positive for COVID. Gee, who could have seen that coming? I’d call the NFL season the dumbest idea in sports, were it not for the fact that UMass still has a football team.

 

 ☛ One of the few joys of aging is that you can stop trying to accumulate cultural capital and admit you don’t like things that supposedly make you a more “sophisticated” person. Here are a few things I just don’t like:

 

·      Opera: I appreciate its complexity, but if you give me a choice between operatic soprano and a herd of screeching cats raking their nails over a chalkboard, I’ll go with the felines.

 

·      Hip hop and rap: If music doesn’t have a melody, it’s not my thing. Once upon a time, rap and hip hop were the voice of the urban black experience. That time was the 1980s. Today it’s just processed pop that legitimizes antisocial behavior. If I want more bad verse, I’ll add to the rotten poetry I’ve written myself.

 

·      Shakespeare: This one drives some of my good friends crazy, but I don’t speak Elizabethan, okay. I don’t get why so many intellectuals who scoff at Biblical literalism treat every word from the Bard of Stratford as if it was pulled from the Gospel of St. Billy Shakes. Plus, do you have any idea how hard Shakespeare is for someone with hearing loss?

 

·      Comedy for idiots: One blessing of Covid-19 is that fewer “mainstream” comedies are being made. Can we legislate this as a permanent condition? Other than films with camouflaged Hollywood stars pretending to be warriors, nothing makes me slump in my seat with my fingers in my ears as often as a trailer for a “comedy” written for people with IQs of 60.

 

Rob Weir

 

    

Gamblers, Fruit Bats. Son Little, Fiona Silver, Greensky Bluegrass

 

Too often, tags like “indie” or “alternative” are masks for artists trying to obscure what they really are. “Adult alternative,” for example, almost always means “folk,” and “indie” too often means midtempo rock that would like to be pop. Gamblers, a Brooklyn-based band, uses the handle “alternative” and for once it’s an apt term. The group is headed by singer Michael McManus, who has been a hip-hop producer, though you’ll not hear any of that on the band’s debut LP Small World (Symphonic). You will, however, hear enough genre-crossing for “alternative” to make sense. The title track is jangly rock with a hint of funk. It’s a love-is-hard song, but it’s more atmosphere than poetry; Gamblers like to close musical spaces and dip listeners into a sonic bath. “Small World” is like the early Beatles crossed with The Beachboys, and “Pet Sematary” an excellent punk cover of a Ramones song. “Give Yourself Into Love” splashes dribbles of electronica into the mix, and “Corinthian Order” is hypnotic, with McManus singing in tones vaguely reminiscent of Neil Young. “The Selfish Bell” is harder-edged with a speedball grunge vibe. Apparently three members form the core of Gamblers, but videos show five on stage. Others display everyone dressed in jumpsuits Devo-style. Jam band, rock, punk, grunge, surf, and more makes Gamblers a throw-out-the-labels act. It’s one you should catch when you can.

 

Paste Magazine has studios in New York and Atlanta that are go-to sources for hearing short concerts of artists known, moderately famous, and unknown. Since 2011, it has been owned by Wolfgang’s Music, whose renowned Vault is a trove of classic performances from the past 70 years of rock, jazz, bluegrass, folk, blues, country and more. Here is music from several recent postings: 

 

If you’ve never heard of the Fruit Bats, the name might sound like a band from the 1990s. You’d be half right. It is the brainchild of singer and former guitarist for The Shins, Eric D. Johnson. The Fruit Bands were formed in 1997, made some records, and broke up in 2103. Luckily, their brand of soft rock lent itself well to impromptu lineups and/or a solo act. Johnson has a new recording, Gold Past Life (Merge Records). “Ocean” is nostalgia-tinged love song with a vaguely country feel. Johnson’s nasal voice wends its way to the brink of falsetto before easing back to a strong but controlled tone. My favorite song is “Mandy from Mohawk (Wherever You Are),” an imagining of someone from his past and the lives she may have led. This one is acoustic folk with muscular acoustic backing and doublings that accent the tempo. Also try “Cazadera,” a soulful take on a man who often feels lost and the woman who helps make sense of things.

 

Speaking of soulful, Son Little at Paste is the stage name of Philadelphia’s Aaron Livingstone, an R & B guitarist, singer/songwriter, and son of a preacher. The last factoid made me wonder if gospel legend Mahalia Jackson influenced the content of his song “Mahalia.” Little employs a big Sam Cooke-like voice and plays guitar like he’ll lay some hurt on it if it doesn’t behave. Jackson divorced twice, but lyrics like Yeah this life’s full of promises/We’d keep but we always break may be coincidental. Things seldom go well in the blues, and one certainly gets the sense that the relationship about which Little sings in “About Her Again” won’t fare much better than Mahalia. “Suffer” would be smooth soul for someone with more of a Nat King Cole voice, but Little’s robust vocals infuse this one with urgency: But we don't have to suffer, you and I/We don't have to wait in the trenches every night. All three songs come from his newest recording, Aloha (Anti-Records).

