Name	Utah Phillips
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Bruce Duncan Phillips
Birth date	May 15, 1935
Death date	May 23, 2008
Genre	Folk music
Occupation	Songwriter, performer, raconteur
Url	www.utahphillips.org

Bruce "Utah" Duncan Phillips (May 15, 1935 – May 23, 2008) was a labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet and the "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest". He described the struggles of labor unions and the power of direct action, self-identifying as an anarchist. He often promoted the Industrial Workers of the World in his music, actions, and words.

Biography

Early years

Phillips was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Edwin Deroger Phillips and Frances Kathleen Coates. He attended East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father, Edwin Phillips, was a labor organizer, and his parents' activism influenced much of his life's work. Phillips was a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the "wobblies," headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Phillips rode the railroads, and wrote songs.

He served in the United States Army for three years beginning in 1956 (at the latest). Witnessing the devastation of post-war Korea greatly influenced his social and political thinking.

Career

Following service, he returned to Salt Lake City, Utah, and joined Ammon Hennacy from the Catholic Worker Movement in establishing a mission house of hospitality named after the activist Joe Hill. Phillips worked at the Joe Hill House for the next eight years, then ran for the U.S. Senate as a candidate of Utah's Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. He received 2,019 votes (0.5%) in an election won by Republican Wallace F. Bennett. He also ran for president of the United States in 1976 for the Do-Nothing Party.

He adopted the name U. Utah Phillips in emulation of country vocalist T. Texas Tyler.

Phillips met folk singer Rosalie Sorrels in the early 1950s, and remained a close friend of hers. It was Sorrels who started playing the songs that Phillips wrote, and through her his music began to spread. After leaving Utah in the late 1960s, he went to Saratoga Springs, New York, where he was befriended by the folk community at the Caffé Lena coffee house, where he became a staple performer throughout that decade.

Phillips was a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies). His view of unions and politics were shaped by his parents, especially his Mom who was a labor organizer for the CIO. But Phillips was more of a Christian anarchist and a pacifist, so found the modern-day Wobblies to be the perfect fit for him, an iconoclast and artist. In recent years, perhaps no single person did more to spread the Wobbly gospel than Phillips, whose countless concerts were, in effect, organizing meetings for the cause of labor, unions, anarchism, pacifism, and the Wobblies. He was a tremendous interpreter of classic Wobbly tunes including "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum," "The Preacher and the Slave," and "Bread and Roses."

An avid trainhopper, Phillips recorded several albums of music related to the railroads, especially the era of steam locomotives. His first recorded album, Good Though!, is an example, and contains such songs as "Daddy, What's a Train?" and "Queen of the Rails" as well as what may be his most famous composition, "Moose Turd Pie" wherein he tells a tall tale of his work as a gandy dancer repairing track in the Southwestern United States desert.

In 1991 Phillips recorded, in one take, an album of song, poetry and short stories entitled I've Got To Know, inspired by his anger at the first Gulf War. The album includes "Enola Gay," his first composition written about the United States' atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Phillips was a mentor to Kate Wolf. He recorded songs and stories with Rosalie Sorrels on a CD called The Long Memory (1996), originally a college project "Worker's Doxology" for 1992 'cold-drill Magazine' Boise State University. His protégée, Ani DiFranco, recorded two CDs, The Past Didn't Go Anywhere (1996) and Fellow Workers (1999), with him. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for his work with DiFranco. His "Green Rolling Hills" was made into a country hit by Emmylou Harris, and "The Goodnight-Loving Trail" became a classic as well, being recorded by Ian Tyson, Tom Waits, and others.

Later years

Though known primarily for his work as a concert performer and labor organizer, Phillips also worked as an archivist, dishwasher, and warehouse-man.

Phillips was a member of various socio-political organizations and groups throughout his life. A strong supporter of labor struggles, he was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (Mine Mill), and the Travelling Musician's Union AFM Local 1000. In solidarity with the poor, he was also an honorary member of Dignity Village, a homeless community. A pacifist, he was a member of Veterans for Peace and the Peace Center of Nevada County. and the Peace and Justice Center. "It's my town. Nevada City is a primary seed-bed for community organizing." Later that autumn, Phillips announced that due to health problems he could no longer tour. By January 2008, he decided against a heart transplant.

Phillips died May 23, 2008 in Nevada City, California, from complications of heart disease, at the age of 73. He was survived by his wife, sons, Duncan and Brendan, and a daughter, Morrigan. Following a private service, a public memorial was held on June 1, in Pioneer Park, in Nevada City. His service was officiated by Meghan Cefalu, a Unitarian Universalist pastor.

