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We asked Eugene to give this workshop because we like his work and think he could be an inspiring teacher. Eugene's music differs from very heavy noise shit, to acoustic guitar & banjo works, from 'country protest songs' (and any other kind of protest songs) to collaborations with Camper Van Beethoven, Zu, John Zorn and Kevin Blechdom (and many others). He's the perfect inbetween for virtuoso (and sometimes whacky) guitar playing on one hand, and the very basic song writing and playing (call it 'weird folk') on the other. And he's a very sympathetic and approachable person.

'Students' can bring an instrument (if they play any) and songs, or ideas for songs. In the evening there will be a very informal presentation of the works that were made or discussed in the afternoon.

Eugene Chadbourne protest songs workshop

(an introduction, in his own words)

I had begun playing protest songs on my guitar prior to the important experience of hearing singer and songwriter Phil Ochs live at the University of Colorado Mackie Auditorium in Boulder circa 1969. Just by learning the songs on the radio one would be immediately playing protest songs, or as immediate as one could get the fingers to make the chords. I had to go to Phil Ochs concerts alone because all of my friends hated his voice. This meant I could be moved more deeply by his performance, there was nobody to act cool around. I wanted to be like him, to make up songs about peasants being killed in foreign countries that would make people laugh and cry—in the same verse! Later I appreciated Ochs’ unusual and sometimes difficult chord changes. I talked about both his music and lyrics in a workshop on Protest Songs held in January, 2009, at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. I also brought along the morning paper so we could talk about which newspaper stories could prompt good songs, or what issues would be the sort that a good protest song would take on. Of immediate concern to the public was pressure on the government to allow a new pulp mill to begin operating, providing jobs in a bad economy but also highly potential of befouling the pristine landscape. We talked about the kind of song that might come out of an issue such as this, perhaps forceful and emotional but also dull unless the songwriter came up with something special—just the importance of the issue wasn’t enough. I demonstrated some of my own songs including They Can Make it Rain Bombs (But they can’t Make it Rain) and Land of Use to Be. We also talked about the page five story, a woman who had burned her house down trying to set her husband’s penis on fire. I used it as an example of the type of violent and scandalous incident that is at the heart of much songwriting, from Scottish ballads to honky tonk country and western. I discussed the philosophy of songs that attack the violence in society by detailing it. Then I played a song I had written the night before, entitled Birthday Song. It starts out by detailing some of the horrible incidents of the last 24 hours, including an Israeli attack on Gaza and a Tamil terrorist bombing in Colombo. Actually this is just a wind up for the real heart of the song, a detailed attack on the disappointing details of my own life and life in general. I explained why I thought this was a kind of “personal protest song”, a type of song I was interested in exploring in this period. Several members of the workshop presented songs, both in live performance and on recordings they brought. Other subjects we discussed included the presence of protest material in so many different genres and the way some material that certainly could be classified as protest material is passed off as something else entirely. These are the sort of subjects and interchange that I think would be interesting in a meeting of this sort, as well as the possibility of choosing a repertoire of material and arranging it for presentation later that evening. Specifically for the Dutch participants as well as for my own enjoyment, I would be like to hear protest songs in the rich sound and cadence of the Dutch language and hope this can be part of the program in development.


Kaarten

De volgende kaarten zijn beschikbaar:

  • Normaal
    Voorverkoop: N.v.t.
    Deurverkoop: € 25.00

Locatie

WORM
Boomgaardsstraat 71
3012 XA Rotterdam

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