Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors is an Americana band based in Nashville, which has been performing and recording since 2006. They have now released six very fine albums, choc full of good tunes, good musicianship and good feeling. Along the way, they’ve played on stages with Ryan Adams, the Avett Brothers, John Hiatt, Needtobreathe and others. Last year Holcomb relaunched the Moon River Music Festival in Chattanooga which had sold out crowds and featured artists like Margo Price, the Avett Brothers, Mavis Staples, Jason Isbelland Brandi Carlile.
The new album from the band, Dragons, is an upbeat, infectious affair, with songs co-written by Lori McKenna, Natalie Hemby, Zach Williams of The Lone Bellow, producer Cason Cooley, and Ellie Holcomb. You’ll find yourself humming along, tapping your toes and generally the better for having listened to it. It’s an assured slice of sunny Americana. That’s not to say it’s in any way trivial – Holcomb says he has never worked harder on his song-writing than on this album, and the lyrics are in turn wryly amusing, clever, poignant and serious about themes like grief and getting older.
One of the album highlights is You Want What You Can’t Have, featuring Lori McKenna. It’s got an infectious rhythm and tune, but Holcomb says it deals with the “fight for contentment in a world of comparison, greed and dissatisfaction.” And then there’s the title track, Dragons, an out and out country song with an inspirational message which evokes the spirit of Holcomb’s grandfather – “Go swimming in the ocean on New Year’s Day, Don’t listen to the critics, Stand up and bear witness, Go slay all the dragons that stand in your way.” Good advice – but maybe I’ll not plunge into the north Atlantic just after Christmas!
We talked to Drew about the album:
DATC: Drew, the new album, Dragons, is terrific. One of your best, for me, up there with my own favourite, Good Light. You’ve said it was largely inspired by the quote, “Always be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Drew Holcomb; I think there is a lot despair, apathy, and hopelessness in our world today. There is also too much “othering” and marginalizing. I find empathy and loving the stranger to be a baseline moral value that we must cultivate in our lives. I want my music to be something that brings people together, while also not being escapist. I think telling my own story is the way to do that.
DATC: Can you tell us a bit about, first of all, writing the songs on the album (I gather some were co-written), and then the recording of the album?
Drew: I wrote “Family” and “See the World” first, by myself, then started writing alongside other friends who are artists and songwriters. Lori McKenna, Natalie Hemby, Sean McConnell and others.
DATC: The first song, Family, is a great opener, a joyous celebration of family, even though “it ain’t always pretty, drive you insane.” How important has family been to you?
I have over thirty cousins, dozens of aunts and uncles and I grew up 5 doors down from my maternal grandparents. I am the 2nd of 4 children and we have 3 of our own now. Family is very important to me. Family has been a majority of the cast of characters in my life.
DATC: You’ve got some great collaborators – as well as Ellie, you have Lori McKenna, The Lone Bellow and Natalie Hemby. Can you say a bit about working with these artists and why you had each one on these particular songs?
Drew Holcomb: I usually don’t co-write but decided to give it a try this record, and it was mostly with people who I already love and trust. We had a great time. “Dragons” for instance was written with Zach Williams from the Lone Bellow, and it all started about a conversation about the big personalities of our grandfathers. The writing with these friends was very narrative and personal.
DATC: You Want What You Can’t Have is a jaunty, toe-tapping song, but it’s got a bit of a punch, with “we want the spark, but we don’t want the burn, we want the love, but we don’t want the hurt,” doesn’t it?
Drew Holcombe: Yes it does. “Some people stay up all night, praying for a child of their own…” is also a gut-wrencher. Lori and I wanted to say something unifying and universal and stinging while also looking in the mirror. Saying hard things to the world while preaching them to yourself always makes the medicine go down better!
DATC: And Maybe kind of continues the theme with “everything is never enough…maybe we’re not supposed to try everything.” It’s a pretty explicit comment about the consuming, individualistic society we’ve become. You don’t shy away from making that sort of serious point in your songs. How much is that informed by your faith and how do you tread the line between that and not wanting to be overly explicit?
Drew Holcomb: I honestly don’t think about the “line,” I just write what I want to write and let the chips fall. This song, “Maybe” was written about a conversation about the never-ending pressure to be interesting on social media. Sometimes what we need is less, not more.
DATC: I love the positivity of title track, Dragons – can you say something about the background to that song?
Drew Holcomb: My grandfather was a pretty legendary guy… He was a surgeon during World War Two, took his family to Kenya for a year in the late 60’s to do surgery there, he loved to play golf, tennis, fish, hunt and do taxidermy. He died about 17 years ago and this song is about a dream of him coming back to give me advice.
DATC: You’ve just organized another Moon River festival – tell us something about that and what the festival is all about.
Drew Holcomb: It’s really just about great music, a great location, and community. We have been doing it for 6 years, and it keeps growing and getting better and better. It has sold out in a day for the last two years. This year was especially fun for me because we had Brandi Carlile headlining and we closed the festival with John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery” together.
DATC: More generally, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors have become pretty successful, but I’m sure it’s been a tough ride at times. Did you ever feel like giving up?
Drew Holcomb: All the time… Making your living as a creative person is a roller coaster of self-doubt, high highs and low lows. There have been many times in the last 15 years I have thought about giving up. The travel is brutal, the sleep, eating etc. on the road is hard on your body, and you are opening up your soul on stage every night in hopes that the crowd reciprocates, which is not always the case.
DATC: Finally, Drew, what sort of music does Drew Holcomb like to listen to and who, would you say are your favourite songwriters?
Drew Holcomb: I listen to lots of things. I would say my favorite bands of the last 15 years have been Avett Brothers and Wilco, but I honestly listen to everything.
Rev Gary Davis is “one of the greatest figures of…twentieth century music.”
I’ve been trying to learn a couple of Rev Gary Davis songs on my guitar of late (helped by the wonderful Ernie Hawkins tutorials) and can report that they are fiendishly tricky to get under your fingers – especially for a modest player like myself. I’ll not be posting YouTube videos of myself anytime soon (to your great relief!).
He is surely one of the most under-rated guitarists of all, inexplicably not featuring in Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list. And how often do you hear his name mentioned when you and your friends are discussing great guitar players? I suppose acoustic guitar players don’t tend to be mentioned as often as the great electric players, but even given that, overlooking Gary Davis’s skills is very remiss.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been some notable accolades from significant sources:
Bob Dylan said Davis was “one of the wizards of modern music.”