Discography

{| | width="350pt" valign="top" | Studio albums

1992 I've Got to Know

1996 The Long Memory

1996 The Past Didn't Go Anywhere

1999 Fellow Workers

1997 Heart Songs

1997 Loafer's Glory

1999 The Moscow Hold

2005 Starlight on the Rails

| width="350pt" valign="top" | Other albums

1974 Good Though!

1975 El Capitan

1983 We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years

1985 Don't Mourn– Organize

1992 Rebel Voices

1997 Legends of Folk

1997 The Telling Takes Me Home

2000 Making Speech Free

2001 The Rose Tattoo

|}

Notes and references

External links

September 2003 Interview in The Progressive

Biography from the 1997 Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Awards

Summer 2005 Interview in "Unlikely Stories"

Fall 2005 Interview in YES! Magazine

Turtle Vision photo gallery of Utah Phillips

(Radio broadcast)

The “Golden Voice of the Great Southwest”, Utah Phillips memorial page on Democracy Now!

Utah Phillips interview with David Kupfer, The Progressive, September 2003.

"Voting for the First Time", by Carolyn Crane. The Nation. October 12, 2004.

Category:American folk singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American storytellers Category:American buskers Category:American anarchists Category:Anarchist musicians Category:Industrial Workers of the World members Category:Christian anarchists Category:American Christian pacifists Category:Catholic Workers Category:American activists Category:American anti-war activists Category:American pacifists Category:American tax resisters Category:Utah politicians Category:Folk music of the American Southwest Category:Righteous Babe artists Category:People from Nevada City, California Category:People from Salt Lake City, Utah Category:People from Cleveland, Ohio Category:Musicians from Cleveland, Ohio Category:American socialists Category:1935 births Category:2008 deaths Category:United States Army soldiers

Name	Ani DiFranco
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Angela Marie DiFranco
Birth date	September 23, 1970
Birth place	Buffalo, New York
Instrument	Guitar, bass guitar, tenor guitar, vocals, percussion, piano
Genre	Folk rock
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician
Years active	1990–present
Label	Righteous Babe
Url	www.righteousbabe.com

Ani DiFranco () (born Angela Maria DiFranco on September 23, 1970) is an American Grammy Award-winning singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums, and is a feminist icon.

Biography

DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York, to Elizabeth and Dante, who both attended and met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She started playing Beatles covers at local bars and busking with her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum, at the age of nine.

In 1989, DiFranco started her own record company, Righteous Records (renamed Righteous Babe Records in 1994). and has written songs about love and sex with both genders. She addressed the controversy about her sexuality with the song "In or Out". In 1998, she married sound engineer Andrew Gilchrist in a Unitarian Universalist service in Canada, overseen by renowned folk singer Utah Phillips. Numerous media sources reported that her fans felt betrayed by her union with a man. DiFranco and Gilchrist divorced five years later.

In 1998, DiFranco's drummer, Andy Stochansky, left the band to pursue a solo career as a singer-songwriter. Their rapport during live shows is showcased on the 1997 album Living in Clip.

DiFranco's father died early in the summer of 2004. In July 2005, DiFranco developed tendinitis and took a hiatus from touring. DiFranco had toured almost continuously in the preceding fifteen years, only taking brief breaks to record studio albums. Her 2005 tour concluded with an appearance at the FloydFest World Music and Genre Crossover festival in Floyd, Virginia. DiFranco returned to touring in late April 2006, including a performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on April 28 and a performance at the renowned Calgary Folk Music Festival on July 30, 2006.

DiFranco gave birth to a daughter, Petah Lucia DiFranco Napolitano, at her Buffalo home on January 20, 2007. The child's father is DiFranco's new husband, Mike Napolitano, the co-producer of DiFranco's 2006 release Reprieve. Essentially a full-time resident of New Orleans, DiFranco is heavily influenced by the city's post-Katrina plight.

She has continued touring into 2008 with a backing band consisting of Todd Sickafoose on upright bass, Allison Miller on drums, and Mike Dillon on percussion and vibes. DiFranco returned to the Calgary Folk Music Festival in July 2008.

Napolitano and DiFranco wed in January 2009 in Hawaii.

, and Steve Albini at The New Yorker festival in September 2005.]]

Recognition

On July 21, 2006, DiFranco received the "Woman of Courage Award" at the National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, New York. Past winners have included singer and actress Barbra Streisand and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. DiFranco is one of the first musicians to receive the award, given each year to a woman who has set herself apart by her contributions to the feminist movement.

