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Monday, 03 November 2008

2nd November Asheville NC

This entry was originally published at Billy Bragg's Blog

JFK airport is full of people wearing medals they won for completing the New York City marathon yesterday, looking tired but happy. After three weeks and nearly 3000 miles in our Econoline van, I feel the same, buoyed by the fact that the best show was saved until last.

Asheville is a town in the Appalachian Mountains renowned for its activism. Across the road from the Orange Peel, a huge hoarding keeps a toll of the cost of the Iraqi occupation in dollars as well as Iraqi and American lives. I’ve been here once before, five years ago on the Tell Us The Truth tour, and have a strong memory of a well attended after-show discussion at a nearby squatted community café with most of the audience and all of the artists.

This time I had a little longer to check the place out. We got to town around 3pm and I took a leisurely stroll in the afternoon sunshine down to the venue past shops selling second hand clothes and American folk art. We even found our first Indian restaurant of the tour. Joy.

The gig was highly charged from the start, the audience responding as if it were Saturday night, not Sunday. They pulled songs out of me that I hadn’t been playing thus far, including the first US performance of One Love/Drop the Debt, along with all the arm waving actions. They seemed to be all ages, from earnest young beardies to old whiskery wobblies, and they knew most of the words too. By the end my voice was hoarse and my fingertips sore, but we’d all had a great time.

Back to the hotel for a farewell beer with the Watson Twins, who have been a wonderful support act, warming the crowd up for me with their southern harmonies and singing like the Staples Sisters every night on Sing Their Souls Back Home.

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1st November Durham NC

This entry was originally published at Billy Bragg's Blog

Considering how many miles we’ve driven in the past three weeks, opportunities for roadside recreation have been far and few between. Early on, we diverted off of I-80 near Jenny Jump Mountain after seeing a sign inviting us to The Land of Make Believe. Our wise-cracks about it being full of Obama supporters were intensified when we drove through a little town called Hope, but when we finally got there, we found to our disappointment that it had been closed since Labor Day. Nothing looks sadder than a funfair out of season, so we headed back to the highway and our engagement in West Long Branch.

So imagine our delight at seeing a signpost inviting us to The Dismal Swamp on the road out of Norfolk, Virginia. Having no show to do that night, it provided us with a classic day-off detour. Of course, in the beautiful autumn sunshine that has blessed our tour, the swamp was far from dismal, but we still had a lovely time, like a bunch of schoolkids, climbing on rotten logs to cross ditches of brackish water. While huge buzzards soared overhead, Andy saw a snake, Grant tore his shirt on the brambles and Vaughn nearly fell off the log into the water. Meanwhile, Billy was busily recording all this on his blog.

Saturday afternoon we drove from Durham to nearby Chapel Hill to take part in an early voting drive. Concerned that their right to vote may be challenged on election day, millions of people across the USA have been taking advantage of the opportunity to cast their votes early, thereby giving themselves a chance to overcome any problems they might face at the polling booth. There have been reports of both Republican and Democratic party officials looking to exclude people who have moved house, have lost their homes due to repossession or simply do not have the relevant document to prove their identity. African American supporters of Obama have been particularly concerned, recalling what happened in Florida in 2000, when thousands of African Americans were denied the right to vote having been illegally removed from voting rolls by Republican officials.

At the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, student activists have registered over 5000 new voters and are making a concerted effort to get them to vote early. Members of the band Superchunk organised a midday concert to get people down to the polling station and, as they heard I was in town, they invited me over to play a few songs. Looking at the assembled crowd, some of whom had brought their young children along, it seemed fitting to sing Laura Nyro’s ‘Change The Country’, with it’s line about ‘babies in the blinking sun/Singing we shall overcome’. The red and blue graphic designed by Shepherd Fairley, of Obama above the word HOPE is everywhere to be seen on this campaign and that audience waiting to cast their vote seemed to me to be the embodiment of that hope.

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Sunday, 02 November 2008

30th October Norfolk Virginia

This entry was originally published at Billy Bragg's Blog

The Attucks Theatre was opened in 1919 and is notable as the oldest remaining theatre in the USA that was entirely financed, designed, constructed and operated by African Americans. It seems entirely fitting that I should be appearing here as the country is alive with the possibility of electing its first African American president. The man himself seems everywhere, on tv, on the front pages, on lawn-posters, t-shirts and buttons. It’s physical too. He was in Norfolk so recently, his uniformed secret servicemen are still checking out of the hotel as we leave for the show, where the promoter shows me a picture on his phone of Obama and himself taken just the day before.

The sense of excitement has been palpable at the gigs too, from rural Pennsylvania to metropolitan midtown Manhattan, from New Hampshire in the north to down below the Mason-Dixon Line in Virginia. The relatively low voter turn-out at American presidential elections has served to undermined their claim to be the worlds greatest democracy. This time feels different. People are energised by the possibility of change. Both candidates have used the phrase to promote their campaigns, but the Republicans pitch is tarnished by the record of George W Bush, who has been the invisible man of this campaign season. How much genuine change can you expect from a candidate who time and time again voted with his president?

The Attucks, which takes its name from Crispus Attucks, an African American who was the first US citizen killed by crown forces in the War of Independence, is an old style theatre. Built before the use of amplification, the auditorium is taller than it is longer, ensuring an intimate gig. Sam Cooke features among the names of great artists who performed here in the past. Could it be that the change he yearned for is finally going to come?

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