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Joe Uehlein
223 Plays3 years ago
Joe Uehlein is the founding President of Voices for a Sustainable Future and the Labor Network for Sustainability. Joe is the former Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department and former director of the AFL-CIO’s Center for Strategic Campaigns. Joe spent 35 years doing bargaining, organizing, public policy, and strategic campaign work in the labor movement. Joe also served on the United Nations first commission on global warming from its founding in 1988 until 2003. In the early 1970’s he worked in an aluminum mill in Mechanicsburg, PA as a member of the United Steelworkers of America, and then on heavy and highway construction projects as a member of the Laborer’s International Union of North America.
Joe is most often seen fronting The U-Liners, his band of 19 years: www.uliners.com. Joe’s been playing (guitar & vocals) in bands for nearly 54 years, since the age of 13, and has played all across the U.S., as well as in Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Great Britain, and Venezuela. Joe’s music over the years has spanned genres from rock’n roll to bluegrass, folk to jazz, country to Motown, and more. From his early days growing up along the banks of the great Lake Erie, and working in an aluminum mill in Central Pennsylvania and on heavy and highway construction, and playing with Billy Wray & the Expressions, Joe developed a keen interest in Rock & Roll, Soul, and the Folk and Country sounds of working class music.
Joe has performed with Pete Seeger, Lester Chambers of The Chambers Brothers, Dave Alvin, Steve Earle, Tom Morello, Boots Riley, Jill Sobule, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Emma’s Revolution, John Kadlecik, Billy Bragg, John McCutcheon, Si Kahn, and with the punk band, the Dropkick Murphys. Joe has also performed at all of Washington, DC’s finest venues, including Gypsy Sally’s, the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, The Birchmere, Strathmore Music Hall, IOTA Club, Jammin’ Java, the Hamilton, Howard Theater, the Black Cat, and more. Joe has also played NYC’s Knitting Factory, Starlight Ballroom, The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Bally’s in Las Vegas, among other fine venues.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Zalante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer. Let's get into it, brother.
Meet Joe Uline: Labor Organizer & Musician
00:00:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:00:19
Speaker
This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and I'm very excited to have Joe Uline, labor organizer, labor thinker.
00:00:36
Speaker
unionist, singer, musician. And Joe, thanks for spending time. Since I've done this show, I've really had an inkling to get a chance to chat with you and it's arrived. So thanks for coming on the show, brother. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. And
Musical Roots and Influences
00:00:54
Speaker
You know, just thinking about the labor movement and music and some of the bigger things that we work and strive for. But prior to getting into that, Joe, can you tell us a little bit about when you were younger? Did you have an artist inclination? Were you plucking around with music? What were your sensibilities like when you were young coming into this world?
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I did. And I sang with my parents. My father played guitar and sang. My mother played piano and sang. And we would do it together as a family. So I kind of grew up in that milieu and listening to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and Joe Glaser.
00:01:51
Speaker
others like them. So yeah, I had an orientation from very early on. Yeah. And so I think anybody who's getting to, let's say with labor music, it's particular social
The Power of Labor Songs
00:02:13
Speaker
activists. It's laden in history and in some deep histories.
00:02:17
Speaker
within folk music. Just generally speaking, I was wondering what does a labor song do for folks when you play it? It's a collective activity. What happens there and how does it help us in the movement? I was just wondering.
00:02:41
Speaker
Well, I think, well, first of all, it depends on the song. But I think the biggest thing is it is something that we can do as an individual that's also part of a larger whole. And that's kind of like what joining a union is. As the song goes, you've got to go down and join the union by yourself. So it is an individual decision.
