John Sinclair

A Column by John Sinclair

(Amsterdam, January 13, 2004) I waited a long time to hit the road as a poet. Although this writer has followed faithfully the bardic path for more than 40 years, there were so many other things to do along the way, and I did them.

As a cultural activist I directed the Detroit Artists Workshop, the Allied Artists Association, Jazz Research Institute and Detroit Jazz Center. I managed the MC-5, Mitch Ryder & Detroit and other bands. I produced dance concerts at the Grande Ballroom, free concerts in the parks, the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals, and countless left-wing benefits, community cultural events, jazz concerts and poetry readings.

I've booked bands, bought talent and done publicity for nightclubs, bars and concert halls, developed programs, written grants and raised funds for jazz artists and community arts organizations, and produced records by artists from the MC-5, Little Sonny and Deacon John to Sun Ra, Victoria Spivey and Roosevelt Sykes. I've been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, a professor of Blues History at Wayne State University, director of the City Arts Gallery for the City of Detroit, a community radio programmer and producer of WWOZ's live broadcast from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

As a professional journalist I've written columns, features and reviews about jazz and blues, rock & roll and poetry for publications of all sorts, from obscure local papers to downbeat and Playboy magazine. I've published poetry books and journals, edited underground newspapers, arts quarterlies and blues magazines, and written liner notes for albums by artists from Louis Armstrong, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes to Johnny Adams, the Wild Magnolias and the Re-Birth Brass Band.

As a political activist I fought the marijuana laws through Detroit LEMAR, the Amorphia organization and a five-year struggle in the courts of Michigan that cost me 2-1/2 years in prison before I won my case and got the old laws thrown out. I was the chairman of the White Panther Party and its successor, the Rainbow Peoples Party, battling Richard M. Nixon and his goons from the beginning of his administration to the bitter end. It was my court case challenging Nixon's national security  wiretap program that produced the historic Supreme Court decision in U.S. vs. U.S. District Court that warrantless wiretaps would no longer be allowed.

There's much too much more to mention, but let it suffice to say that I've enjoyed a full and productive life in the arts and community affairs for more than four decades & and helped raise four terrific daughters in the process. But I started my adult life as a poet, setting my verses to music and performing them with jazz musicians and blues guitarists, and it was always my intention one day to take my own show on the road and pursue my performing arts career in earnest.

In truth what performing I did was done mostly for fun until 30 years had passed, and I was well beyond my 50th year when my first album, Full Moon Night, was released in the middle of the 1990s. I had finally realized my lifelong dream of hearing my verses and musical arrangements realized to perfection by a wildly sympathetic team of serious players, cleanly recorded in the heat and clarity of public performance, and my years of work in the music business told me it was time now to follow the bardic call and hit the road for real.

Since 1995 I've criss-crossed the United States and western Europe, working through a vast time-tested network of old friends and new comrades to assemble bands of Blues Scholars and book myself into funky nightclubs, blues bars, art galleries, coffeehouses, churches, cultural centers, college auditoriums and music and poetry festivals from coast to coast to coast.

Living in New Orleans in the 1990s I got to collaborate with a lot of great musicians, playing duets with Earl Turbinton, Johnny Vidacovich, Willie Metcalf and Walter Wolfman  Washington; guesting with the groups of Michael Ray, the Radiators, Rockin' Jake, Stavin' Chain, New Orleans Juice, Brotherhood of Groove and the Jazz Vipers; and doing special projects with Mark Bingham, James Andrews, Tuba Fats, the Forgotten Souls Brass Band and a host of others. I formed my own band of Blues Scholars anchored by guitarist Bill Lynn and drummer Mike Voelker, and we played all over town, from Margaritaville and the Mermaid Lounge to JazzFest and the House of Blues.

When I started travelling, however, it was a rare occasion when I could take my band from New Orleans on the road with me. There's not much money in the poetry racket under the best of circumstances, so I generally travel by myself, hooking up with musician friends and friends of friends wherever I go. The cast of characters is always changing and the music behind me changes with them, so my texts stay fresh for me because they sound different every night. Plus I get to play with a thrilling array of great musical friends and make new connections with outstanding players in their prime locations, and that adds a level of excitement that's hard to beat.

In America, my three strongholds outside of New Orleans are Detroit, Boston and Oxford, Mississippi. In Detroit I get to work with my two most favorite guitarists, Jeff Baby  Grand and James McCarty; and original Motor City Blues Scholars Martin Gross, Johnny Evans and R.J. Spangler. Outstate I hook up with Brian Bowe & the Saugatuck Blues Scholars on the west coast of Michigan and a great band called Glowb in my home town of Flint. I work all over New England every Fall with Ted Drozdowski & the Boston Blues Scholars, and in Oxford I'm part of an ensemble called Afrosippi that features Senegalese guitarist, singer and griot Guelel Kuumba, blues guitarists Eric Deaton and Jeff Henson, and a rhythm section rooted in the music of the North Mississippi hill country.