Bob Weir (Grateful Dead) said he had “a Bachian sense of music which transcended any common notion of a bluesman.”
Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane) suggests Davis is “one of the greatest figures of…twentieth century music.”
Alan Lomax called him, “one of the really great geniuses of American instrumental music, a man who belongs in the company of Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet.”
Although he shared with Robert Johnson incredible guitar chops and musical nous, in important ways, Davis was the exact inverse of Johnson. Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil in return for his guitar skill – although of course this has been debunked as a myth arising from a old African folk tale about the crossroads magic, told to try explain Johnson’s rapid improvement in his mastery of the instrument (the truth is much more prosaic – see our review of Conforth & Wardlow’s recent Johnson biography).
Nevertheless, Johnson did have a very negative attitude to religion, blaspheming vehemently when drunk and had a penchant for hoodoo. Davis, on the other hand, spent his life as a Baptist minister, seeking to save souls, and refusing to sing the blues in public for most of his life, even though that decision likely cost him professionally and economically.
Gary Davis’s guitar playing and all-round musical skill is all the more remarkable given he was blind and born into deep poverty. His near complete blindness seems to have been caused during early childhood, by the lack of proper medical care. “I could tell the look of a person, but to tell who it is, I’m not able to do that,” he said in later life. Davis was born in 1896 to poor sharecroppers in South Carolina. He was the eldest son of his mother’s eight children, all the rest of whom died young, most in infancy, again the result of non-existent medical care for black communities.
His father was often in trouble and ended up shot dead after reportedly slitting a lover’s throat. His mother, it seems, was also a philanderer and had no time for her children, and abandoned young Gary to his grandmother’s care, causing considerable him considerable emotional turmoil, which we can surmise persisted throughout his life: Ian Zack says, “It’s surely no coincidence that the themes of death, abandonment, the lost child in the wilderness and a reunion with his mother ran through Davis’s gospel message and music.”
Of his mother’s abandonment, Davis later said,
“I felt horrible about it ‘cause I felt like I was throwed away…Because of the way she talkin’ to me, she’d wish that I were dead. She tell me that a heap of times.”
Of his blindness and the absence of parental love, in There Was A Time That I Was Blind, on his 1961 American Street Songs album, Davis sings,
“It’s so hard I have to be blind
I’m away in the dark and got to feel my way
And nobody cares for me”
Davis’s grandmother was a Christian woman and taught young Gary the various spirituals he would reprise throughout his career. She took him to church, the Center Rabun Baptist Church, where he sang in the choir. Services were lively, with shouting, hand waving and foot stomping, fiery preaching and enthusiastic singing. Davis became a keen musician as a child, first of all mastering the blues harp, then the banjo and then guitar. Before long he and the guitar were inseparable. Davis said his first memory of hearing a guitar was that it sounded like “a brass band coming through.” If you’re at all familiar with Davis’s music you’ll understand that this is exactly what he ended up doing with his guitar playing, where he plays lead, rhythm and bass parts all at once, mimicking an entire band.
Davis’s first marriage as a young man to Mary broke up, Mary leaving him for another man – another abandonment to add to that of his mother’s, which led to a downward spiral for David into heavy drinking and rambling, playing the blues on the streets, in barrelhouses, country jukes, dancehalls and private parties.
His life was to turn around however in 1934 when he had a kind of vision of both a fowl and a young child vying for his attention. For Davis this was the devil versus an angel which was beckoning him to God. Right then, Davis said he surrendered and gave up to God – “give up entirely.” He was ordained at the Free Will Baptist Connection Church within 3 years, and was soon known as the Reverend Gary, from this point on harnessing his considerable guitar prowess in the service of encouraging the faithful and saving souls.
His song Great Change Since I Been Born highlights the practical difference faith brings – “since I been born,” of course referring to the idea of coming to faith as a “new birth,” as per John’s gospel chapter 3. That “road I used to walk, I don’t walk no more,” he sang, and, like the author of Psalm 40, he had a “new song.”
Davis’s commitment to his faith and refusal to sing the blues cost him dearly and ensured his talents largely remained hidden until the ‘60s when he was “discovered” in New York City. A college student who heard Davis play at that time said of him, “He was really an uplifter, [trying to get everyone] to focus their attentions on things other than their immediate frustrations.”
And there, I think, we’re at the heart of Davis’s faith. He had his faults and acted in quite un-preacherly ways at time – cussing, heavy drinking, eventually singing some bawdy blues songs and toting a gun. But his own life, lived in poverty and the restrictions of his blindness, and the experience of early abandonment led him to embrace a faith that helped him transcend the racism, the poverty and all the rest of the difficulties he experienced. And part of that was the hope that there was something beyond this life – songs like I’m Going to Sit on the Banks of the River, Twelve Gates to the City, Soon My Work Will All Be Done, I’m Gonna Meet You at the Station are all about the Christian believer’s heavenly hope.
That’s been on my mind a bit of late – someone I’m close to is likely close to the end and it sure is sobering to hear the doctors talk frankly and in some detail about his dying. His faith, however, is luminous, the product of a life well lived with a deep trust in God’s grace.
Gary Davis’s Death Don’t Have No Mercy is a stark reminder of the reality of what lies ahead for all of us. The New Testament writer Paul saw death as an enemy, and it surely is. But the resurrection of Jesus, he said, means that the sting of this last enemy has been drawn, its victory nullified, with the result that “mortal bodies [will] put on immortality.” So – Paul again – “if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” But, he goes on to say, there is indeed reason to hope for more, because of the resurrected Jesus.
Christians believe there is hope in the here and now. But, ultimately, it becomes important that there can be hope beyond the here and now. The question for all of us, as Bob Dylan puts it, is “Are You Ready?”
The blues is dead is a phrase you occasionally hear. It’s also the title of a song on Spectacular Class, an album of timeless acoustic blues, released a few months ago by 22-year-old Jontavious Willis, who hails from Greenville, Georgia. Importantly, though, Jontavious’s song title has a question mark and this hugely gifted artist uses the song to disabuse us of any notion that the blues have passed their sell by date. Such talk just makes him “scratch my head.” Jontavious knows that “the blues ain’t goin’ anywhere, the blues been around for a great long time,” As long as people have “situations and problems on their mind,” the blues ain’t going anyway. So, “stop with that foolish talk.”
