While we were staying in Rock Island on Monday, a small but vociferous bunch of citizens marched past our hotel, protesting at the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis. As we were headed to that way, I put out a few feelers to check out the possibility of playing a gig there in solidarity with the protests. We left Rock island early on Tuesday, headed for Galesburg, Illinois, to interview some railroad workers who were fighting to retain two man teams on the freight trains that play a huge role in distributing goods in the USA. While there, we took a detour to grab a sandwich and happened to pass a group of striking school teachers, so we stopped and, in the shade of a tree, I did what Woody would have done and played for them. While we were stopped there, I got a contact in St Louis for an activist who also ran a small gig so I put in a call. Ten minutes later, I saw him tweet to say that I would be playing a gig that night at the Royale in support of the Ferguson protesters. From Galesburg we headed South to the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, Iowa, where Joe Purdy and I sang some songs with the inmates and told them of our journey - how the song Rock island Line was originally collected in 1934 from prisoners who sang it as a work song near Pine Ridge in Arkansas. The prison is one of the oldest buildings in Iowa, built in the 1830s and had the feel of an old Victorian prison like Wormwood Scrubs. The drive from Iowa to St Louis took us down Highway 61 and, with my compadre Joe Purdy driving, I called up the Dylan album of similar name and we sung along to make the miles pass by. Outside of the city, in traffic, I called for my guitar from the back of the van and Joe and I ran through a couple of songs we hoped to perform that night. We got to the Royale 20 minutes before we were due onstage. The garden out the back was packed, volunteer sound people were busy setting us up onstage and, well you can read the report of the gig below and see some clips too. It was an incredible day and if I hadnt been so shattered when I got into my hotel room, Id have written all this up last night.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 04:51:44 +0000
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