In Los Angeles I get to play with fellow former Detroiters Wayne Kramer, Charles Moore, Phil Ranelin & Buzzy Jones; in San Francisco it's Black Mike Henderson, Steve Mackay & the cats; in Seattle with Henry Cooper & Chris Morda, the son of my old friend and partner, Domenick Morda. In New York City it's Dee Pop, Ras Moshe and the great Daniel Carter; in Philadelphia with Elliott Levin, Calvin Weston & the Big Tree band, Tyrone Hill & Noel Scott from the Sun Ra Arkestra; in D.C. with Tom Dodd & the cats at the Signal 66 Gallery; in Chicago with Nick Tremulus, Warren Leming and the late Jimmie Lee Robinson; in St. Louis with Tom Papa  Ray and the legendary Bennie Smith; and in Kansas City with the guys from the Little Hatch band. My homeboy Doug Kaufman of Nobody in Particular Presents puts a band together for me in Denver, and I've done dates on the East Coast with old friends like David Amram, Archie Shepp, Bob Moses, Charles Eubanks and T.J. Wheeler & the Smokers.

So the particular kaleidoscope of music encountered from night to night is always the high point of every tour, and the changing sound of my poems helps keep things interesting for everyone concerned. Of course, when one proposes An Evening of Music & Verse,  very few people really have any idea of what they're going to hear when they get there anyway, but by the end of the night our audiences always seem to be glad they came (or, as the saying goes, whatever their response was).

On top of the music, the audiences and the performances themselves, the other great thing about travelling the bardic path is the incredible community of people who light up the way and see to the poet's modest needs while I'm in their town. Starting on the East Coast, my personal angels include George Kucewicz & Cathy Salmons in Boston, Bruce Pingree in Portsmouth, Paul Lichter & David Snow in Portland, Pete Gerson in Burlington, Mark Fisher & Mary-Claire Wellingon in Marblehead, my sister Kathy in New Haven, Joe Rosen & Giorgio Gomelsky in New York City, Danny Collins, Tommy Hard and the cats at the Wig Warmer in Philadelphia, and Steve Lewis and Tom Dodd at the Signal 66 Gallery in DC.

In the Midwest I'm blessed with the concern and care of Mark Steuve in Cleveland, Steve Gebhardt & Ed Moss & Ron Esposito in Cincinnati, the great Maribel Restrepo, Matty Lee and my daughter Sunny in Detroit, Jeff Strouss & Al Campbell in Ann Arbor, Michael & Paige James and the incomparable Fritz Keilsmier in Chicago, Michael Castro in St. Louis and Roger Naber in K.C. Heading West it's Cary & Nancy Wolfson in Boulder, Doug Kaufman in Denver, Harry Duncans, Chinner Mitchell & Jim Epstein in San Francisco, Mike Henderson in Oakland, Emil Bacilla in Sebastopol, Judge Eric Labowicz & Paul deMark in northern California, Chris Morda and Johnny Boudreau  Frenchette and Craig Norberg in Seattle.

In Los Angeles I'm in the loving care of Michael Simmons, Wayne & Margaret Kramer, Patrick Boissel & Suzy Shaw, and the one & only Earl Palmer. Chad Henson & Allison Borders make me welcome and keep me fed in Oxford, and then there are all my peoples in New Orleans: my daughters Celia & Chonita, Wallace Lester & Shannon McNally, Jerry Brock, Sylvester Francis, Dennis Formento, Barry Smith at the Louisiana Music Factory, Barry Kaiser & Mary Moses, Tom Morgan & Hild Creed and others way too numerous to mention.

These are the people who pick me up at the train station and take me to the airport, bring me into their homes, put me up in their spare bedroom or let me sleep on their couch, feed me and get me high. They help me set up my gigs, drive me there, introduce me to all the cool people they know, take me out to dinner afterwards and help see to my recreational needs. They're the amazingly sweetest of friends, but they're also fellow artists and journalists and educators and broadcasters and producers, and their lives pulsate within the nexus of creative activity and social consciousness which obtains in the places they live. They're always doing things themselves, making things happen, and they know what's going on around them as well. I bring them news from our mutual friends and other scenes around the country and take their stories and concerns along with me to the next stop on the trail.

And all this activity takes place well beneath the radar of popular culture and the entertainment industry, in locations only people like ourselves know about, involving music the likes of which is only rarely heard on the radio today, never played or seen on TV or even given notice by the daily press. It's produced in profusion and joyously shared by people who live and work in obscure neighborhoods and deconstructed urban communities which are largely shunned by mainstream America and the mass media important outposts of the vast teeming world that throbs with heat and turmoil underneath the acknowledged surface of American society and remains unseen and unrecognized by the world of the squares.