DiFranco has been toasted by the Buffalo News as the "Buffalo's leading lady of rock music." The News further said:

"Through the Righteous Babe Foundation, DiFranco has backed various grassroots cultural and political organizations, supporting causes ranging from abortion rights to gay visibility."

Since 2003, DiFranco has been nominated Four consecutive times for Best Recording Package at the Grammy Awards, one of which she won, in 2004, for Evolve.

Musical style and the "folk" label

DiFranco's guitar playing is often characterized by a signature staccato style, rapid fingerpicking and many alternate tunings. She delivers many of her lines in a speaking style notable for its rhythmic variation. Her lyrics, which often include alliteration, metaphor, word play and a more or less gentle irony, have also received praise for their sophistication.

Although DiFranco's music has been classified as both folk rock and alternative rock, she has reached across genres since her earliest albums. DiFranco has collaborated with a wide range of artists including musician Prince, who recorded two songs with DiFranco in 1999 ("Providence" on her To the Teeth album, and "I Love U, but I Don't Trust U Anymore" on Prince's Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic album); folk musician and social activist Utah Phillips (on The Past Didn't Go Anywhere in 1996 and Fellow Workers in 1999); funk and soul jazz musician Maceo Parker; and rapper Corey Parker. She has used a variety of instruments and styles: brass instrumentation was prevalent in 1998's Little Plastic Castle; a simple walking bass in her 1997 cover of Hal David and Burt Bacharach's "Wishin' and Hopin'"; strings on the 1997 live album Living in Clip and 2004's Knuckle Down; and electronics and synthesisers in 1999's To the Teeth and 2006's Reprieve. Samples from the track "Coming Up" were used by DJ Spooky in his album Live Without Dead Time, produced for AdBusters Magazine in 2003.

DiFranco herself noted that "folk music is not an acoustic guitar — that's not where the heart of it is. I use the word 'folk' in reference to punk music and rap music. It's an attitude, it's an awareness of one's heritage, and it's a community. It's subcorporate music that gives voice to different communities and their struggle against authority."

Lyrics, politics and religion

Although much of DiFranco's material is autobiographical, it is often also strongly political. Many of her songs are concerned with contemporary social issues such as racism, sexism, sexual abuse, homophobia, reproductive rights, poverty, and war. The combination of personal and political is partially responsible for DiFranco's early popularity among politically active college students, particularly those of the left wing, some of whom set up fan pages on the web to document DiFranco's career as early as 1994. DiFranco's rapid rise in popularity in the mid-1990s was fueled mostly by personal contact and word of mouth rather than mainstream media.

DiFranco has expressed political views outside of her music. During the 2000 U.S. presidential election, she actively supported and voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. She supported Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 and 2008 Democratic primaries. Kucinich appeared with her at a number of concerts across the country during both primary seasons. DiFranco went on to perform at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Early in her career, DiFranco considered herself an atheist. On the subject of religion, DiFranco has stated:

"Well, I'm not a religious person myself. I'm an atheist. I think religion serves a lot of different purposes in people's lives, and I can recognize the value of that, you know, the value of ceremony, the value of community, or even just having a forum to get together and talk about ideas, about morals — that's a cool concept. But then, of course, institutional religions are so problematic."

Since becoming a mother and releasing her Red Letter Year album in 2009, DiFranco has talked in concert about "finding religion". At concerts she has stated that her song "The Atom" is an "alternative Christian proposal". In "The Atom" she sings ”Oh holy is the atom/ The truly intelligent design/ To which all of evolution/ Is graciously aligned.” In Reno in 2008 prior to singing "The Atom", she said "I've kind of gotten religion lately, I took a sweet religion, one I am sort of familiar with and sprayed a can of patriarchy-off and this is what I came up with."

Ani has also appeared as herself as part of a new wave of protest music sweeping across America in music documentary Sounds Like a Revolution.

Label independence

Ownership of Righteous Babe Records allows DiFranco a great deal of artistic freedom. For example, on her 2004 album Educated Guess, DiFranco played all of the instruments, provided all of the vocals, and recorded the album by herself at her home on an analog 8-track reel to reel. She was also involved in much of the artwork and design for the packaging. The only other person involved in the record's musical production was Greg Calbi, who mastered it.

References to her independence from major labels appear occasionally in DiFranco's songs, including "The Million You Never Made" (Not A Pretty Girl), which discusses the act of turning down a lucrative contract, "The Next Big Thing" (Not So Soft), which describes an imagined meeting with a label head-hunter who evaluates the singer based on her looks, and "Napoleon" (Dilate), which sympathizes sarcastically with an unnamed friend who did sign with a label.

