Eric Ward: Singing a Different Tune, Telling A Different Story
The narrative at the heart of the independent music scene is the narrative we need as Oregonians: “We are an interdependent system, and the more we connect, the more successful we’ll be.”
Eric K. Ward, Executive Director of Western States Center, Senior Fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Senior Advisor to Race Forward. @BulldogShadow
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A Tale of Two Music Scenes
“There's a sleeping army for peace that's just waiting to be organized and directed. All we need is a little help.” ~ Ana Egge
Image provided by Eric Ward.
Last year around this time (back in the days when we could go out to see live music), I went to a show in North Portland. It was a couple of troubadours from Canada telling stories set to music that they called Nights of Grief and Mystery. It was organized at the last minute when the two principals - having sent their touring band home -decided that they couldn’t head north across the border without one last gig in Oregon.
The show sold out with only a few days’ notice. That’s the kind of town Portland is and the kind of people Portlanders are. But the show would not have happened if it weren’t for the kinds of policies that make the musicians’ home – Canada – unique; their tour was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
It’s not that Oregon doesn’t have similar policies. For example, Oregon has a Poet Laureate. We also have a state agency dedicated to promoting the film and video industry. But, as far as I know, we don’t have any policy-level or budgetary support for the music scenes that tell our stories and bring us together as Oregonians. And, that’s too bad because there are certainly stories to tell.
Oregon has an amazing music scene:
Dozens of incredible music festivals: blues, jazz, roots, country, bluegrass, folk, indie pop, classical.
Scores of great performing spaces full of history and character that host more than 13,000 events each year attended by 7 million people, according to Oregon’s Independent Venue Coalition.
Studios that lure top talent to record their work here with world-class producers like Tucker Martine.
A quality of life that has made us the quiet home of some big names when they’re not out on the road: Portugal. The Man, The Decemberists, Esperanza Spalding, Strfkr, Pink Martini, Sleater-Kinney, Typhoon, The Dandy Warhols, M. Ward, to name-drop a few.
I asked singer-songwriter Ana Egge, who visits the state often, about the draw for artists. She told me Oregon and the Pacific Northwest as a whole “is a kind of mystical destination. [One with] natural beauty, where the land meets the sea but with more trees; a place where the imagination can keep going further and further.”
But aside from the big national acts that come through Oregon and the underground buzz about the state among touring musicians, we’re not widely known for our music scene. We’re revered as a foodie paradise, for our craft brew scene, for our timber products and salmon, and maybe even our rodeos. (Read about the one in Harney County here.)
Comparatively, there’s nothing clandestine about Canada’s music scene. Our international neighbors to the north have established a Canadian Content standard to ensure “compelling, high-quality Canadian-made creative content from diverse sources on a variety of platforms.” We have a “Made in Oregon” brand identity – but not for the narrative-driven music scenes that are so essential to who we are and how we come together as Oregonians.
The Power of Music and Listening
"Salt & Ana Egge" by the PhotoPhreak is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
If you have any familiarity with my name, you might have expected I’d be writing about the threats to our democracy and to Oregon posed by white nationalism and hate violence. And, it’s true those subjects are never far from my mind but before I became a civil rights and anti-hate activist, I was a musician.
At the age of 21, I was working minimum-wage jobs and playing in a garage band called Sloppy 2nds. (After it disbanded and later re-formed without me, it became Sublime, the most famous Long Beach band of all time.) One night shift – pumping gas at the Union 76 station, the Specials’ song “Do Nothing” came on – “Nothing ever change, oh no / Nothing ever change” – and I knew that if I didn’t leave Southern California, I would die soon. So I moved with a multiracial group of L.A. punks to Eugene. We bunkered down in a house we called Camp Iceberg, named for the frigid temperatures we endured from never turning on the heat.
While my musical tastes have not toned down much since then, they have expanded to the storytelling rhythms of roots, blues, and folk that’s now marketed as Americana. This music is more to me than a way to unwind from organizing against hate violence. It’s a taproot into the heart of our communities – a way to explore our values and get real about what we have in common and what can tear us apart.
Ana Egge is one of the artists who gives expression to the needs of our times. She wrote in her “Is It the Kiss” liner notes, “There’s been a change in me in the past two years. And in many people I know. There’s an uneasiness and a deeper need for connection. I’ve also felt the shift in my audience. People are listening like they never have before. I too, am listening. Like I never have before. That’s where these songs come from.”
Listening to music is a way we can listen to each other, to understand more about the heartaches and aspirations that we all share as humans. Listening to music on the community level is also a way for us to bridge our differences.
How Music Can Connect Us
"Matthew Ryan - Teatro Circolo della Fratellanza, Casnigo (BG) - 16 novembre 2008" by Andrea Sartorati is licensed under CC BY 2.0
I have to admit that, as much as I love the music featured at Oregon festivals, I don’t go to many of them. I’m not confident that as a Black man, I’ll be welcome. Much of the Americana music scene is overwhelmingly white, despite the genre’s roots in old-time Black music. Ana grew up around a lot of Deadheads – fans of the Grateful Dead, a band and a scene with a deep and storied connection to Oregon. “There are a lot of Deadheads who are racist and sexist,” she says. “They don’t realize how many of the Dead’s songs were written by old Black songwriters.”