We used to call it the underground, because we were so far down out of sight that they couldn't even see us, and as mainstream culture narrows and tightens the boundaries of what kind of life is acceptable in this country, the underground world continues to grow in size and scope and to encompass an ever greater diversity of denizens. There's the underworld of the endless African American ghetto that extends from city to city across and down the country, everywhere you go it's there, and they keep it out of sight too. There's the underworld of deviant sexual behavior, the underworld of social and political protest against the multinational corporations and their governments, and.the underworld of drug users and the people who supply them with what they need to get high despite all the obstacles in their way.

There's the underworld of outlaw music punk rockers and garage bands, blues quintets and jazz wailers and wild improvisors, jam bands and funk groups, reggae outfits and folk singers and hammered dulcimer players who are all busy making music in their communities or criss-crossing the country like I do, playing for the little pockets of people who are aware that they exist from seeing their names in the one little weekly paper in each area that chronicles their passages and passings-through. They put out their own records and CDs and T-shirts and sell them at their gigs, put out their own publications and manage to survive and spread their message, as I do, by virtue of the kindness and generosity of their comrades and friends.

And then there's the intellectual underground, that ever-shrinking populace of intelligent Americans who pay attention to what's going on and devise their own little ways of registering their responses to it in music, painting, poetry, dancing, writing of every description, photography, plays, films, videotapes. CDs, DVDs, hand crafted objects, whatever forms of expression happen to enter into their minds and issue forth from their hands and fingers and mouths and eyes to reach the rest of us. Creative individuals, people who are grounded in the great social and artistic achievements of the past and steeped in the idioms of the present and future, alert to the tightening of the political and economic noose around the neck of the public and full of ideas about how to slip out of it and maybe even how to tie it around the throat of the oppressor and thus hoist him upon his own petard.

These are the people I'm always looking for when I travel, and the good part is that I almost always find them. But you've got to go to where they are, and seek them out, and cherish them when you find them, and keep coming back to seek them out again, and keep on exchanging energy and ideas as freely and completely as you possibly can. That's what sustains our creativity and our intellectual life and makes the whole thing worthwhile.

The downside to underground life in America is the relentless economic terrorism that grips our existence and very rarely lets up, even for a week or a month at a time. Nothing ever pays enough to cover the costs of everyday life in an appropriate time frame: we're behind on the rent, out of groceries, always trying to keep them from turning off the electricity or the phone. Our cars break down, we don't have any insurance and god help us if we get sick. Or we take much precious time away from our intellectual and creative endeavors to exchange for a miserable paycheck and some minimal benefits, postponing artistic production in order to bring up our children or tend to our afflicted.

If we get high we've got to worry about the police, and pay too much for our supplies, and go through a maze of incredible changes just to secure the substances we require. If we make music we've got to find people who will let us play and give us enough money to pay for what it cost us to get there. If we're poets or writers or painters or dancers or fine artists of any sort, we are never allowed to forget that our work is not valued and will not be properly compensated no matter how good it may become. If we publish our magazines or produce our recordings and books we will never solve the incessant problem of effective distribution and thus will always fail to reach our intended audience.

But as an artist in America, I always say, once a person takes the vow of poverty, one may be as creative and productive as one is capable, and it is possible to do many great things despite the ever-present shortage of sufficient funds to provide for the necessities of daily life. We find a way somehow to make a life for ourselves within the economic netherworld to which our work has consigned us, and we keep firmly in mind the promise once delivered nightly by the Rev. Robert Grant in the opening segment of his Spiritual Sunbeams  program on WGPR Radio in Detroit: If you can take it, you can make it.

All that said, then, let me welcome you to the first installment of what will be a periodic report from the bardic path by means of which the poet pledges to bring his readers pertinent news and information from the far-flung outposts of the underground. At this writing I'm ensconced in the well-worn flat of my friend, guitarist and fellow journalist Mark Ritsema in the city of Rotterdam, engaged in an exploratory expedition to determine whether I can find a way to make a living over here and support a permanent move to the Nederlands for my wife Penny and myself.

Simply put, I've reached the point at my advanced age where I feel that if I have to struggle so hard to make a living doing the work I love to do, I owe it to myself to find a less hostile environment than the one I'm accustomed to in the United States. If it's got to be so hard to get paid what one needs to live, let me carry on my struggle for survival as an artist and intellectual in a society where the citizenry isn't armed, regular people still aspire to a certain level of basic intelligence, the arts are cherished and the police don't care if I want to get high.

I love being in Holland and hope that I can stay, but first I've got to come back to the U.S.A. and pick up my travels there this Spring. So I'll hope to see you on the road, and I'll tell you more the next time I write. Right now I don't have the faintest idea of how this story will turn out, but now we've got it started and we'll see where it goes from here. Happy trails!


(c) 2004 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.