Once you listen to this talented young man, who has delivered an album that sounds at once traditional but at the same time entirely fresh, with an outstanding set of songs driven by his top-notch guitar picking and his hugely entertaining vocals, you realize that the blues are nowhere near dead. In the hands of Jontavious Willis, the future of the blues is secure.
And that’s the opinion of the legendary Taj Mahal, who said, “That’s my Wonderboy, the Wunderkind. Jontavious is a great new voice of the 21st century in the acoustic blues.” Keb’ Mo’ too has recognized his talent, working with him in the recording of Spectacular Class and taking him on tour with him.
Like many other musicians, Willis grew up singing in church from an early age, encouraged by his grandfather. He started playing guitar when he was fourteen and five years later was playing on stage with Taj Mahal. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, an excellent song writer, a talented guitarist and a hugely entertaining performer.
And, he’s a nice guy. As I found out when I got the chance to chat to him one day recently during his busy US tour.
Gary Congratulations on the new album, Spectacular Class. It’s terrific, it was one of our best albums of 2019 so far, in the list that we did a couple of months ago. It’s had a great reception, been very well received. I guess you’ve been pleased about that?
Jontavious Oh most definitely. It’s been great and I’m proud of it. We did a good job and worked hard and now I’m very proud of it.
Gary Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the making of it. Both Keb’ Mo’ and Taj Mahal have been involved I gather.
Jontavious Yes. Keb’ was strongly involved. But you know, I think it took us two, maybe three days to make it. And it was real easy. Keb’ made it real nice. He was very easy to work with. My first album, I did it all by myself and it was a lot harder. Keb’ taught me a lot of things in the studio. We did it in three days and it was good. I wrote all the songs, Yeah, it was fantastic.
Gary What sort of things do you think you learned from Keb Mo’?
Jontavious I learned a lot of technical things, a lot about the board, more about how to get different sounds, and mixing and mastering. I learned more about the other side of things, not just the performance aspect, mixing sound and making the record.
Gary And Taj Mahal has made some very nice comments about you?
Jontavious Yeah that’s my buddy! Yeah, Taj, he e-mailed me almost every other week.
Gary That’s fantastic. Because he’s a legend really, isn’t he?
Jontavious Oh yeah, and he’s also a great person and a great mentor. Aside from being legendary, he’s just a great man in general.
Gary So how did you come in contact with him?
Jontavious I met Taj in August 2015. We had a mutual friend and he’d seen a video of mine that was posted on YouTube. He enjoyed it and he had a show in Atlanta and invited me to come there and play two songs for him. And the rest is history!
Gary So he liked it.
Jontavious Yeah, he liked it. He called me up on stage – that was the first time I played for a pretty large crowd. It looked like it was two thousand people out there. I’m not sure how many. There was a lot of people there.
Gary Did that make you feel a bit nervous?
Jontavious Well I was more nervous that Taj was sitting beside me than I was with all the people! He didn’t leave the stage. When I played, he stayed right there, his hand patting on his leg while I was playing, so that made me nervous.
Gary So no pressure!
Jontavious No, and I never encountered pressure ever again after that day!
Gary Fantastic. I gather you’ve played a few shows with Keb’ Mo’ in the last couple of months. How has that been?
Jontavious It’s been great. Yeah, I played a few. He gave me 45 minutes, you hone in on how many songs it takes to, you know, complete it. It sharpened me up pretty good and I get to always check out what Mr. Keb’ is doing. That’s always a pleasure. And just hanging out with him. I always enjoy just talking to people more so than anything, just talking to people and getting to spend quality time not just strictly music, but getting to know each other.
Gary That’s very cool. You have a great song on Spectacular Class called The Blues is Dead? It’s a proposition that you clearly don’t agree with! What sort of blues particularly appeals to you?
Jontavious I have an appetite for music in general but I love all different styles of blues. I don’t go out with a band, but I tell people I enjoy blues from the ‘20s to the late ‘50s. That’s about my span with blues. I enjoy Chicago blues from Tampa Red to Muddy Waters. But yeah, it’s all around. The only thing about playing solo is you don’t have to worry about missing anybody else if you want to change the tempo. If you want to do what you want to do, you can do it. You don’t have to worry about messing up your bandmates.
Gary And are you finding that out there there’s a real appetite for the sort of traditional acoustic blues that you’re playing?
Jontavious Yes most definitely. People are enjoying it. And I try my best to deliver it in a way that’s enjoyable not just, you know, something nostalgic. I try to bring something new to the table, at the same time while being true to what I love and the music.
Gary Yeah, I think you get that sense when you listen to the album, Jontavious. Obviously, it’s very traditional in one sense, but there’s something very fresh and modern about it and there’s a good sense of fun coming through as well.
Jontavious Oh yeah, most definitely. I think it’s a big misconception that the blues, traditional blues, has to be not really engaging or interesting, but you know there are so many different elements. There’s a lot to do with just knowing the history of the music and being from the area of the culture, just knowing that there are so many different aspects of blues. I try to get those points across. Blues is not just sad. It’s happy, it’s angry, every emotion.
Gary So what is it do you think about this music which has been around for such a long time that still resonates with people today?
Jontavious Well for me, being from the south, from where it originated and being around the people that it originated from, it’s always been the truth. And I always have enjoyed the truth. And so that’s my main thing about the blues. People telling a story just like it is – not sugar coating it. I started out in the church and that was a different truth, so I always enjoy any music that represents truth.
Gary Well now that you mentioned that you grew up singing in the church, how important is that background for you both musically and maybe personally?
Jontavious Oh, very important. I learned almost everything I know about music in church. I didn’t know it at the time but I found out about being able to read a crowd. Being able to learn timing, being able to know different phrasing. You know how to present a song and actually be a great performer of a song. Making people feel like they are part of the song and a part of your performance. All of that became instrumental in my music career and my life. So, I learned a lot. It was also communal, going to church was communal. Singing was communal. I always felt better when I was singing in church with my grandpa…I started singing behind my granddaddy.
Gary Fantastic. Now tell us a bit about your guitar playing. You’ve got that highly rhythmical country blues picking down to a fine art. How did you get started playing the guitar and how did you how did you get good?
Jontavious Well I started playing guitar when my dad bought me a guitar on December twenty four 2010. I just started playing – that’s pretty much it! And I kept on doing it, that was basically it. I’d listen to records sometime.
Gary Did you use Youtube videos or did you just listen to records?
Jontavious No I didn’t use YouTube videos because I didn’t play in standard tuning until about 4 years ago. I was playing in alternate tunings. Ever since I learned, playing guitar was what I wanted to do with myself
Gary Very good. So, you just experimented yourself and taught yourself.