Talking with Ana – her white woman and me a Black man, both of us singer-songwriters, one successful and talented in that craft (I only place myself in the same category with an immense amount of humility) – we marveled at this core aspect of American identity.
“It’s been part of American culture at all times: people learning instruments and songs to come closer together, through sad times and joyous times with neighbors and friends,” as Ana says.
In this time of intense polarization and racial justice awakening, understanding more about the roots of American music provides a chance for us to break down divisions and come together at the places of cultural intersection.
The need to rebuild that place of common ground brought singer-songwriters Matthew Ryan and Neilson Hubbard of Strays Don’t Sleep back together after a 15 year hiatus (I encourage you to listen to their new recording “I Walked Away”).
Matthew, who often tours through Oregon, told American Songwriter, “The internet has put us all in a position where we’re ingesting information and news tailored to our activity and aquariums, isolating us so much that it seems many of us see our neighbors and fellow citizens as monsters. It’s like we’re forgetting that we’re dependent on each other. All any of us wants is a fighting chance at a good life, the room to love and live, security, a sense of belonging and future for ourselves and our families, for each other.”
In this moment when so many people are feeling anxious, unsure of their place amidst changing demographics and a difficult economy, when our divisions seem insurmountable – we need our storytellers to help us rebuild a culture of caring and inclusion.
When hyperpartisanship means we can’t agree on public policies that benefit all Oregonians, it’s time to go back to the basics: the notes, the rhythms, the harmonies and dissonance, the stories of love and longing, of hardship and simple pleasures. Mastering those are the keys to the common good and there’s no better place to start than music.
Supporting Storytellers
"Portland Waterfront Blues Festival-July 5th, 2009" by tdstone is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
At a time when we need our songwriters and musicians more than ever, they are particularly imperiled by the economic and social crisis of COVID-19. Musicians have banded together to raise funds for each other. Independent venues – which employ over 4,000 full- and part-time people, generating $384 million of revenue annually – have joined forces to marshal public support and lobby for relief. Many have moved to online performances to keep artists and production staff working, if only at a minimal level. In July, the state legislature earmarked $50 million to aid cultural institutions around the state – not without raising questions of equity. And, Travel Oregon put together a list of Oregon-made podcasts and musicians to listen to until we can gather in person again.
These efforts are important. And, they don’t go far enough. We need to attend to the impact of the COVID-economic crisis, absolutely. But, we also have to look to what’s next, as we reset from the myth of the urban-rural divide and other tired “culture war” narratives.
We should be able to count on our federal government for a rebooted Works Progress Administration (WPA) Music Program, the Depression-era project that not only employed musicians but did so much to lift up and preserve America’s traditional music and folk songs – but we can’t wait for that to happen.
"Baker County Tourism – basecampbaker.com 22046" by TravelBakerCounty is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
In the meantime, we can look to local institutions, both old and new. In the Portland tri-county area, one such institution is the Regional Arts & Culture Council, which works “to build a community in which everyone can participate in culture, creativity and the arts” through a variety of initiatives, including awarding more than 5,000 grants totaling $44 million in the past two decades. Another is Music Portland, a newer advocacy and organizing group, formed to “unite, defend, and amplify the Portland independent music scene.”
One thing I love about Music Portland is their focus on “all parts of the local music ecosystem.” From this ecosystem perspective they assert some core values: “Our local culture is far more collaborative than competitive. We are an interdependent system, and the more we connect, the more successful we’ll be.”
This is what I’m talking about. The narrative at the heart of the independent music scene is the narrative we need as Oregonians: “We are an interdependent system, and the more we connect, the more successful we’ll be.”
With all due respect to these important city-based and regional efforts – they need our support and funding to keep doing their important work – I’d like to see the whole state lifted up and brought together by the power of storytelling music.
Couldn’t we do this as a state, Oregon? I can’t think of a better time – a more necessary time – for us to invest in the power of Oregon to tell its own stories. What can we do at the public policy level to support artists and storytellers, to foster the kind of synergy around our Americana-roots music scenes that we’ve benefitted from in our culinary and adult beverage industry?
Recently Oregon has been on the national map for all the wrong reasons. With the right kind of support, the singer-songwriters who live here and come here to work could well make Oregon the state that has not just a Nashville/ Austin/ Branson/ New Orleans of the Northwest, but a place with thriving music ecosystems from Joseph to Josephine County, Ontario to Oregon City. Maybe this is the opportunity for an urban-rural partnership?
This could be fun. But I’m making a case for more than entertainment. Music – Made in Oregon Music, Oregon Content – could be a balm for our weary souls, a way to learn more about each other, and to connect around the values that bring us together instead of the ideologies that drive us apart.
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