00:03:10
Speaker
But it puts you into something that's bigger than you are with like-minded people. It builds that solidarity and camaraderie that you don't have a lot of in other aspects of life. So it does that. Now, again, depending on the song, it can also tell a story that people may not know about a particular strike, a particular
00:03:39
Speaker
leader of an effort, a strike or a protest or something, where a song is written about the people who organized it, story of struggle. And so it's a good way to educate and at the same time, inspire and motivate people to step up and take action themselves. Yeah, that beauty of empowerment
00:04:06
Speaker
I got one of the big questions I wanted to ask you here because it's on the forefront
Art as a Catalyst in Movements
00:04:12
Speaker
of my mind. I wanted to ask you in particular, the question is what is art? And I think I just want to make a comment. That's the question. But, you know, I think when we think about music and we think about this question, what is art? I mean, I know, you know, I studied it at the university.
00:04:32
Speaker
It's supposed to be this, it feels sometimes like this erudite, otherworldly type of thing. And I think when people think about art, they think about, you know, expensive pieces, you know, on the wall. So there's this inherent stuff that goes along with that. But I wanted to ask you, I wanted to ask you, Joe, what do you think art is? Well, you know, at the most basic level, it is
00:05:01
Speaker
life. If we're living life well, we're living it artistically, whether we know it or not. So I think that art is living its life. But for me, in the labor movement, as well as the climate change and environmental movement, other movements I've been involved in, peace and freedom, all of that, we tend to be taught rules.
00:05:31
Speaker
you know, like Saul Alinsky has his rules for radicals. And there's like, I don't know, 11 or 12 of them in the book. And they're great. They're kind of I like to think of them as guideposts rather than rules. But I'm a big believer in improvisation. And so I don't like rules that much. And I think organizers hold themselves back by
00:06:00
Speaker
strict adherence to rules and they think well these are the rules we this is how we have to go about it and I think that's limiting and so what art brings in is is an element of uh we can play around with these rules we we can you know like one of Saul Alinsky's rules is
00:06:22
Speaker
whenever possible operate outside the experience of the adversary. So he even built into one of his rules, he's saying, you don't have to follow the rules. Don't do what they've seen you do before, come up with new things, be creative. And I think the creative element, it could stand more of a resurgence
00:06:51
Speaker
So art brings that, it brings creativity. I like the writings of Steven Nachmanovich when it comes to art. He wrote the book Free Play, which inspired me a lot when I read it 20 some years ago. He has a new book out called The Art of Is. And that's really about what he calls the three imps, improvisation,
00:07:20
Speaker
impermanence and imperfection and that we all hold those three imps inside of us and we need to understand it and deal with it and use them, even imperfection, of course, use it to our advantage. So art is mind-opening.
00:07:37
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, thank you for your comments, Joe. I was thinking about, you know, particularly within art and organizing. I think when you're involved in these activities, there's a desire to always do the right thing, to make the right call, the right decision, play the right angle. And when you get involved in these things, you know, it's one of the main things you have to do is say, okay,
00:08:03
Speaker
It's going to be very different or could be very different 20 minutes from now. And, you know, we got to kind of adjust in and create. And I love, I love how that's embedded in some of your thoughts there about that creativity and following the angle. And maybe that the rule isn't, isn't going to work because the conditions on the ground.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah are much different than the writer anticipated, right? They're all they're always different.
Labor Movement & Climate Change
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah Yeah, thank you and I and I know your answer probably got into components of this but I do ask it ask it um uh explicitly about the role of art today or right now or what art's supposed to do I hear what you're saying what art is but
00:08:52
Speaker
Does it have a particular role, a particular place for our human life right now in 2022? What are your thoughts there? I think it does. I think it's a way that we can raise questions that agitate. And by that, I mean that challenge existing assumptions about the world we live in, about power, about how we organize, it can challenge
00:09:22
Speaker
us to think differently. It also, I mean, in this world where we are now, everything is so fast, you know, this whole digital world we live in. And I think what art can do is, whether it's a great song or a painting or a poem or whatever, can kind of arrest life for a moment and invite contemplation.
