Faith Nolan singer/songwriter, plays guitar, harp, banjo, ukelele- songs focus on social justice , kids music, LGBTQI- Enviornment-anti racism, anti-capitalism-ani-sexism, anti-homophobia- pro peace , love and joy Heritage – Black-Mi’kmaq-Irish , born in Nova Scotia -have recorded 16 CD’s, original many world languages used in lyrics and lots of blues folk jazz, reggae
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Faith Nolan
John O’Connor
John O’Connor
In 1983, while living in Seattle, John O’Connor sent a batch of his songs off to Flying Fish Records cold and–almost unheard of in the music business at that time–landed a contract to make an album of his powerful original songs. Songs For Our Times came out in 1984 and was named one of the best albums of the year by the Washington Post and several folk publications and radio stations.
Geoffrey Himes, in his Washington Post review said of John’s songs, “Mister, Slow It Down,” … is the best hitchhiking song since Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGree.” O’Connor’s “Missy and Me” is the best song about old age since John Prine’s “Hello in There.” “A Cold November,” an a cappella ballad about a poor man harassed by a Chicago cop, echoes Woody Guthrie’s hobo songs.
Almost 40 years later, having traveled the country, touring and working as a union organizer, John has gathered a treasure-trove of songs, stories and poems about the working class, war and peace, love and loss. Craig Harris has said, “…O’Connor has shaped his own acute observations of the working class into songs that beg to be sung along to…” Si Kahn calls his songs “wonderful: direct, simple, singable, powerful.” “Songwriting… right out of the same well that slaked Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger,” commented the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch.
John’s music has always been inseparable from his involvement in working class politics. He began his involvement in the labor movement right out of high school when he went to work in the factories of Waterloo, Iowa. His passion for American folk music led to a career as a folk singer and a cultural educator, performing in concerts, festivals, coffeehouses, schools and colleges, union education programs and political action events.
John recorded three albums with Flying Fish, one of them with the political quartet, ‘Shays Rebellion’, and a CD on the Chroma label. He also recorded a CD produced in conjunction with Collector Records called “We Ain’t Gonna Give It Back”, which is regarded by many as one of the best collections of original songs on the American labor movement. The late Joe Glazer said of John, “He writes the best songs about labor you are likely to hear.” Britain’s Southern Rag has said that “John O’Connor deserves to be numbered with the all-time greats of contemporary folk music.”
In 2017 John released his first CD in more than 20 years. Upon release, Rare Songs was ranked for several weeks in the top 50 albums on the US folk charts. John McCutcheon wrote, “John O’Connor’s wonderful new album, Rare Songs… is a welcome return of one of our best and most humane songwriters.”
Some 50 years after walking through the gates of his first factory job, John is still stalwart in his focus of fighting for the working class and inspiring them with his music and their music. John’s songs have been recorded by numerous singers from around the world. In 2009, the French topical singer, Renaud, adapted and recorded O’Connor’s song of deindustrialization, North by North, which went to number one on the French charts.
Also an accomplished poet, John has seen his poems published in dozens of literary magazines. He has won the Associated Writer’s Program’s Prague Prize and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. His book of poems, Half the Truth, won the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award in 2015.
Tom Rawson
Folksinger/Storyteller/Songleader
Tom Neilson
Donna Nestler
Chris Koldewey
Mainly focusing on Folk Music; he sings, plays guitar, concertina, banjo, fiddle, mandolin. Music of the sea, the land, work, and play, Chris loves to sing, and play with people from all around, in the first “do-it-yourself” music: folk!
Traditional – Singer of songs with a strong historic base. Composed long ago, by those whose names may be long since forgotten, but whose ideas are still relevant today.
Contemporary – Singer of songs that, although written today speak with a voice of timelessness.
Of The People – Singer of songs that “folks” can make their own, and carry on.
