Utah Phillips talks to Democracy Now's Amy Goodman about his career in folk music. Utah was one of our greatest songwriters and storytellers and a great teacher. I met Utah a couple of times at a little folk club in Leucadia, California where I used to hang out back in the mid eighties, and attended a couple of workshops that he gave at the short lived San Diego Folk Festival. He was a genuinely good man, a fine performer and a real philosopher. At different times in his life he had been a soldier, a historian, a hobo and a politician. He knew everything there was to know about the American labor movement and all the songs that had ever been written about the struggle for social justice and workplace equality. Utah passed away two years ago and it left a big hole in the folk music community and in the lives of everyone who had met him. He lives on though, through his songs and his writings, the recordings of his radio show, and the humor and wisdom that he spread around while he was here.
In this video he tells us all how important it is to own your own work. Utah made his living performing and recording music, and he worked real hard to do that, but he also worked real hard to remain independent. In the video he tells how Johnny Cash called him up one day and asked for permission to record a whole album of his songs, and why he decided to say "no." There's a lot of food for thought in this interview for independent musicians. Record companies, and managers and world tours aren't all they're cracked up to be. Money isn't all it's cracked up to be, either. Woody Guthrie turned down the best paying gigs he was ever offered, too. Making a living is one thing. Making a killing is another...
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