00:09:50
Speaker
Now, you have to be open to it. You know, people who are, you know, they're just in to swiping the screen. They'll pass and miss opportunities, but art can help us. It can stop life, help us, you know, invite contemplation, help us think creatively about the challenges that we face. And, you know, at the most basic level,
00:10:15
Speaker
It inspires in a way that the written word can't. What I should say is, we write a lot of reports and commission reports to explain this problem or that problem when we do white papers. That's all great, but it's mostly an intellectual thing.
00:10:43
Speaker
And what art does is it speaks to the heart or the soul or the center. However, you want to think about that. Art speaks to that. So it goes beyond the intellectual pursuits. It has a lot of roles. I mean, you know, if you think about, you know, go back to kindergarten, first grade, second grade, little kids,
00:11:11
Speaker
they naturally play free without any regard to rules and they can keep doing it for hours when they're together. We lose that as we get older and we go through the educational system, it kind of strips us of that sensibility. So reintegrating art into life, I think is just super important.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. We're talking with Joe Uline, labor musician, thinker, has worked on strategic campaigns, the AFL-CIO. He also does a ton of work on labor and labor in the environment. And I had mentioned to you briefly, Joe, I very much
00:12:10
Speaker
glama to thinkers like yourself who are talking about the labor movement and talking about the environment and and talking about them in a in a deep way in a sense of What our thinking is what our thinking needs to be? Again at this time in this in this age So when you speak those words They they feel to me. Let me just say one thing labor movement at time feels to me
00:12:40
Speaker
to kind of always be trying to catch up to kind of like the next thing, to always trying to respond and get up in front of major social issues. We think about racial and social injustice. We think about the environment. These things are, of course, interrelated. But I wanted to ask you, given your work on this topic and how deeply important it is, what are you seeing, what is your take
00:13:11
Speaker
on the labor movement, seeing the climate crisis and what's happening with how we think about things like jobs, productive jobs, and sustainable jobs. Could you comment on that? Yeah, sure.
Shaping Factors in Joe's Outlook
00:13:30
Speaker
Well, I think, first of all, there's a tremendous amount of progress being made in the labor movement on these issues. They're being made because
00:13:42
Speaker
labor folks are seeing you know what's happening and and where the economy's going and what has to be done to solve the climate crisis and there are jobs there being created in renewable energy industries and other industries and they want to organize those which is great those jobs must become union or else the example I use is you might have
00:14:10
Speaker
Climate jobs like jobs that are good for solving the climate crisis, but if they're crappy jobs Then they're not sustainable because sustainability the concept rests on this
00:14:23
Speaker
three-legged stool, when any one leg is missing, the stool falls down, and that is economic justice, social justice, and environmental justice. Those are the three stools of sustainability. Too often, companies, they will co-opt the term and just make sustainability about being green.
00:14:49
Speaker
And nothing else. That's a bad trap. You don't want to fall into that. And a lot of people do in the environmental movement, because they want to solve the environmental problems. And they don't think about the workers who are hurt or those who are getting the new jobs, but without pension, without health care, without good pay.
00:15:16
Speaker
So we always advocate for full spectrum sustainability. I think one of the biggest things for labor when it comes to climate change is that climate change itself is the real job killer, not the answers to climate change. Climate change is going to decimate entire industries. It's already had a huge impact in places where there have been
00:15:46
Speaker
like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, New Orleans lost 40% of its economy in the aftermath of Katrina and maybe 25% came back.
00:15:57
Speaker
There's a permanent loss of 15% of the economic activity in that city. And we're going to see a lot more of that with the fires and the floods and all the stuff that's coming. So climate change as the real job killer is, uh, I think an important concept for us to be talking about. Yeah. I think there's been a, maybe the way we've culturally dealt with it, or maybe overall is that it's, it's been, uh,
00:16:25
Speaker
Maybe an ancillary thing to think about, and I think it's imploring everybody that it is front and center among those components that you mentioned when we're talking about justice. I even think about, you mentioned Katrina in New Orleans, you think about that.
00:16:41
Speaker
you know, after that as well, there were no public schools. And so it was, it was became an entire, which was set up and thought that way to come back in and create a charter school, more privatized system there.
