detail = Sprout Wings and Fly
By John McCutcheon
Rounder Records, 1997

detail = Nothing to Lose
By John McCutcheon
Rounder Records, 1995

Review by Alex Bainbridge

John McCutcheon is a progressive songwriter with an enduring ability to make his listeners feel good. He is an accomplished musician (on more than a dozen instruments) and reportedly a very passionate and polished performer. He is known for his powerful song “Christmas in the Trenches” about one of the Christmas fraternisations between German and Allied soldiers during World War One.

McCutcheon's political songs are often very simple. He usually doesn't go much beyond general ideas: there is injustice, so let's stand together and do something about it. His message is one of solidarity; simple perhaps, but vividly put, compassionate and very affirming of those who choose a life of struggle.

There is more to McCutcheon than just politics however. These latest two albums contain a variety of McCutcheon styles.

Sprout Wings and Fly is an experiment with a range of musical styles on a variety of traditional folk songs plus a couple of his own and other people's songs. He mixes traditional instrumentation (including didgeridoo) from Australia, Africa, Russia and Nicaragua with the Appalachian folk tradition. He includes a good rendition of Woody Guthrie's “Ludlow Massacre” written about the United Mine Workers' organising drive in the early part of this century.

In Nothing to Lose, McCutcheon is described as visiting the “lives of working men and women, small town characters and `folks who've been around the block a time or two'”. Many of these songs are co-authored by Si Kahn, another progressive songwriter who was also a trade union organiser in the US.

This album includes “Here on the Islands”, about the uprooting of a traditional islander people's way of life by modern capitalism. It's also about how they resist and the “fear and doubt and pride” that accompanies that. “Lefty's Bar Tonight” is about the “no-scab bar in Austin, Minnesota” where progressives recuperate for another round of struggle.

These albums are perhaps not as political as some of his previous efforts, but nevertheless rewarding. If you haven't heard McCutcheon before then it's probably worth checking him out. He certainly has something to offer to a lot of different people and these two albums are as good a place to start as any other.

This article was posted on the Green Left Weekly Home Page.
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