Communist country music / left-libertarian country music?

Thunaraz

My search results haven't yielded anything. Does anyone know of any left leaning country music? ofcourse folk has a strong tradition but I want to stress that I strictly mean country music. instrumental tendencies like Hank Williams Jr., John Anderson, etc etc

Jackson Browne? John Denver? Johnny Cash? I'm not sure if "anarcho-country" is even a thing; mostly just left-activist type of people. I'm not a huge country music fan, with it being associated mostly with rednecks (and not the revolty kind).

Hmm, "Sixteen Tons" or "Take This Job and Shove It" (questionable songwriter -- DK did a cover of it though) are just a few working-class-themed country songs, I guess, that spring to mind. I'm more familiar with folk music, Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, etc. and various IWW songs (Joe Hill and so on). It's easier to look there if you're wanting communist/anarchist country-like music.

I do not know of any country music with a specific anarchist or communist content. The history of country is similar to blues music, in that its main purpose was for entertainment and dancing. Like all ‘folk music’ these forms directly related to the lives of the working class people who played and appreciated it. Any politics critical of the status quo were not openly stated. In the blues this was often codified and is still a subject of study.

It is not hard to find examples in country music the living and working conditions of ordinary people. This is particularly true of country music before WW2. For example: Blind Alfred Reed – ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live’ (1929); Bentley Boys - ‘Down On Penny’s Farm’ (1929); The Dixon Brothers - ‘Weaver’s Life’ (1937); The Martin Brothers - ‘The Marion Massacre’ (1929),

This tradition still surfaces occasionally in the music of Townes Van Zandt, Kathy Mattea, Iris Dement, Tom Russell, etc.

Townes Van Zandt & Willie Nelson sing ‘Marie’ on the pleasures of being homeless.
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=Townes+Van+Zandt+%26+Willie+Nelson+Marie#id=1&vid=247e19f69f3977d11c2d63701d20a25f&action=click

Edit
The word ‘codified’ above is not what I meant to say. Instead I wished to refer to the obscure and hidden meanings in some blues songs.

Both Auld-bod and you are obviously more knowledgeable than me. Just to say though, I've been listening to Cash's At Folsom Prison, and I think it's a pretty charming album (aside for its backward moments here and there). The fact that it's performed in a prison also enhances it in a way, hearing the interactions between Cash, the prisoners and guards, etc. I'm personally fond of the tracks "Dark as a Dungeon" (a cover of Merle Travis who also did the Sixteen Tons song), "Folsom Prison Blues," and "25 Minutes to Go."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpZ-2HDJzFw

Johnny Cash made some marvellous recordings. His LP, ‘Bitter Tears’ (1964), put the spotlight on the savage treatment endured by the Native Americans. This was years before Hollywood reflected similar sentiments.

In the audience at Cash’s San Quentin concert, 1st January 1958, was Merle Haggard, who up till then had spent much of his life locked up. He was inspired by Cash to use his musical gifts and though his commercial breakthrough was made singing what became conservative anthems, he did not pursue this path, choosing to express his life in memorable songs.

Very little non-conservative political comment breaks through due to an active political policing. Sometimes this is overt. This was printed in the UK based, ‘Country Music People’ magazine, November 2017, page 40, in what was supposed to be a record review:

‘…Anyone who is a fan of far-left politicians like Bernie Sanders in America and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK will probably love the politics exposed here. Other folks may not be so keen. So does anyone fancy a political lecture? On the track Worlds To Change, the worst song on the album, we are told to get out on the streets. Sadly, if we do we may meet the far-left thugs of ANTIFA who claim to be fighting fascists but if you don’t agree with them, and most people don’t, they will shut you down, often using violence. We also have university students who don’t embrace free-speech. Welcome to the new world of 2017. Around 30% of this album is very political…’

Part of Paul Riley’s review of The Winterlings, American Son CD.

There was a two part podcast on Johnny Cash and prison reform here, haven't actually listened to it yet, but it made me put some of his music on a couple of times and was pleasantly surprised (since I usually write anything remotely country-adjacent off).

