I Hear Them All

Punk Rock Woody
When I first wrote about the Dave Rawlings Machine's Friend of a Friend I enthused about how a feeling of great possibility emanated from the album. Seeing the band live in 2009 at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston only confirmed that feeling. Fortunately, someone recorded the next night’s DRM show, and doubly-fortunate that recording just got passed on to me by my pal John. One of the stand-out tracks meshes fellow Machine and Old Crow Medicine Show member Ketch Secor’s beautiful “I Hear Them All” and Woody Guthrie’s sturdy and triumphant sing-a-long “This Land is Your Land.” It’s one of those heaven-made matches.

I Hear Them All - Dave Rawlings Machine
This Land is Your Land - Dave Rawlings Machine

There are different versions of “This Land,” and I don’t think it’s an accident that Rawlings & friends decided to include two of the “extra” verses of “This Land” when they paired it with “I Hear.” While the most well known version of the song celebrates the natural wonders of the land and the right for all to full participation in the life of the country, the extra verses call attention to the stark economic inequities and exclusionary practices which deny this right.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Those verses jive quite well with the sentiments expressed in “I Hear.”

I hear the crying of the hungry
In the deserts where they're wandering
Hear them crying out for Heaven's own
Benevolence upon them
Hear destructive power prevailing
I hear fools falsely hailing
To the crooked wits of tyrants when they call.

It’s not hard to imagine finding those lines in the pages of the lefty folk magazine Broadside or being sung, like Woody’s song, at a 60s anti-war rally. And while a lot has changed in the country for the good since the sixties, there’s still plenty of same as it ever was injustice and rabid inequality. Perhaps at no time during the past 50 years was this more evident than during the Bush administration’s sorry, and yes, racist response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. OCMS did right by the post-Katrina gulf stream waters town of New Orleans when they filmed the “I Hear” video there.



Both are deeply American songs of affirmation: your voice will be heard and this sprawling landscape and all-men-are-created-equal idea called America has room for everyone. They are affirmations only partially incarnated throughout our history (to put it all too kindly), but they place a demand on us to find ways to make that incarnation more true to the ideals expressed.

If the world serves up a shot of the Machine in a town near you, get yourself to the bar lickety-split. Here’s the band singing the gospel at Bonnaroo 2010.