Fossil Fuels vs. Sustainable Energy
00:16:57
Speaker
So education, environmental justice, and that those jobs are no longer, you know, as connected to, um,
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, the potential the potential for unionization or everything to become a separate charter system. So yeah, yeah, go ahead. No, no. And it's just it's just one of those one of those examples where I think being upfront and thinking about these things, because many of us, you know, who
00:17:29
Speaker
who work in this know that when the disaster comes, there's a plan back behind it to enact. So just being ready for that. I wanted to ask a bit more of a kind of, again, where you come from a question. It's a general question. You can answer it as you will about influences on yourself. And the question is, who or what made you who you are, Joe? Yeah.
00:18:00
Speaker
Well, I'd say for starters, uh, my parents, they were both union organizers. My dad worked in the mills in the Cleveland Lorraine area of Ohio. And, uh, you know, I was six years old when the 1959 steel strike started, ended up being the longest strike in the history of the industry. 110 days ran through Christmas. Uh, that had a huge impact on us because we had no income.
00:18:28
Speaker
for 110 days. And so Christmas was like, you know, socks and underwear. That was it. We were down on the picket lines all the time. I, as a little six year old kid, was down there walking the picket line and hearing the songs. And so that all had a profound impact on me. And then right after that,
00:18:54
Speaker
You know, the lake, Lake Erie, which to us was like our paradise. We swam in it all the time. We ate the yellow perch by the hundreds and hundreds. And then all of a sudden in toward 1964, 65, 66, they started to post the signs. You can't eat the fish. You can't swim in the lake. And so all the smoke coming out of the steel mills, which always just meant bread on the table for us started to mean something a little different.
00:19:24
Speaker
And that had an impact on me. And then when I got my first job, my family had moved to central Pennsylvania. I first went to work in an aluminum mill, but then I went to work on outdoor construction. And one of my first big jobs was the construction of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which sits just south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And every day I crossed the picket line of environmentalists who didn't want to see the plant built.
00:19:52
Speaker
I took their literature, it made sense to me because of my Lake Erie experience, and I complained to the local union about it because they had a bumper sticker that said, hungry and out of work, eat an environmentalist. And I complained about that and I got run out of the union hall. So I was starting to form, I then of course pursued a life in the labor movement, but
00:20:22
Speaker
always with those environmental sensibilities yeah and uh it i think that you know the bumper sticker or the antagonisms that exist there i mean it just yeah it's it's it's manifest right there in those in those tensions and uh yeah i think there is something very very um
00:20:43
Speaker
very profound about what you're talking about, where the prominence of Lake Erie, you think about those cultural elements, which happens to many communities, that something can be very much in the forefront. And all of a sudden it is, that which existed here is no longer for your interaction, consumption, drink, drinking, eating, and that kind of, you know, thunder clap right there. Well, you think about why, uh,
00:21:12
Speaker
pretty much all the fish contain mercury. That's because of the burning of fossil fuels for a hundred years. That's why, and so we pursued the better life through the fossil fuels, coal and others, without thinking about, well, what damage could we be doing? Now we know the damage, yet we're addicted.
00:21:41
Speaker
and we're having a hard time weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. And the labor movement has pretty significant density in the fossil fuel industry. So a lot of members who work in oil refineries and out on the rigs and the coal mines, all that, which makes it really hard for unions to sort of accept that that has to end.
00:22:09
Speaker
But it does. We know that it has to end. We have to find the way to get off of that. Yeah, I've been I've been reading a lot of kind of interactions in commentary around energy, but I even think it's pretty fascinating and seeing some of the building trades unions around things like wind power. I know back my former stomping grounds out and out in Boston. Local 103 IBW out that way and there's
00:22:38
Speaker
block island off of Rhode Island, which is sustained by wind as well. But just seeing building trades, it's all complicated, but just seeing the prominence and some of the ideas
00:22:55
Speaker
dig in where maybe they want to know before about sustainable energy and in that that jobs do need to be sustainable on The criteria that you stated to be worth saving I think yeah Yeah Yeah, I think the what we're seeing in the both the building trades and the energy unions today is a is really a beautiful thing because they are a
00:23:24
Speaker
working hard to advance the wind power and solar power. That IBW local you mentioned in Boston, they were maybe the first labor organization that came out in support of the Green New Deal.