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2016/03/29/podcast-johnny-cash-prison-reformer-part-1/

One Piece at a Time is a great workplace sabotage/theft song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws-_syszg84

[youtube]-FHUi_M427Y[/youtube]

the performer of this song himself was a follower of FDR but the song itself is a traditional from the Appalachian region of North Carolina

These are borderline country/folk but the first two have been covered by plenty of country singers.
John Prine sings of the destruction by strip mining of his parents' town; [youtube]DEy6EuZp9IY[/youtube]

Arlo Guthrie sings his dad's song about the death of deported Mexican farm workers - [youtube]F8lRf6fATWE[/youtube]

Then his dad's song about migrant workers getting revenge on a mean railroad brakeman - [youtube]cyByFeUB4n4[/youtube]

Cash is far from perfect it seems though. I mean obviously he's no radical (I'd question his views on women etc.), but I don't really care for his religious interests, support of Billy Graham or posing with Reagan. It somewhat detracts from the "man in black" image, mourning and being the voice of the poor etc., or just shows ignorance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouvLmeiUVSo

COMMUNISM KNOWS NO COUNTRY

another great hobo song by IWW member Harry McClintock

[youtube]ovKk_kPmAk4[/youtube]

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs

...

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
The jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again

and this one

[youtube]8uKbIkYGsIg[/youtube]

Spassmaschine

COMMUNISM KNOWS NO COUNTRY

Took me longer than it should have to get that.

Steve Earle ran with Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, but he ended up a lefty, to wit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9K8b211MJw

Here is playing with Tom Morello (who is wearing an IWW hat) singing a mineworker's lament. At the end he says "If you have a boss, you need a union."

He also has some other songs like one about a prison worker/guard who is haunted by working on death row, (Ellis Unit One) one about Maquiladora worker who quits, heads to California (I think?) and then tries to make money selling drugs but gets locked up (iirc) (Whats a Simple Man To Do) and another called "Rich Man's War"

Finally, he has a song "about heroes" called "Christmas Time in Washington" where he says "Rise up Woody Guthrie, rise up Old Joe Hill" etc.

Then there's Sturgill Simpson, from Kentucky (notice that Coal Country is a bastion of left leaning rural people? UMWA/Redneck traditions die slow I guess). He did a stint in the Navy and doesn't harbor any illusions about it:

"Basic was just like papaw says:
"Keep your mouth shut and you'll be fine"
Just another enlisted egg
In the bowl for Uncle Sam's beater
When you get to Dam Neck
Hear a voice in your head
Saying, "my life's no longer mine"
Have you running with some SAD SOG
BMF sandeaters"

and

"Sometimes Sirens send a ship off course
Horizon gets so hazy
Maybe get high, play a little GoldenEye
On that old 64
And if you get sick and can't manage the kick
And get yourself kicked out the navy
You'll spend the next year trying to score
From a futon life raft on the floor
And the next fifteen trying to figure out
What the hell you did that for

But flying high beats dying for lies
In a politician's war"

Sturgill also protested the latest CMA's in opposition to Trump. Maybe he's a bit of liberal, maybe a lefty, I'm not certain.

Y’all should check out Mike Hellman. mikehellman.com
Also, there are tons of political undertones (and occasional overtones) in many a country song, as some of y’all noted above. A few other notable artists stand out: Otis Gibbs, Justin Payne, Austin Lucas. Bobby Bare also did a damn good job of delivering the raw experience of poor and working class folks in his album “Hard Time Hungrys”. That’s just a start.

dixie chicks lol

Perhaps not true country but enjoyable and amusing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGu__oqMcKM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f88nMWvCZSY

Closest I have found is the amazing Dr Chadbourne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDBhL8Omm7c

I would very strongly recommend Sing Me Home, a compilation of folk and country cover songs recorded as a benefit for long-term anarchist prisoners last year - some are more on the folk side of the fence, but some are very solidly country. And looking into the sources of some of the songs covered led me to discover Lavender Country, a fascinating gay revolutionary country music project from the early 1970s. Waltzing Will Trilogy (cw for some very dark lyrical material) has a refrain of "With a good dose of insurrecution/we could wipe that clap-trap jailhouse off the map!", which is probably as perfect an anarchist/communist country slogan you could hope for, and Back in the Closet Again would be a fantastic name for a country song anyway, but is even more interesting because the narrator is having to go back into the closet following a failed revolutionary attempt, where an uprising has collapsed following infighting brought on by homophobic prejudices among some revolutionaries. (Cue denunciation of "identity politics", I suppose...)

I came in here to post "Waltzing Will Trilogy" but I see R Totale's got it covered!