Jontavious Yeah that’s it.
Gary I understand you play other instruments as well.
Jontavious Yeah, I play a little bit of harmonica and a little banjo. Not much.
Gary Very good. And Jontavious, you’re a graduate of Colombus State University I understand. What did you graduate in by the way?
Jontavious I had a B.A. in Social Science.
Gary OK. And you’ve obviously decided to make a career out of performing and recording. So, what’s the what’s the attraction of the uncertainties of life as a musician over getting a steady job as a as a graduate?
Jontavious Well I mean I’m a go with the flow kind of guy! And I have been living off music comfortably very well and I’m making more now than I would be otherwise!
Gary So you going to stick with it!
Jontavious If there ever comes a time when I have to make tough decisions I’m always ready! But it seems like It has been doing well. So, I will let the universe take care of itself.
Gary So how are you enjoying life on the road so far?
Jontavious Oh I love it. Every minute of it. I see something different every time and I’m meeting new people. Every almost every town I go in I’ve got a friend. So it’s amazing.
Gary That’s fantastic. And you have a busy schedule of touring over the next few months?
Jontavious Yes I do. Currently I have l think four more shows in the States. And then and end of the month I do Norway, Switzerland and Denmark. And then up next month sometime I get back on the road with Keb’. And yes, I’m happy.
Gary Very cool. Jontavious, thank you so much for talking to us. It’s been great talking to you all the best.
“The finest rock songwriter after Dylan and the best electric guitarist since Hendrix.” Los Angeles Times.
Richard Thompson, looking fit and healthy, gave a rousing solo acoustic performance in the rather grand surroundings of Belfast’s Ulster Hall, getting a standing ovation from the delighted audience. He’s an iconic figure, featuring on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” winning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association in Nashville, several Grammy nominations and an OBE.
He was part of the English folk-rock band, Fairport Convention in the late 60s and early 70s before launching a successful period with Linda Thompson and then his solo career, which has seen him release 18 studio albums and play with a who’s who list of major rock artists and his songs covered by artists like Emmylou Harris, David Gilmour and The Blind Boys from Alabama, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, and Don Henley. His 18th album, 13 Rivers was released in 2018 to great acclaim.
Here’s what we learned:
1. A Richard Thompson concert is far from old minor key English folk songs and sea shanties. Yes, there’s folk, but with a huge variety of styles and tempos, and some full-blooded rock’n roll too, all peppered with self-deprecating banter and humour. It makes for a fine evening’s entertainment.
2. Sometimes you need more than three chords and the truth. And with Richard Thompson, you get a kaleidoscope of chords, runs, fills, arpeggios, harmonics and more, in a virtuoso display of guitar playing that will have your jaw dropping and your foot a-tapping.
3. Who needs a band, when you play bass, chords and lead, all at the same time, with great attack and panache to accompany your impressive vocal performance?
4. Lowden acoustic guitars “are the best out there, if you ask me,” said Thompson, praising the highly acclaimed Northern Irish luthiers. On the evidence of this masterful display of guitar wizardry, there can’t be much argument.
5. It’s great to have a trademark – in Richard Thompson’s case, his black beret, which he hasn’t taken off since 1984 (just joking!). His other trademark, of course, is his terrific song-writing skills, aptly demonstrated in song after song from each decade of his long career. Musically rich and lyrically clever, with wit, sarcasm, and great story-telling, the songs’ music and lyrics interweave powerfully.
6. Forty and fifty-year-old songs can still be magical. Thompson’s Bright Lights which “brushed the lower regions of the Top 40” in 1974, along with Dimming of the Day and Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes, all stirred great memories and were warmly received by the enthusiastic Belfast crowd. Songs that stand the test of time.
7. In your 8th decade, you can still look fit and robust and give nearly two hours of fabulous entertainment, singing and playing your heart out. It helps, clearly, if you play tennis and cricket regularly.
Oh, and the sweet, sweet voice and song writing talents of Katherine Priddy who was the evening’s support deserves a mention. One to keep an eye on.
“The blues is the truth,” said Willie Dixon, famously. “The blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.”
One the one hand, the blues have always been entertainment, music to dance to, but it’s essentially music that is rooted in hard times, trouble and suffering. Which Dixon understood well. Born in Vicksburg in 1915 in a household of 14 children, his family lived in what he described as a “raggedy” house. Even worse was where he ended up aged eleven after running away from home – “man, you’re talking about a shack… the house [I stayed] in had great big holes in the floor.” Trying to steal some fixtures from an old derelict house got him sent to a jail-farm when he was twelve where he said, “That’s when I really learned about the blues. I had heard ’em with the music and took ’em to be an enjoyable thing but after I heard these guys down there moaning and groaning these really down-to-earth blues…I really began to find out what the blues meant to black people.”
On another occasion, for a petty charge, Dixon served thirty days at the Harvey Allen County Farm, near the infamous Parchman Farm prison, where the treatment of prisoners was inhumane – “this was the first time I saw a man beat to death,” he said. Dixon himself was brutalized, receiving a blow to his head that made him deaf for about four years. Dixon, in short, knew all about the truth of the blues.
Early blues songs covered the whole gamut of real-life problems and hardships faced by black communities – ill-health, poverty, homelessness, discrimination, police brutality, as well as the vagaries of romantic love. Here’s Victoria Spivey with TB Blues, tuberculosis being a disease particularly associated with poverty:
There’s no hiding from the realities of life with the blues. As slide guitarist Bryn Haworth told me recently, “Blues music to me is honest music. It’s people expressing their sorrow, their pain, their loneliness, their disconnectedness, their questions or anger about things we all feel…It’s honest…honest to God music, really.”
The blues face life head on, honestly, and somehow, often seem to enable a way through, because of that honesty. Honesty, however, seems to be a quality in short supply these days.
Tell the Truth, written by Bobby Whitlock and Eric Clapton, was recorded by Derek and the Dominos in August 1970, and appeared on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Whitlock has described it as a kind of coming of age song, a reminiscence about getting older, but as you listen to the lyrics today, it sounds like a social commentary on the descent of today’s world into double-speak and deceit:
Tell the truth.
Tell me who’s been fooling you?
Tell the truth.
Who’s been fooling who?
It doesn’t matter just who you are,
Or where you’re going or been…
The whole world is shaking now. Can’t you feel it?
