Different dynamics, same antiestablishment attitude
Punk bands make folk connection at Club Passim
Question: Which one of these artists had the phrase "This Machine Kills Fascists" inscribed on his guitar? A) The Clash's Joe Strummer
B) The Sex Pistols' Steve Jones
C) Rancid's Tim Armstrong
D) Woody Guthrie
If you guessed "D," then chances are you understand the premise and the point behind "Punks Are Folks Too," a showcase that tonight will put a slate of talented punk performers from Boston and beyond on acoustic display at the legendary Cambridge folk haunt Club Passim.
The event, organized by Pete Walsh (of both the Ramones-worshiping Boston combo Meat Depressed and a Pogues-loving band whose rude moniker is unprintable in a family newspaper), features a half-dozen punk rockers playing 25-minute sets and recasting their songs in a stripped-down setting considerably quieter than the raucous clubs in which they usually ply their trade. "I write most of my stuff on an acoustic guitar anyway," Walsh says. "What it comes down to is, a good song is a good song."
Fear not, folk purists: Punk -- like folk -- has always been a slippery term, but what it is not is merely an assortment of surly kids perforated with safety pins and festooned with Day-Glo mohawks. Fear not, punk purists: Folk -- like punk -- is a term whose meaning has mutated over the years, but what it is not is merely an assortment of tie-dyed old hippies who want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
"Those characterizations are the broadest strokes of the brush," says Club Passim spokesman James O'Brien. "Smart folk and punk listeners and smart folk and punk musicians know that the populist, antiestablishment, prolabor aesthetic that permeates the lyrical content of these sorts of songs are cousins -- and that Woody Guthrie was the Social Distortion of his day."
Was there ever a more symbolically "punk" move than the one made by one-time Guthrie heir apparent Bob Dylan, who 40 years ago sloughed off stuffy folk conventions by infamously plugging in at the Newport Folk Festival and instructing his band to "play real loud"? Wasn't the social and political revolution espoused by the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK" during Thatcher-era England firmly in folk's antiauthoritarian tradition? And what of left-wing troubadour Billy Bragg, a protest singer embraced by both camps who, with the alternative country-rock band Wilco, has written and recorded new music set to unearthed Guthrie lyrics? "Change the haircuts and change the guitars," Walsh says, "and you might have the same crowd."
"I just picked up a CD by
[Pogues frontman] Shane MacGowan, and the instrumentation is accordion, banjo, and acoustic guitar -- and he's a classic punk," notes Kier Byrnes, banjo player with Boston's Three Day Threshold. "But if you gave this to somebody and didn't tell them, they'd say, `Wow, this is a really upbeat folk act!' Maybe punks play things a little faster, but as musicians I think we're all still focusing on songwriting." The lyrics of Suspect Device singer Jason Bennet are routinely freighted with pointed political criticism, although he knows the message is sometimes swallowed by decibels and energy. When he participates in the acoustic "Chords & Discourse" series that his wife, music promoter Kristen Bennett, stages at the Paradise Lounge, he says audiences tell him the "songs come out more intense when they're done that way. You don't have the bass and the guitars and the drums and the volume, so you really have to do it through the intensity of the performance." But is it folk music? "I don't think we're that far apart," says Bennett. "We might swear a little more than they do, and the musicianship isn't always as good as theirs."
When Walsh broached the idea of the show, Club Passim officials were intrigued. "Trying to get that crossover into our room is something that we're always, as a club, interested in doing," says O'Brien. Tonight's performers also include some out-of-towners: the Long Island-based singer Patience, Mark Linskey of New Jersey, and New Hampshire's Jonee Earthquake.
"We don't expect that everyone who comes to this room who's used to the Middle East or T.T. the Bear's or the Abbey Lounge is going to walk out of here saying `What I really want to do is go to coffeehouses for the rest of my life,' " O'Brien adds. "But maybe we can take the curtain back a little and show them that [Passim's] not a church basement and that it's not an uptight atmosphere; it's a vibrant, creative room."
If the show's a success, Walsh hopes to arrange another installment, although he'll probably enlist fewer artists so each gets more than 25 minutes. Then again, he says with a chuckle, "We're punks; we're used to short sets." 