DiFranco has occasionally joined with Prince in discussing publicly the problems associated with major record companies. Righteous Babe Records employs a number of people in her hometown of Buffalo. In a 1997 open letter to Ms. magazine she expressed displeasure that what she considers a way to ensure her own artistic freedom was seen by others solely in terms of its financial success.

Recent work

On September 11, 2007, she released the first retrospective of her career, titled Canon and for the first time, a collection of poetry in a book titled Verses.

DiFranco's album Reprieve was released on August 8, 2006. It was previously leaked on iTunes for several hours around July 1, 2006, due to an error saying it was released in 2002. DiFranco performed with Cyndi Lauper on "Sisters of Avalon", a track from Lauper's 2005 collection The Body Acoustic.

She also collaborated with fellow folk singer Dar Williams on "Comfortably Numb", a Pink Floyd cover song from Williams' 2005 album, My Better Self.

In 2002 her rendition of Greg Brown's "The Poet Game" appeared on Going Driftless: An Artists' Tribute to Greg Brown.

Red Letter Year is DiFranco's most recent studio album, released on September 30, 2008. Says DiFranco about the album:

“When I listen to my new record, I hear a very relaxed me, which I think has been absent in a lot of my recorded canon. Now I feel like I’m in a really good place. My partner Mike Napolitano co-produced this record – my guitar and voice have never sounded better, and that’s because of him. I’ve got this great band and crew. And my baby, she teaches me how to just be in my skin, to do less and be more.”

DiFranco performed a live webcast from Ex'pression College for Digital Arts on June 24, 2010. She debuted a selection of new material, including the songs "Which Side Are You On?" (a cover of the Pete Seeger song), "Life Boat", "Unworry", "Promiscuity", "Splinter", "Amendment", "See See..." and "Hearse".

Discography

Studio albums

1990 - Ani DiFranco

1991 - Not So Soft

1992 - Imperfectly

1993 - Puddle Dive

1993 -

1994 - Out of Range

1995 - Not a Pretty Girl

1996 - Dilate

1998 - Little Plastic Castle

1999 - Up Up Up Up Up Up

1999 - To the Teeth

2001 - Revelling/Reckoning

2003 - Evolve

2004 - Educated Guess

2005 - Knuckle Down

2006 - Reprieve

2007 - Canon (compilation)

2008 - Red Letter Year

2011 - Mariachi

Live albums

1994 - An Acoustic Evening With

1994 - Women in (E)motion (German Import)

1997 - Living in Clip

2002 - So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter

2004 - Atlanta - 10.9.03 (Official Bootleg series)

2004 - Sacramento - 10.25.03 (Official Bootleg series)

2004 - Portland - 4.7.04 (Official Bootleg series)

2005 - Boston - 11.16.03 (Official Bootleg series)

2005 - Chicago - 1.17.04 (Official Bootleg series)

2005 - Madison - 1.25.04 (Official Bootleg series)

2005 - Rome - 11.15.04 (Official Bootleg series)

2006 - Carnegie Hall - 4.6.02 (Official Bootleg series - available in stores)

2007 - Boston - 11.10.06 (Official Bootleg series)

2008 - Hamburg - 10.18.07 (Official Bootleg series)

2009 - Saratoga, CA - 9.18.06 (Official Bootleg series)

2009 - Chicago - 9.22.07 (Official Bootleg series)

2010 - Live at Bull Moose Music (Limited edition)

EPs

1996 - More Joy, Less Shame

1999 - Little Plastic Remixes (limited distribution)

2000 - Swing Set

Demos

1989 - Demo tape (unreleased)

Videos

2002 -

2004 - Trust

2008 - Live at Babeville

Poetry

2004 - ""

2007 - Verses

Other contributions

2004 – – "Bliss Like This"

2006 - Jason Karaban - "Doomed to Make Choices"

2008 - The City That Care Forgot - Contributed backing vocals to the title track of Dr. John's 2008 album.

2009 - Jason Karaban - "Sobriety Kills"

2010 - Anais Mitchell - "Hadestown"

See also

Righteous Babe Records

:Category:Righteous Babe artists

References

External links

The Righteous Babe homepage

Ani DiFranco at Rolling Stone

Category:1970 births Category:Living people Category:American composers Category:American female singers Category:American folk guitarists Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American female guitarists Category:American folk singers Category:Feminist artists Category:Anti-corporate activists Category:Bisexual musicians Category:Musicians from New York Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American musicians of Italian descent Category:Righteous Babe artists Category:American buskers Category:People from Buffalo, New York Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:LGBT composers Category:LGBT parents Category:Grammy Award winners