Back in 1949, George Orwell’s 1984 was published under the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, and portrays a nightmare vision of a future in which truth has been eclipsed. Orwell said he was worried that the “very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.” Would he have been surprised at where we have reached in today’s world, where the bare-faced lie has become perfectly acceptable and truth in the public sphere scarcely seems to matter?
Robert Musil, the author of the classic The Man Without Qualities in the mid-1930s, wrote, “No culture can rest on a crooked relationship to truth.” And yet here we are. Donald Trump is in the White House, telling more lies each day than you wash your hands (according to CNN, June 2019) – as of June 7 2019, his 869th day in office, the president had made 10,796 false or misleading claims, according to Washington Post’s the Fact Checker’s database. And UK Tories have just installed Boris Johnson as the country’s Prime Minister, a man with a long and well-documented history of playing fast and loose with the truth (as reported by the Independent) – from his days as a journalist with the Times and the Daily Telegraph to backing the infamous claim on the side of the bus that the UK was sending £350m a week to the EU, followed by “let’s fund our NHS instead” during the Brexit referendum campaign.
As Roger Cohen put it recently, “The triumph of indecency is rampant. Choose your facts. The only blow Trump knows is the low one. As the gutter is to the stars, so is this president to dignity. Johnson does a grotesque Churchill number. Nobody cares. The wolves have it; the sheep, transfixed, shrug.”
Of all the disturbing aspects of the rise of petty nationalism and populism which has given rise to racism, xenophobia and increasing polarisation, it is the assault on truth which is perhaps the most undermining of life as we know it. I watched a clip on an US TV programme recently where a woman was asked about Trump’s recorded statement that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone without losing any voters, and she dismissed it out of hand as “fake news” from the dishonest media. Up is down; black is white; I only believe what fits my viewpoint.
But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Harvard professor and four-term United States senator, famously observed, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” That has become almost quaint, so far down the road have we come. Johnson and Trump do not exist in a vacuum; the dishonesty which pervades public life at the highest levels seeps out through elements of the media into the public square and into the lives of individuals. Truth has become devalued and our societies imperilled because of it. As the ancient prophets of Israel said, “Truth has stumbled in the street” (Isaiah 59.14) and “lies and not truth prevail in the land” (Jeremiah 9.3).
We’re grateful for courageous reporters, broadcasters, church leaders and others who speak truth to power, expose lying and call out dishonest leadership. And with a continuous stream of properly fake news, we need to take care what we are prepared to believe. As psychologist Jordan Peterson says, “The small sins of the individual culminate into the great sins of the state.”
Dishonesty is a temptation for us all. Fyodor Dostoevsky warns us in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov, that not to tell the truth risks us losing our sense of reality. To lose the truth is to lose your soul. “Above all,” says Dostoevsky’s Father Zossima, “don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”
Lies and deceit eat away at the fabric of our being. They are truly destructive, each lie causing a little more damage to our characters, until we can scarcely tell truth from untruth.
On the other hand, when you tell the truth, “Everything begins to come together…when you’re around someone who tells the truth everything comes together and that’s the potential destiny of the world…you can bring forth something again to paradise by speaking the truth and you can start in your own life, and in the lives of your own family…It’s the proper way of wending your way through the terrible world without making it worse than it already is and with the possibility perhaps of making it better.”
Someone famously said, “Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth – to see it as it is, and tell it like it is – to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.” Words to live by – despite the salutary fact that this came from Richard Nixon on the occasion of his acceptance of the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1968. The danger of ignoring the advice writ large.
More importantly, two thousand years ago, someone said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” As we discover in the authenticity of the blues, there is something about truth telling that does indeed set us free. Something about facing the realities of the world and our troubles face-on that is the first step to freedom. There’s a deeper freedom than that, though – as a provincial governor found out a long time ago when he faced his prisoner and asked, “What is truth?” There was no answer because the living embodiment of that was standing in front of him.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (Gospel of St. John)
Bryn Haworth is an outstanding slide guitarist and songwriter from the UK who has been making records and performing for the past 50 years. He’s appeared on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test and the John Peel show, was a major figure in the explosion of Jesus Rock in the 1970s and ’80s, and been the guest guitarist on many albums by rock and folk artists.
During the 1970s I nearly wore out my turntable needle playing his Sunny Side of the Street and Grand Arrival albums, and to my delight, I recently discovered a 2006 album called Keep the Faith, which I’ve been playing almost non-stop.
So, it was a particular pleasure to chat to Bryn about the blues, his remarkable journey into faith when he was a successful musician in California in the ‘70s, the important work he’s been doing in prisons over many years and how we need to care for the environment.
I asked him first of all how he would describe the sort of music he makes.
Bryn Well the word I’d use is eclectic really. Because it’s because I was brought up in a house back in the ’50s where all kind of music was played and loved. My mum was the one who bought the records, these old 78 records, and she would buy Elvis, Elgar, Little Richard. She’d buy the Kingston Trio. And it was a big thing when we got a gramophone in the front room. It would be a big deal when you bought a new record, you’d sit down and play it and you’d have your fish and chips and stuff in the room, listening to these records and appreciating them and just enjoying them. So, for me all styles of music are good and to be enjoyed, and I just carried on like that in my writing and playing. So…eclectic, I like all kinds of music. It may not be commercial but I enjoy the freedom!
Gary But a lot of your music has always sounded a bit bluesy to me and you’ve got that lovely slide guitar work. So tell me how you feel about blues music.
Bryn Blues music to me is honest music. It’s people expressing their sorrow, their pain, their loneliness, their disconnectedness, their questions or anger about things we all feel. So you know for me it’s natural to express these things. It’s honest…honest to God music, really. I mean life is hard isn’t it? You know we’ve all been hurt, we’ve all been damaged, or we all hurt others knowingly or unknowingly. And there’s just this whole thing of, you know, unanswered questions – in our hearts this feeling – Where do I belong? Where’s home? And that’s all in the DNA of every one of us. And so, it’s great when music is expressed like that in a simple fashion. So that’s how I feel about blues.
And then look at how many musicians there are in the Bible, like Jeremiah and Habakkuk and David and Job, and you start to see the blues in what they’re saying. There’s so much blues in there. You know in Job 30. 31, it says “my harp is tuned to mourning, my flute to the sound of wailing.” The Message translation says “my fiddle plays nothing but the blues and my mouth harp is wailing.” Job was a musician. And then you got David – “Why is this happening? How long? Where are you God? You know, just real people interacting with a real God, real full on honest to God stuff. Psalm 69 – I love that one: “I’m up to my neck in trouble.” And then Psalm 88 – the last verse “darkness is my closest friend.” And that’s the end of the song.