 

Fiona Silver at Paste is a mighty mite weaned on Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Joan Jett, Radio Head, and Amy Winehouse. You can still hear a touch of girliness in her voice, but her new Hostage of Love EP is both here-and-now and a harbinger of things to come. “Hot Tears” is a mix of pop, blue-eyed soul, and rock. Her band is robust, but she doesn’t allow it to overwhelm her. On “Dark Bluey,” she simply takes charge. She is hungry to impress and over-sings this one, but you can tell there’s not a shy bone in her body. She busts out the horn section for the title track, which drenches the song with a bit of Sin City ambience enhanced by assuming a bit of a Jim Morrison-like dread and danger pose. “Violence” has a jumpier tempo and the scratch in her voice makes the song more impactful. Her band knows when to get out of the way. It also knows how to fill in behind guitarist Guy Fiumarelli when he electrifies a song and amps Silver to another level.  

 

Despite its name, the Michigan-based quintet Greensky Bluegrass is a blend of what Parade Magazine compared to “bluegrass meets the Grateful Dead.” That’s not a bad analogy; they have definite jam band chops and in a song like “What You Need,” Paul Hoffman’s vocal is the most bluegrassy thing about it, despite instrumentation from standup bass, dobro, banjo, acoustic guitar, and mandolin. “Like Reflections” even sounds like a Grateful Dead title and it too has a meandering mix. Only “Money For Nothing” has a breakdown feel. For my dosh, Greensky lacks passion, but they’ve been around for nearly 20 years and have a devoted fan base. If you’re in it, check out their recent CD All For Money.  

Secret Honor: Altman's Brilliant Take on a Paranoid Presidency

Secret Honor (1984)

Directed and produced by Robert Altman

Cinecom/Criterion Collection, 90 minutes, NR (strong language)

★★★★

 

With the election bearing down upon us, a new revelation has surfaced that when Donald Trump was a young man, he corresponded with his political hero: Richard Nixon. Quite coincidentally, a few days earlier Secret Honor surfaced in my Netflix queue.

 

Secret Honor was a one-man show before Robert Altman filmed it in 1984. Altman and playwrights Donald Freed and Arnold Stone were careful to call the show a political myth, but anyone familiar with the White House tapes from the Watergate scandal will recognize there is considerable truth amidst the imagined. Although actor Philip Baker Hall didn’t always resemble Nixon, he had his mannerisms down so well that after a while we forget we are watching a play and begin to feel like voyeurs to a total mental collapse.

 

In 1964, historian Richard Hofstader published The Paranoid Style in American Politics. His target wasn’t Nixon, rather Hofstader sought to explain why Republican voters chose Barry Goldwater over the statesman-like Nelson Rockefeller. Goldwater was trounced in the general election, but Hofstader worried about an emergent type of political personality driven by rightwing conspiracy theorists and fearmongers, and was at heart anti-intellectual and demagogic.

 

Secret Honor is set in Nixon’s New Jersey study sometime after 1976, as he mentions Gerald Ford’s loss to Jimmy Carter in that year. Even before Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, there was discussion as to whether he was clinically paranoid. Altman takes this as a given. We see the disgraced ex-president hunched over a tape recorder, pacing around the room, obsessively checking video monitors, sweating, swearing, and drunkenly ranting. A loaded revolver appears from a drawer and lies on the desk. Nixon eyes it repeatedly but, as we know, he did not use it.

 

Those drawing upon the paranoid style of politics run the risk of becoming their own creation, which is what happened to Nixon. He infamously compiled an enemies list that began with 20 names and swelled to 576. It’s one thing for a conservative to believe that labor leaders, political opponents, and liberal journalists are enemies, but when a list includes Barbara Streisand, Joe Namath, Hugh Hefner, trumpeter Herb Albert, Paul Newman, and a host of retired military officers, it invites speculation that the president has lost his marbles.

 

Secret Honor will make you believe that Nixon was indeed mentally ill. He is ostensibly making a tape for an imaginary court hearing in which he justifies everything he has ever done. Instead, he rages against President Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, the Kennedys, Jews, African Americans, Latinos, and especially the Committee of 100, an elite that emerged from yearly Bohemian Grove encampments in California. Nixon believed the Committee of 100 created him against his will and conspired to shape America for its own benefit. Bohemian Grove is a real thing where the power elite does indeed hobnob, though in theory it’s a retreat from power and politics. Make up your own mind whether Nixon was paranoid about that one, but its very clear (in the film at least) that Nixon was unhinged. He couldn’t even make his tape, as he interrupted himself with profane tirades, talked with his long-deceased mother, poured more whiskey, and launched rambling attacks that blamed everyone he could think of for his failings. He even claimed that he engineered his own resignation to save the nation from the conspirators. (This is the “secret honor” of the film’s title.)

