Utah Phillips with Ani DiFranco
Fellow Workers (Righteous Babe)
by Jamie Kiffel
Says folk singer Utah Phillips of those kick-ass-tivists who came before him, “They lived those unbelievable lives that can never be lived again.” Yet, he goes on, he learned more from these rule-busters than he learned from any history book. It’s ironic, then, that Fellow Workers takes Phillips’ living, burning pleas for equality and justice, and backs them with Ani DiFranco‘s plodding, plain electronic noodling. It is as if DiFranco doesn’t believe Phillips’ own unbelievable life is still going on, so she frames him with simple, detached tones, like musical mummification. Even the CD cover art is a guilded metal frame with a black-and-white photo of DiFranco and Phillips inside, each barely smiling. But Phillips’ songs are living anthems, made to rouse and anger and excite. Folk singer/activist Pete Seeger, now in his eighties, skips around stage while singing and playing his banjo – and last time I saw him perform, his whole audience was clapping and shouting with him, including some kids in Misfits T-shirts. Phillips’ lyrical get-up-and-go is just as intense, from questioning religions that promise rewards after death, to lamenting union workers beaten down by the corporation, to demanding that we all question who we are and why we do what we do. These ideas can rouse crowds. But Phillips can’t do it if he’s being set off with atonal, shuffly electronica. Anyone placed behind a muffling wreath of wah-wahs and allowed to sing into a vacuum is going to sound lame and thin – as is the case on Fellow Workers. This music needs to spark its flint against a rock of sharp-edged sound – not a softly smiling wash of noise. DiFranco needs to get out of her lonely corner and play the sizzling, angry folk rock she understands. Then Phillips can blast open some minds with the feelings DiFranco’s been jamming on all along – but in his own words – and maybe we’ll all come closer to realizing that, from punk axe to folk banjo, we’re all strumming mad about the same damned injustices.
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