Gary Although it’s quite interesting, Bryn, when you look at a lot of the Psalms, they’re quite like some of the blue songs, in that they start off really, really dark. You know “Why have you forsaken me” and then by the end of the song, the Psalmist has sort of worked himself through the blues and he’s in a better place. And actually a lot of the blues songs are a bit like that – I think of that old standard Trouble in Mind – I’m gonna lay down my head on some railroad iron and then by the end of the song, it’s you know, the sun’s gonna shine on my back yard some day. Things are gonna get better and there’s a kind of a parallel to the way some of the Psalms work.
Bryn Yeah, yeah, There’s one song of mine from the Rebel Man album called Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do, and it’s really just reading the Prophets where God says, why don’t you love me like you used to, and now you’ve gone off and stuff like that. So that’s a classic blues theme, isn’t it? The reality is that God feels the pain of rejection. God grieves and feels pain – Genesis 6 says the Lord was grieved that he’d made man and his heart was filled with pain, and then you see Jesus, he was rejected and despised. I mean, blues? Is that not blues?
Gary Absolutely right. It’s right there.
And looking back, who are the artists that have influenced you, that have meant something to you along the way, blues or otherwise?
Bryn Well in the blues I like the Johnsons – Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson. I like Elmore James because of the slide. I’m always fascinated by how these guys play. It’s just stunning. And I like the finger-pickers, I like Mississippi John Hurt – I hear a lot of Mississippi John Hurt in Eric Bibb. I just love listening to John Hurt you know, because his spirit is really gentle. He’s not aggressive.
And I also like harmonica players. Little Walter. Because harmonica players like Little Walter are great to copy for slide players. You know, if you’re a slide player and you want to play blues, then you get a lot of your basic blues shapes and patterns from listening to, and trying to emulate and copy, good blues harmonica players. They work within a tight range of notes. So, I’ve always been attracted to them and my ear pricks up to play like that.
And it’s the same with sax players. There are some really good players like King Curtis, black R&B sax player, who played on a lot of the old Arista Records. Like Respect and a lot of the old Motown stuff. And then there’s Junior Walker and the Allstars. If you’re a slide player, they’re great players to just try and copy because they come at it from a different point of view than your Ry Cooders and your Duane Allmans and people like that. You’re really into a different thing and it’s really interesting to learn from them. And there’s a guy called Darrell Mansfield that I really like, a Californian harmonica player. We toured together in Europe quite a bit. I liked him and of course Paul Jones is a great harmonica player.
The main influence I think when I first started playing electric guitar was when I got Soul Dressing by Booker T and the MGs. And I just thought Steve Cropper was the bee’s knees! I thought he was incredible and I learned every solo of his on that album. I just wanted that sound you know. I didn’t really know what he was playing, but in the 60s I thought I’d like to be a psychedelic version of Steve Cropper! But then you see you had Eric Clapton and then you got Hendrix, and I love George Harrison. Willie Nelson, I love. I love his guitar playing, I love Lonnie Mack’s playing. I do like guitar players and I like the ones that are brave.
Gary So looking back over your career, Bryn, you have been described as a pioneer of Jesus music and you were part of the explosion of Christian music in the 70s and 80s. And your Christian faith has continued to be a major emphasis in your work over the years. How do you do you see your music: as Christian music, or do you see it as having a wider appeal?
Bryn Well, you know, I’ve never really gone for a label because first of all I’m a musician. I see myself as a musician who has discovered that there is a God and that he loves me. And I found that great news. And it’s that because I’ve found this for myself, I found a new way of living and a new way of loving and being loved. And Jesus has made all this possible. So yes, I want to communicate this – by the way that I live, and also my work and in writing and communicating. I mean, the thing is, that everybody wants to communicate. And everybody is communicating something. And when you find life like this you just get energized by it and you get captivated by it, and you want to let other people know that He’s real and that His love for them is tangible.
And some of the music and the songs I play like this resonate with a wider audience and that’s just fantastic. But not all my songs are about Jesus, about my faith – I write generally about the whole of life. So, I wouldn’t consider myself just as a Christian musician doing one thing, because I do like to try to write about, and play about, many other things. And hopefully in the future I’ll be get better at it in expressing where people are at, and identifying with them on that basis.
Gary So would you tell us about how you came to faith and why has it continued to be important to you.
Bryn For me it was quite dramatic. There’s a great verse in Isaiah 65 verse one where God says, “I reveal myself to those who did not ask for me and I was found by those who did not seek me” – and this was really me, because I was not interested in, not looking for God. I didn’t know anybody who knew anything about God. It just wasn’t on my radar. I was in a really good band in California and I was making good money and we had a good life. Smoking dope, you know, no crisis, no interest in anything!
And then one night I go to bed and have this really long dream, a very powerful dream where a lot of my old painful memories surfaced. And a lot of hurt and fear and anger came, and all I knew is when I woke up was that I had to come back to England and get right with my dad. I didn’t like him, he didn’t like me and we didn’t talk. I hadn’t thought about him for years. Anyway, that week I got a ticket and went home and ended up living in North Wales. It was the early seventies and if you were kind of a hippie, that’s where you went – North Wales. You got a cottage and chilled. So I came out of that life in California and I had a time out. I had time to look at my life and asking questions like, why do I drink so much, why do I do so many drugs, why am I so angry and fearful, and why am I so driven and insecure? I would never have thought about myself or looked at my own life when I was in California, but when you’re on your own, you’ve got time to think – about your direction and what’s happening to you.
And that’s when I started asking questions about who am I, what am I doing here, and is there a God? I’d never thought about that before and I just started going out for long walks and asking, “God are you there? If you are, then you got to let me know.” That’s how the whole thing started. It wasn’t something that I had been seeking or searching.
So I was kind of woken up by that dream, and I started to examine my life. And then about three years later, we went out for a drive one day. And in the corner of this field was a circus tent. Now for the first time I had started painting, and during that week I had painted a circus tent with red and white stripes. So, in the corner of this field that week was this circus tent, so I said “Hey let’s go to see the circus.” We drove in and it was a gospel meeting. I’d never been to anything like that in my life, and so we stood at the back so we had a quick escape if we didn’t like it. But I was kind of riveted by the whole thing. I didn’t understand what the preacher was talking about – the language he was using was alien to me, but there was this banner over the front of the stage with some of Jesus’s words on it: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” And I thought, “Well, I’ve lived my way for 26 years and it ain’t working.” All my questions hadn’t been answered, but I was thinking, if God is ever going to be real to me I’m going to have to take a step of faith tonight and so, that’s what I did.