 

Hall’s performance was astounding. The energy he put forth was such that one can scarcely imagine how he could have summoned it on a nightly basis for the stage. Altman makes the performance more palpable by mixing mid-range shots with closeups that make us see Nixon’s raw anger, stumbling speech, wildness, slumped body language, and furrowed brow. We both hate and pity the figure we see on the screen.

 

I wish to reiterate that Altman never claimed what we view was 100 percent historical; it is an imagining of a monologue that we have no record actually took place. Nonetheless, to circle back to Hofstader, Secret Honor is a portrait of the paranoid style of politics. What else can we call a person who can’t get along with anyone, dislikes his own military leaders, is an Anti-Semite, a racist, takes no responsibility for his actions, and blames failure on others? Right now, we call him the 45^th president of the United States. It’s interesting that George Soros was on Nixon’s list. How sad that today’s purveyors of paranoia continue to beat a tired horse. (Soros is 90!)

 

Robert Altman blew red hot and icy cold as director. Secret Honor is one of his well-made films. How utterly sad that Secret Honor remains relevant. Nixon begat Trump. One can only hope there is no third act.

 

Rob Weir

Pete Kronowitt: September 2020 Artist of the Month

Pete Kronowitt

Do Something Now

Mean Bean Records

 

 

[Please note: This album has just been released, so check YouTube to see if new songs have been added.]
 

 

If you’ve been wondering where all the great protest singers are now that Pete Seeger and Utah Phillips have joined Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs in the Great Beyond, the answer is that they’re out there; you’re just no looking in the right places. Take New Jersey-born, Florida-raised, and San Francisco based Pete Kronowitt, for example. His 5^th album Do Something Now tells you where he’s coming from. It is a dozen tracks that pull few punches.

 

I used to chat with Utah Phillips (1935-2008) on a regular basis, and he’d occasionally rail against “pretty” protest songs. He was fond of saying, “There’s a world of difference between ‘How many seas must a white dove sail’ and ‘Dump the bosses off your back.’” That was his way of saying that the best call-to-action songs are short on poetry and long on getting to the heart of things. Kronowitt is in that wheelhouse. The title track appears twice–as a stripped-down acoustic version and as one with a band–and I recommend the sparer of the two. It’s a relatable singalong tune that doesn’t beg, rather tells us in no uncertain language, “Don’t just bitch and moan/Time to get on the phone.” If that’s too subtle, the last line is, “Time to get your ass in gear.”

 

This might suggest that Kronowitt is an angry man. He is to some extent. “Are We Great Yet” is a folk-rock takedown of the current Commander in Thief, and Kronowitt isn’t afraid to ask, “Lock a kid up in a cage, is this what we’ve become?” Nor does he put on kid gloves when he inhabits Trump’s dark soul and sings, “Build a wall/When they yell/Kill them all.” For the most part, though, Kronowitt wants us first to think and then to act, rather than hitting the streets in a lather without a plan. There are two environmentally themed songs, “Ladybugs,” with its wistful Western feel; and “Roly Poly,” another folk-rocker that asks us to imagine  a world without animals small and large: from bees and caterpillars to polar bears.

 

When he does implore, it’s usually to center us toward things that should matter more than they often do. “Stay Safe,” for example is Kronowitt’s take on COVID. Like a good folk song, it opts for simple lyrics to remind us we can find solace and renewal in loved ones. A sample lyric for dealing with a heartless world runs, “When the world is a little bit colder/You can be a blanket for me.” Music can also be a balm, a theme he explores in “Big Ole Stick of Wood.” As the title infers, this one is offered up country style, complete with some standup bass from John David Coppola and pedal steel from Tim Marcus. Just to mix things a bit more, there’s a Tejano feel to “You Never Ever Never Know.”

 

Kronowitt and Coppolla often perform together, with percussionist Darian Gray riding shotgun. Justin Kohlberg adds electric guitar and additional acoustic work on the album. Most listeners, though, will be instantly drawn to the gorgeous harmony vocals of Veronica Maund. I emphasize once again, though, that social change music is most effective when the message, not production, is at the fore. Were I in a mood to be critical, I’d note that Kronowitt’s voice is occasionally obscured when there’s too much instrumentation. I’m inclined, though, to give him a free ride. He is a founder of the Face the Music Collective, a coalition of likeminded activist artists that includes folks who have been reviewed on this blog: Olivia Frances, the incomparable Eliza Gilkyson, and The Nields, the pride of Northampton, Massachusetts. Plus, Pete Kronowitt gives us just what we need as November 4 approaches: a swift kick in the pants.

 

Rob Weir