00:23:43
Speaker
That was at a time when the IBEW National was very negative on the Green New Deal. The AFL-CIO was blasting the Green New Deal and still does, but that local leader saw it for what it was and came out in support of it.
00:24:03
Speaker
Locals and and well even a couple national unions the the UAE national nurses nurses United SEIU the AFT Nationally all then came out in support of the Green New Deal. So there's real You know as much as we're still addicted to the fossil fuels. I'm inspired by what I see happening in that group of unions who are going all in and
00:24:33
Speaker
Uh, for the renewables. Yeah. There's some, uh, there's some, some good activity. And I think that's one thing for, you know, for, for, you know, activists or folks deeply concerned, you know, labor environment getting into these issues that, uh, you know, there's different ways to look at it. You could look at a local and regionally or within certain subsections of labor and, you know, maybe not be completely.
00:24:57
Speaker
Frustrated or disappointments on the the lackluster press release around something and just be like, okay There are some people digging in on this one and where are they digging in? so I think that I know in labor for me that ends up being really helpful to see where the Activity is where people are working on this. So that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah so
00:25:20
Speaker
One of the big, I have the big conceptual question coming up, but I wanted to ask you another one, just a bit, thinking about my listeners and thinking about labor music and labor songs.
Keeping Labor Music Alive
00:25:37
Speaker
If you could just spend a little bit of time with that. It's not everybody knows labor songs, they know probably what they would be, but
00:25:45
Speaker
Can you just mention a few things about maybe some of the, I know you did at the beginning, about labor acts, maybe some folks who are out there right now, some sounds around labor. How do people get acclimated both with yours and in other works, labor music? Well, one of the best places or centers for this kind of music and art in general
00:26:15
Speaker
is the Labor Heritage Foundation, which has been around for some 45 years now that I'm a co-founder of and very proud of that. It's dedicated to working class art and culture. And yeah, that's where I first met Ricardo Levens Morales and Elise Bryant and so many other inspiring Anne Feeney, may she rest in peace.
00:26:42
Speaker
so many inspiring people who came to the Great Labor Arts Exchange, which will happen next month in conjunction with the labor notes gathering in Chicago. And it's been every year, you know, since the beginning, it started as the Great Labor Song Exchange, and then became broader arts exchange. But all those people building, you know,
00:27:10
Speaker
on the shoulders of, well, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joe Glaser, Joe Hill, and then, you know, Cy Kahn, who's still with us, and John McCutcheon, who's still with us, and so many other artists who were inspired by the earlier ones and are carrying the tradition on. And it was tough through the, you know, the post Taft Hartley era and the Red Scare, the McCarthy era,
00:27:40
Speaker
is when the labor movement got rid of a lot of the lefties, whether they were communist or not, because there was that non-communist affidavit in the Taft-Hartley Act, you had to sign it. And if you didn't as a labor leader, you couldn't use the National Labor Relations Act or the board. And so, you know, it was, so a lot of the singers and songwriter, Pete Seeger's career was
00:28:07
Speaker
Destroyed he had number one hits on the folk charts With the almanac singers and Then he couldn't get gigs He flipped it around, you know and went into the churches and the schools and built a whole musical movement
00:28:27
Speaker
inspired by today. There's Emma's Revolution, Pat and Sandy who make up Emma's Revolution. They're awesome and they're out there every day doing this. It's their life. It's their full-time living. There's Kathy Fink and Marcy Markser. They're just a whole bunch of people who have kept this tradition going.