I just said, “Jesus if you’re are the way to life I choose to believe you.” And I went forward and I was prayed for. I came out of that tent and I felt like I was home, that I belonged and that God was real. And that was really the beginning of the whole journey of finding out who God really is, rather than how I imagined him. And so that’s how it all happened.
Gary That’s a remarkable story.
Bryn It really it is. There have been lots of other kinds of interventions along the way, things you can’t really explain but you just get the sense that God is drawing us to him through the circumstances of our lives, that through the pain and the difficulties, the damage and the suffering that we struggle with every day, that he’s drawing us to himself and he wants us to call out to him. And that’s all I did. I just called out to him. And that’s how it all started.
And I just found that he wants this friendship. He wants a relationship; he wants to restore and heal and make us new. And I didn’t know anything about that until I made that step of faith in that tent.
Gary Well that’s fantastic. And Bryn, when you’re talking there about people being broken and hard times and so on, that’s something that you have come face to face with in the work that you’ve done over the years in prisons. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that?
Bryn Along with my wife I’ve been involved in prison work for 30 years now. And again, it wasn’t something that I sought to do. I would say that I was called to do it – I was just reading through the gospels and God really spoke to me, and I was eventually given an opportunity to go into prison and I took it. I was kind of cornered, because for about three years I’d be going, Oh I’d love to do that, to go into prison, but I thought, well what would I do? I’m just a musician and I don’t know anybody in prison, and how do you get into prison and so I talked myself out of it. And then suddenly someone said to me, can you do this? So we went in to Wandsworth Prison and the chaplain there – out of all the prisons, he was the only chaplain who said, “Yeah you can come in” – David Cairns was his name – and he let us see what happened in prisons. They have Chaplain’s Hour meetings and then as we were coming out again, he turned round to me and said, “Right, you do it next week!” So that’s how it started.
I was in a church called the Vineyard at that time, a Californian church – the first church plant they did was in Putney where we were in South London. I was on staff at that time. And so I took in a few members of that team and we did an hour long meeting and we’ve been going on like that, and it’s been wonderful. My wife and I love going into prisons. We’ve seen some wonderful things happen. God’s done some wonderful things – we’ve seen people’s lives turned around, changed from the inside out. We’ve seen dramatic physical healings, we’ve seen people emotionally healed. It’s a prisoner’s right to have an hour a week of a religious service. And so, we go in on that basis in the morning, say, and do an hour’s service. I’ll do some worship songs, some of my own songs, I do a short talk from part of the Bible and some prayers, and pray for them at the end. Or in some prisons we do a concert. I’ll go in and do an afternoon concert for the whole prison. And that’s really good.
But generally, when I go in. I always feel out of my depth – even now. I always think this could have been me, because I’ve done things in my life, but the only difference is I just didn’t get caught. It could have been me!
But it is a very creative environment for songwriting as well, because you’ll be standing there in front of these guys and you go, “I need a song that says this,” and I haven’t got one. And so, you go away and write something. And it’s also very creative because different styles of music are really helpful – if you can play reggae, rock, pop, blues, country. Because you’re reaching all different tastes in music. And so it stretches you to see if you can write something that will appeal to them and draw them. But I know from my own experience that people can be transformed and learn to live differently and be a blessing to the earth.
Gary Well that’s fantastic. And is that something that you’re still doing Bryn?
Bryn Yes. I would say the majority of the year I do it. I still do concert work as well. But we do it because we love doing it. Funny enough, we just feel quite at home in prison! It’s not everybody’s cup of tea. But for us, we love it.
Gary Now, you released a song earlier this year called Enough is Enough. Can you tell us about that?
Bryn Well where we live, developers want to cut this 200, 300 year old wood behind the houses where we live. They want to come into the wood and knock all these trees down and build eleven new city style houses. It’s pretty brutal what it will do to the street and to the neighbourhood. So my wife and I found ourselves default leaders of a campaign to stop it, because people can be quite apathetic and they don’t know how to fight. But you got to fight these things, you can’t let people roll over you. And you know this kind of thing is happening all over the country, the indiscriminate felling of trees to build roads and houses and railway lines and stuff like that. But we’re losing so much, so many of the mature trees in this country and we’re the least forested place in Europe. And the trees are our lungs. We need them. And so, I got up one morning and I was just so upset about this whole thing I sat down and wrote this song. Enough is Enough came in about 20 or 30 minutes. I just got the whole thing. And I thought, Fantastic, we can use this as part of our campaign. So I recorded it really quickly. And then I had a friend who works for the BBC and does National Geographic magazine, he said “Oh I love this song, can I will make a make a video of it?” He did it for free and we got a really good video out of it. So, it all came together very quickly and so we’re trying to get that used and played on the radio and on TV. But that’s the story behind it. It’s a protest song!
Gary So is getting involved in that sort of thing, Bryn, integral to your Christian faith?
Bryn Well, you obviously don’t have to be a Christian to feel upset about your planet going down. But, as a Christian, as a believer, I look in Genesis 2 and our original job description when we were put here was to look after this place. To let it grow, let it develop – we were put here as caretakers, or gardeners. So I think that we still have that remit, just to be looking after what God has made and make sure that the next generation when we’re dead and gone has got something to look at, you know.
I like Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. “They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum and charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em.”
Gary Yeah, that just about sums it up, doesn’t it?
Bryn Yeah it does. But you know, we have been given responsibility for the care of this planet and particularly your own locality. And you can do it. You can actually do something about this. We were put here to look after it the planet look after and help it to flourish.
Gary Very good. Well let me ask you this, Bryn. Recently I’ve spoken to a few musicians who are in and around the 70 years of age mark. Chris Smither and Rory Block were a couple of them. They’re both going strong, performing, recording. Chris Smither seemed to be definitely thinking about the aging process. But when I talked to Rory Block, she said she felt like she was just getting started! She was fantastic, really refreshing actually. What about you? Do you still feel inspired to keep going? What’s the motivation at this stage of your life?
