“You can be safe or you can be free."

Most singer-songwriters and artists will say, ‘I don’t like to mix music and politics' in some form or another when pressed on their political views. This is usually not an ideological function, but a business decision.  I've known many artists who make the calculation that espousing a liberal, progressive or conservative viewpoint from within your music is not worth the risk of alienating a large swath of potential listeners.  Far be it from me to begrudge other musicians, writers or artists their particular methodology, but from my point of view, this is cowardice.  

It is BECAUSE we have a voice and a reach that many people don't have that we have the opportunity to express ourselves on matters of injustice and the politics that engender and foster it.  I can't conscience choosing to maximize my level of profit over the chance to bring people to a broader viewpoint through music and lyrics.  I also view it as a kind of cowardice to stifle the voice many artists innately have in order not to offend a contingent of political views.  I write songs that are clearly and overtly political - I've been accused of being everything from a ‘smart ass’ to a ‘traitor’ and characterized by the MAGA-friendly listening audience as a ‘pussy’.  I hold no illusions whatsoever that certain people will be swayed or even interested in the message of songs like ‘Lord of the Pigs’. Most artists and bands succeed by attracting a certain audience and growing it over time.  MAGA is NOT my audience - I don't make music for them…or really for anyone in particular.  I simply write and sing the message that is most central to my own soul and express it honestly without fear or favor.  

If you prefer songs about being in a club or how much the singer really, really, really wants to fuck a hot chick he saw in a bar, I am not for you.  If you prefer tired cliches about how much being young and stupid is just really, really so unfair, I am not for you.  Music should at least spur the impulse to thought and feeling…if not directly evoke feelings of its own.  If you like music that, in its words and structure, at least prompt the possibility of thought beyond the mundane and banal…if you feel a certain way about politics, injustice, our future destiny as humans and like music that taps into those feelings and gives them shape, sound and volume, then you might like what I do…or not.  It's all good.

What I CAN say is that it will always be honest, it will always remain true to my beliefs and experiences and it will always be distinct from the ocean of homogenized noise and un-inspired drivel that so much of modern music is. I can't do any more or any less…