00:28:52
Speaker
And then also I would be remiss if I didn't say that if we look into popular culture, we see the same inspirations there. We see Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave out on picket lines all the time and wearing his Unite cap and his IWW cap and t-shirt
00:29:21
Speaker
We see the same with Steve Earle and Boots Riley. They're writing the labor songs of today and performing them to large audiences. So all of the stuff that people tried to isolate is now finding its way into a broader popular culture, Bruce Springsteen. There are a lot of them.
00:29:48
Speaker
So it's out there. And even ones people don't think about, Merle Haggard, people think, well, that's Okey from Muscogee. He's a conservative guy. Well, that's not really accurate. And he did change over the years and became very progressive and wrote a lot of working class songs. So, you know, it's our culture as the working class does have a place in the broader culture and we need to
00:30:16
Speaker
find all that music and art as well and include it in what is our own.
00:30:23
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Joe. And it's really, and I appreciate it too, because, you know, it's not to miss or to pass over, you know, the vitality of those songs and what's going on right now.
Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
00:30:40
Speaker
I got to admit, my soul is a sucker for Paul Robeson. Not even just singing. When that man, he is
00:30:54
Speaker
engaged and he's speaking. Good Lord, I very rarely listen to anybody where it's like, everybody stop, wait till this is done. Let him finish whatever he needs to say and then everything else will go. That's right. That's exactly right. There's a great song and I'm blanking on the name of the person who wrote it. I recorded it on a Uliner CD.
00:31:22
Speaker
That's my band. And it sings about three verses that pay honor to those who practice. The song title is Three Chords and the Truth. Ry Cooter. Ry Cooter wrote it. Three Chords and the Truth. First one is Joe Hill, then Paul Robeson, and then Pete Seeger. So three verses that pay homage to these three people. And then a chorus that sings about
00:31:50
Speaker
the three chords and the truth. But yeah, Robeson, I mean, he just had it all going on. And he had the voice, he had the presence. Yeah, very much a huge inspiration. Well, one of those that's tough to talk about, it seems so profound, like it might be at any time. So anybody listening, if you haven't connected to the just deep in engaging
00:32:20
Speaker
Man that Paul Robeson was definitely do some searching and look for that. Yeah, I got I got The big the big question here Joe Of the podcast big philosophical question, but tell me and thinking about art creativity labor What have you why is there something rather than nothing? Yeah
00:32:48
Speaker
That is a great question and it is a highly philosophical one. I don't know if I'm the right person to answer it. I turned to others for inspired thought on this kind of a question. You know, it's kind of like when I think about why I even do this, it's never been a choice.
00:33:18
Speaker
Uh, so why is there something rather than nothing? I asked myself that a lot. Why do I do that? Why do I keep doing it? You know, I'm pushing 70 and I was at a gig this morning and I sang the Joe Hill song. There is power in a union there. Joe Hill song, the rebel girl, you know, I was singing all these rebel songs and I, why do I do this? Uh, it isn't the choice. It's like, I can't not do it.
00:33:47
Speaker
So I'm compelled. That's why there's something, at least just coming from my own experience, rather than nothing. But I think that's true with probably every artist, that they are compelled for some reason to create. And so there ends up being something rather than nothing, whether it's a painting, a poem, a song, a play. You know, my friend, Steve Jones,
Environmental Themes in Music
00:34:16
Speaker
And Elise Bryant, they've done these amazing musicals about labor struggles. They're compelled to do it. None of us are making money doing this. Emma's Revolution is doing it full time and they're making a living. They're not wealthy.
00:34:37
Speaker
just saying it's they're compelled to do it and that's why there's uh something rather than nothing i think yeah thank thank thank you brother and uh yeah and i know you mentioned at least brian a couple times i've been able to uh
00:34:54
Speaker
to know and interact with Elise and do some work with the National Education Association and otherwise. So yeah, the just living integration of art and creativity, organizing, labor, it collects there and she's a tremendous individual and tremendous asset to
00:35:20
Speaker
all this work. So Joe, in wrapping up here, I wanted to mention to folks, we're going to have a track by Joe called Water for Gold. I'm going to ask, so Joe, if you could tell folks about this track, but also make sure folks listening to this here are going to be interested in your work on labor and the environment.
