John McCutcheon is equal parts musician and storyteller, skilled with a variety of instruments but also engaging when telling tales between tunes. He is a Wisconsin native who called Charlottesville home for years before moving to Smoke Rise, Georgia. He is also an avid community organizer and political figure in folk music.
Given this multifaceted career and his interest in grassroots efforts, it’s no surprise that McCutcheon has also dabbled in theater, portraying activist musician Joe Hill onstage in a one-man play titled Joe Hill’s Last Will. This year, McCutcheon will release an album under the same name, paying homage to Hill’s songs and life. And on March 28, he returns to Charlottesville for a concert at Piedmont Virginia Community College.
Far from a household name for many, Joe Hill was a labor activist in the early 1900s. A Swedish immigrant to the U.S., he struggled to find steady employment and became an itinerant worker, eventually joining the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). It was as a union member that Hill made a name for himself, writing protest songs and drawing cartoons to bring greater public awareness to the plight of the worker. Seeking relevance rather than fame, many of Hill’s songs actually reuse or adapt sections of other songs from the time, creating new meaning through his cause-related lyrics. These songs helped popularize the union message to workers, urging them to organize in order to demand better conditions and pay from their capitalist factory owners.
In one of Hill’s better-known songs, his lyrics express this message poetically: “Workingmen of all countries, unite/Side by side we for freedom will fight. When the world and its wealth we have gained/To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain. You will eat, bye and bye/When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry/Chop some wood, ’twill do you good/Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye.”
“Joe Hill was the ultimate utilitarian artist,” said McCutcheon. “He wasn’t writing songs to gain notoriety. He was writing songs to do a job, a very specific job.”
Understandably, Hill became something of a folk hero among industrial laborers. And like most heroes, he died young but stays alive in myth. At the age of 36, he was executed for murder, though his guilt, last words, and even the locations of his cremated ashes remain contested as we approach the 100th anniversary of his death later this year. Some believe Hill was a martyr to the IWW cause; others think he was victim of political subterfuge by those wishing to silence his organizing efforts. Regardless, Hill’s music has persisted, inspiring numerous musicians in folk traditions, including Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and now John McCutcheon.
“My introduction to folk music was watching the March on Washington with my mother, when I was 11 years old,” he said. “The music felt old and deep, yet it was wedded to something utterly urgent and contemporary.” On Joe Hill’s Last Will, McCutcheon attempts to apply his unique sound to this type of traditional folk song, updating Hill’s lyrics in places to make songs easier to understand and playing with instrumentation to highlight his own talents with the hammer dulcimer and jaw harp, among others. Ideally, these songs will prompt his fans to dig deeper into the original work by Hill and his contemporaries.
For those interested in more diverse interpretations of Hill’s songs, Smithsonian Folkways has two albums of his work: Don’t Mourn—Organize! Songs of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill, released in 1990, as well as an album of Hill’s songs performed by Joe Glazer that was originally released in 1954. Indeed, many of Hill’s songs are timeless in content and rhythm, making them ripe for covers and re-interpretations. “Many of the issues he wrote about a century ago—immigration, worker’s rights, war, religion, women’s leadership—are still things we’re struggling with today,” McCutcheon said.
As an artist, McCutcheon has spent decades supporting these very issues through his own community organizing and grassroots efforts. “The community organizing work began when I was living in Knoxville in the very early 1970s, working in an urban ministry that focused on neighborhood issues in the immediate community,” he said. “I was also working in rural, mountain communities collecting folk music and, inevitably, was informed about and involved in the issues of those communities.”
During his time in Charlottesville, McCutcheon was active in supporting Live Arts, the Jefferson Area Board for Aging and Virginia Organizing, among others. McCutcheon was also involved in the formation of Local 1000, the traveling musicians union within the American Federation of Musicians. In addition to helping financially support member musicians when they perform at free public service events, the union also has a Joe Hill Scholarship Fund to support members who want to learn about union history and community organizing through music.
John McCutcheon will perform at PVCC’s Main Stage Theatre of the V. Earl Dickinson Building on Saturday.
For those interested in learning more about grassroots community organizing, the next meeting of the Charlottesville/Albemarle chapter of Virginia Organizing is on April 6 at the Legal Aid offices on Preston Avenue.
Which local community organizer would you like to hear a song about? Tell us in the comments.