Bryn The big one – you’ve only got so much time left. You better get on with it. [laughs]. I guess that’s the one you think about. But I can still stand up to play! The one good thing about playing blues is you can sit down to play and still look cool! When your legs don’t work anymore you can do a B.B. King! So, you’ve got a long career if you can play blues! But yeah, I think it’s the wear and tear. I think if you travel like we’ve done – that’s the hard thing now, the actual travel to gigs and being tired because the roads are so much worse. It seems to take a longer time to get here. There’s also the physical side – your finger joints – I’m 70 – and they suffer from wear and tear. Repetitive strain, basically on your fingers and the joints. There’s one finger that doesn’t work properly anymore, it doesn’t close so you’ve got to figure out different ways of playing chords. But then you see Django Reinhardt with two fingers, so you think, well it must be possible! There are physical things that happen to a lot of guitar players’ hands from just playing so much, especially if you’re an acoustic guitar player.
But I think for me it’s that everybody wants to communicate. You still want to communicate when you have something that’s this good, and you want to communicate life to people and blessing. You want them to know that they’re loved and they’re not alone, that they belong and that they’re connected. You have incredible amounts of energy to keep going out and doing that and seeing these things. And it’s interesting, as you get older, you’re more relaxed, there’s nothing to prove. You just have to keep working hard at what you do and trying to make it sound good, and just keep your standards up.
Gary So from what you were saying earlier, you’re still you’re still performing and you’ve got a performance schedule for the rest of the year.
Bryn I haven’t really gone after gigs really for a long time. I’ve more tended to let them come in and so I don’t do that many. Because the prison work is quite absorbing and interesting. But I still like doing concerts because of the variety of music as compared to a prison. And it’s great if you can get a whole evening – having a first half and a second half to play to people. It’s quite a luxury now to be able to do that. And it’s a good test of whether your chops are still up to it and you can still play and communicate.
Gary So have you plans for a new album at some stage do you think?
Bryn Well I got a title which is good! So, I’m trying to gather ideas around that. I think that’s about as much as I got really. I’m a writer, and you have put your hat on as a writer – roadwork takes a lot of time, so I need to take time off to do it.
Gary Well, we’ll look out for that. Bryn. We’d look forward to doing a review at Down at the Crossroads when that project is completed. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. It’s been great.
You expect a new Keb’ Mo’ album to deliver the goods. For the last 25 years, he’s been releasing high quality blues and roots albums. Oklahoma, even by Mo’s standards is top notch – and surely puts him in line for another Grammy award. Produced by Mo’ and Colin Linden, who plays electric guitar alongside Mo’s resonator on several tracks, the album not only delivers the characteristic laid-back Mo’ sound, but engages with a number of current issues including environmentalism, mental health and immigration.
Mo’ is joined by some formidable musical collaborators, including his wife, Robbie Brooks Moore, Robert Randolph, Taj Mahal, Jaci Velasquez, Rosanne Cash, and Andy Leftwich. All-in-all it’s a wonderfully enjoyable album, seasoned with accomplished musicianship and thought-provoking lyrics.
In 2018, Mo’ produced and performed on Ana Popovic’s I Like It On Top, perhaps her best album, [catch our interview with Ana here] which appealed for equality for women, and now on Oklahoma, he continues to be a spokesperson for the cause with Put A Woman In Charge. It’s a catchy number, enhanced by Rosanne Cash’s vocals, where the efforts of men have left us “standing on the brink of disaster.” That being the case, Mo’ says,
“We’ve got to turn this world around
Call the mothers
Call the daughters
We need the sisters of mercy now.”
It’s time, he says, “to put a woman in charge.”
Now, in case you think this is all some sort of feminist plot, research shows that when more women work, economies grow. Women’s economic empowerment boosts productivity, increases economic diversification and income equality in addition to other positive development outcomes. Increasing the female employment rates in OECD countries to match that of Sweden, could boost their GDP by over $6 trillion.
A report last year from McKinsey and Company said that women’s economic equality is good for business. Companies greatly benefit from increasing employment and leadership opportunities for women, which is shown to increase organizational effectiveness and growth. It is estimated that companies with three or more women in senior management positions score higher in all dimensions of organizational performance.
Interestingly, a study by global consulting firm Hay Group found that women outperform men in 11 of 12 key emotional intelligence competencies and said that “If more men acted like women in employing their emotional and social competencies, they would be substantially and distinctly more effective in their work.” And then there’s some research by the Pew Research Center saying that 34% of American workers say that women have an edge over men when it comes to being honest and ethical, while just 3% believe men are better.
The positive effects of favouring women become very pronounced when we consider developing countries, where traditionally girls are not well educated, are forced to marry young and are restricted from reaching their potential. Investing in the education of girls has been shown to bring high returns in terms of breaking cycles of poverty and aiding economic growth. Importantly, it also improves children’s and women’s survival rates and health, delays child marriage and early pregnancies, empowers women both in the home and the workplace, and helps tackle climate change. Girls’ education also has a transformative effect on health, which can be passed on through generations. Every additional year of school a girl completes cuts rates of infant mortality – the death of children under one year – dramatically.
These benefits to individuals and communities by educating girls and promoting the equality of women are well documented. Yet still:
Around the world 130m girls who ought to be in school are prevented from attending
15m girls will never get to attend school
Globally, over 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men.
Of 189 economies assessed in 2018, 104 economies still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs,
59 economies have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace
In 18 economies, husbands can legally prevent their wives from working.
And at present, fewer than 20% of the world’s heads of state, prime ministers and government ministers are women. Despite recent improvements in women’s political representation, they still occupy fewer than 25% of national parliamentary seats worldwide.
Here’s what’s happening in a world run by men:
There are more than 40 wars going on, causing untold misery to millions. (New Humanitarian)
Some 820m people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. (about one in nine people), with millions of children not getting the nutrition they need. Most of these are in developing countries, where 12.9% of the population is undernourished.
An inadequate response to climate change has led to rising seas and coastal flooding, disasters due to extreme weather, destruction of marine ecosystems, severe drought, affecting poor people disproportionately and much more.
Excluding women from education, the workplace and government hasn’t done us any favours. So yeah, as Keb’ Mo’ says, maybe it’s time we “put the women in charge.”
[For details of one great organization which is working to empower girls and women in impoverished communities, check out Saphara’s Girls Champions Programme.]
DATC: Drew, the new album, Dragons, is terrific. One of your best, for me, up there with my own favourite, Good Light. You’ve said it was largely inspired by the quote, “Always be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” Can you tell us a bit more about that?
