The unProfessional

Shawn

Pickathon 2018

www.americanstandardtime.com

Friends! The campaign for my book is LIVE and happening NOW. Can you spare a dime or two and support my project via this link on IndieGoGo? http://igg.me/at/26SongsIn30Days Check the perks!

This is a clip from “The Columbia”, a documentary film in which Woody Guthrie was commissioned to write folk songs promoting the ambitious Public Works projects on the Columbia River in the late 1930’s. His 26 Songs in 30 Days would promote the concept of Public Power and the delivery of electricity to rural areas of Oregon and Washington for the first time. His classic “Pastures Of Plenty” was written during this song cycle in 1941, a ballad forever linked to his legend and a song that brought to light the issue of migrant workers (Okies), and lent hope to Dust Bowl families looking for a brighter future in the Pacific Northwest. Woody supported the idea of a New Deal in which the government could do something to reform America and create programs (and dams) that would help common people in the form of lower electrical rates, land reclamation for independent family farmers, and ultimately change our reliance on private power companies who controlled our natural resources (rivers). This resonated with Woody Guthrie who not only eventually wrote “This Land Is Our Land” (he was working on it while driving around The Columbia Basin), but how our “Pastures Of Plenty” must always be free and that opportunity should be afforded to all people. His Columbia River Songs were hopeful ballads of a better place after 10 years of economic depression and hardship. It’s still heavy after all these years.

*SIDENOTE- this version you are hearing is the lost minor-key version of the song which only appears on the movie soundtrack which eventually was released in 1949. Guthrie later recorded the song for Moe Asch of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings but changed it to a major-key, which sounds very different. A very scratchy copy exists in poor fidelity, but is nearly unlistenable. It’s a long story…. read the book! 

Woody Guthrie was commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration to write songs about the Columbia River projects in 1941. Songs like the “Grand Coulee Dam”, “Pastures Of Plenty”, and “Roll On, Columbia” were three of his 26 songs promoting the benefits of hydro-electric power, jobs for the unemployed, and a massive irrigation project. 

The plan to divert Columbia river water into an elaborate system of canals and siphons would eventually turn a desert into an agricultural breadbasket in the Columbia Basin. This photo illuminates the sheer size and dimension of the ambitious Public Works project that was intended to be a solution to the migrant crisis and Dust Bowl families looking for a clean start in the Pacific Northwest

Friends! The campaign for my book is LIVE and happening NOW. Can you spare a dime or two and support my project via this link on IndieGoGo? http://igg.me/at/26SongsIn30Days Check the perks!

This is a clip from “The Columbia”, a documentary film in which Woody Guthrie was commissioned to write folk songs promoting the ambitious Public Works projects on the Columbia River in the late 1930’s. His 26 Songs in 30 Days would promote the concept of Public Power and the delivery of electricity to rural areas of Oregon and Washington for the first time. His classic “Pastures Of Plenty” was written during this song cycle in 1941, a ballad forever linked to his legend and a song that brought to light the issue of migrant workers (Okies), and lent hope to Dust Bowl families looking for a brighter future in the Pacific Northwest. Woody supported the idea of a New Deal in which the government could do something to reform America and create programs (and dams) that would help common people in the form of lower electrical rates, land reclamation for independent family farmers, and ultimately change our reliance on private power companies who controlled our natural resources (rivers). This resonated with Woody Guthrie who not only eventually wrote “This Land Is Our Land” (he was working on it while driving around The Columbia Basin), but how our “Pastures Of Plenty” must always be free and that opportunity should be afforded to all people. His Columbia River Songs were hopeful ballads of a better place after 10 years of economic depression and hardship. It’s still heavy after all these years.

*SIDENOTE- this version you are hearing is the lost minor-key version of the song which only appears on the movie soundtrack which eventually was released in 1949. Guthrie later recorded the song for Moe Asch of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings but changed it to a major-key, which sounds very different. A very scratchy copy exists in poor fidelity, but is nearly unlistenable. It’s a long story…. read the book! 

I hate a song that makes you think you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody.No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim. Too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I’m out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. 

“All You Fascists Bound to Loose”, 18"x24" Recent illustration, Woody Guthrie portrait for this month’s Texas Observer 

see more: www.bartlettstudio.com

Guthrie once said, “When a song or a ballad mentions the name of a river, a town, a spot, a fight, or the sound of somebody’s name that you know and are familiar with, there is a sort of quiet kind of pride come up through your blood.”