Utah Phillips, RIP

Utah Phillips has died.

I have trouble knowing what to say about Phillips. He represented both musical and labor traditions that I am ambivalent about. He had a rich baritone and a real love of the music. He kept a lot of old I.W.W. songs alive that otherwise might have died. He wasn't a prolific songwriter but he wrote some really great songs ("Rock Salt and Nails" for instance). But his style of folk singing, particularly the participatory nature of it, is not something I've ever been super comfortable with. This is my own shyness I guess but I like some distance between the artist and myself. Pete Seeger is much the same way.

In the late 1990s, Phillips became more popular than ever before because of the two Ani DiFranco albums that included his work. She set his work to a more hip beat and style, using modern technology to make the work relevant. In principle I like the idea, but this was at the time where everybody on the left was listening to DiFranco like she was the Second Coming and it drove me up the wall. Her music is solid enough I suppose, as were the Phillips albums, but not good enough to make up for the annoying fans.

Phillips' reputation was that of the old-time train hopper and I.W.W. member. He certainly represented that well, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. He was romanticizing a very bad lifestyle through his own actions. He may have known that. I'm not sure. But people who actually had to ride freights to survive lived horrendous lives that should be wept over, not replicated unless absolutely necessary. The cold, heat, train cops, rape, murder, robbery, and danger of getting run over sucked for virtually everyone involved.

From a historical point, identifying with the I.W.W. is interesting to me. Keeping that tradition alive has value. But they have been irrelevant for 80 years and I'm not sure why they shouldn't remain that way. They are still stuck in 1912 and in many ways so was Phillips. They represent an non-bureaucratic, hyper masculinized, individualized form of labor that has been lost through the AFL-CIO. On the other hand, those latter unions actually accomplished things. The I.W.W. accomplished very little. They won a couple of strikes but there way of running things made it almost impossible to build a long-lasting union. Romanticizing these people is OK because it's basically harmless, but it also made Phillips more politically irrelevant than he could have been.

Anyway, I saw Phillips about 3 years ago. His heart was bad but did a really nice show and I'm glad I saw him.