00:35:46
Speaker
on your music, your creativity, the U-liners. So could you just tell us about that song, Water for Gold, and tell us where we find your other stuff. Yeah. Well, I wrote the song Water for Gold after reading an article in The Nation magazine by John Cavanagh and Robin Broad, and the article was
00:36:09
Speaker
about how gold mining companies from the US and Canada went down to El Salvador along the Lempa River and they figured out there was gold in the hills along the river and they'd go get it like it was their gold to go get. And they did and they polluted the water supply in the process of the gold mining process. And so people protested.
00:36:36
Speaker
They rose up, they organized, they protested, and there were assassinations of protest leaders. So I was moved by the article to write this song and to, in particular, memorialize one of the leaders who was assassinated, Marcelo Rivera. And I really, I like this track. It's on the Uliner's most recent CD and all of the info about my music
00:37:06
Speaker
can be found at the Uliners website, which is www.uliners.com.
00:37:19
Speaker
And then the labor environmental work is at the Labor Network for Sustainability website, which is www.labor, the number four, sustainability.org. And that's got all kinds of great stuff on labor and climate change on that website. But the Water for Gold song I just have to mention was
00:37:45
Speaker
I wrote it for acoustic instruments. So there's guitar, mandolin, violin, mandocello, and bass, and then a couple voices. And I really like the way it came out. It's one of my favorite tracks. Tell me, Joe, what's a mandocello? I'm fascinated right now.
00:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, well, the mandolin family of instruments has a piccolo mandolin, which is a little thing about like that big. It has the mandolin and then the mandola and then the mandocello and a mando bass. So a mandola is a bigger version of a mandolin and the mandocello
00:38:37
Speaker
is even bigger yet. You still play it like this, unlike the cello that you bow, but it's a really big version of a mandolin and kind of difficult to play. I remember in the recording session, my mando cello player was like, hey, this is hard. The mandolin family of instruments is a fascinating family that people really don't know much about.
00:39:07
Speaker
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. I hadn't heard that, so I just wanted to jump in. Thanks for connecting us to your art, Joe. I want to say, speaking here, Joe Uline, it's been really important and it's been a great pleasure for you to be on this show. And I think
00:39:32
Speaker
You know, that the work that you do, the connections that your mind and music makes are really important at this moment. So I appreciate you chatting with us and coming on to the show.
00:39:47
Speaker
Well, thank you. Pleasure is all mine. But thank you very much. Thank you. And a deep respect to the memory of Marcelo Rivera and theorist and Feeney, a labor singer, a musician. Joe, great pleasure. I'll see you sometime soon on the pick a line. OK, brother? Awesome. Thank you, brother. Take care. Take care now.
00:40:24
Speaker
The Lempa River runs through El Salvador Anduras Guatemala down to the shore Bringing fresh water to the people in the towns Farmers and ranchers, everyone around They come from the north with their money and their guns For the gold in the hills where the Lempa River runs Marcello Rivera never grows Water for life
00:40:53
Speaker
or water for coal? Water for life or is it water for coal?
00:41:38
Speaker
People rose up in solidarity when their water was poisoned by the gold pumpanies. Neurals on the walls marching in the streets for dead in El Salvador. They come from the north with their money and their guns for the gold in the hills where the Lamper River runs.
00:42:01
Speaker
Marcelo Rivera never grow old Water for life or water for gold Water for life or is it water for gold?
00:42:52
Speaker
The rumble of the mountains, the rumble of the sea The rumble of the people who want to be free Marcello and others live no more How many dead in El Salvador? No more, no more In El Salvador, they come from the north With their money and their guns For the gold in the hills where the Lamper River runs
00:43:19
Speaker
Marcelo Rivera, never grow old Water for life, oh water for gold Water for life, or is it water for gold?