Susan Lewis
As a member of the women’s trio Belles of Hoboken in the early 80s (with Janet Stecher and Marcie Boyd), Susan performed throughout the New York City area and recorded numerous songs for the “Fast Folk” musician’s cooperative monthly musical “magazine.” When she moved to Seattle, Susan was a founding member of the quartet Shays’ Rebellion, along with fellow Local 1000 member John O’Connor (as well as Tim Hall and Janet Stecher). Their ‘songs of social movements past and present’ were shared with audiences across the United States and Canada. Their album “Daniel Shays’ Highway” was released on Flying Fish Records (FF427) in 1987.
Susan and Janet teamed up to form the duo Rebel Voices in 1989. They have released 3 albums together: “A Little Look Around”, “Warning: Women at Work”, and “A Piece of the Wall”. They have appeared in concert at coffeehouses, K-12 schoolrooms, colleges, festivals, living rooms, conventions, rallies, picket lines, and union halls across the U.S. and Canada, as well as in England and Portugal. The thousands of hours they’ve spent working together and the love of the material they sing are evident in their confident and inspiring performances. Their performances for organizations and events representing a broad spectrum of political and social causes have gained them enthusiastic fans wherever they go.
Most recently, Susan has begun to delve into musical theatre, as a cast member in the Vashon Repertory Theatre 2021 production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song.
Valdy aka Paul-Valdemar Horsdal
Travelling folksinger, still digging it after more than fifty years on the road,
still learning and curious.
Bev Grant
Bev Grant is a labor and social activist, feminist, singer-songwriter, photographer and 2017 Joe Hill Award winner from the Labor Heritage Foundation for her work as a cultural worker as well as the 2017 winner of the ASCAP Foundation’s Jay Gorney award for her song We Were There. Former leader of the cutting edge 70s and 80s folk/rock & world music band, Human Condition, Bev is also founder and director of the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus.
Bev grew up singing and playing with her two older sisters in Portland, OR. After moving to New York City in the early 60s, she formed her band The Human Condition, who recorded their first album “Working People Gonna Rise,” with Paredon Records, now distributed by Smithsonian/Folkways. Her song “Inez” is included in the Smithsonian/Folkways “Best of Broadside” collection.
As cultural director of the UALE NE Union Women’s Summer School she developed and wrote the theme song for the multi-media women’s labor history show, called “We Were There!”, which she presents throughout the United States and which became global when she presented it in October 2017 in Costa Rica at the United Trade Union Confederation’s 3rd Women’s Conference.
Ron Olesko, WFDU folk DJ and columnist, featured Bev and her recently released CD “It’s Personal” in the May 20, 2017 issue of SingOut Magazine, saying…
”Over the past few decades, Bev and her songs have been part of many social struggles including the labor movement, so it came as somewhat of a surprise to discover that her new solo CD It’s Personal is an introspective and heart-felt collection of personal songs. However, closer examination reveals that the songs in this collection give an insight into what has motivated and shaped this extraordinary artist. It’s Personal features a diverse mix of folk, jazz and good old rock and roll to gives us a glimpse of the world that is fighting to make a better place for all.”
Full Review: https://singout.org/2017/03/20/bev-grant-gets-personal/
In July 1917, Bev begin scanning images from photo negatives she shot as a radical photo journalist in the late 1960s, including some iconic photos of the early radical Women’s Movement (The Miss America Beauty Pageant protest in 1968, and the W.I.T.C.H. Hex on Wall Street on Halloween in 1968), She’s exhibited at OSMOS Gallery in NYC, and received several favorable reviews in main stream media. In December 2021, OSMOS published a monograph of Bev’s photographs called: Bev Grant Photography: 1968-1972.
“What struck me so profoundly was the fact that Grant prefigured this whole notion of intersectionality.” Grant’s images, Gingeras said, “tell the story of this utopic moment before things got very divisive and polarized. And the echoes of the struggles she documented are still being heard right now.” The New Yorker Photo Booth 9/28/2018 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-photographers-life-changing-encounter-with-political-struggle
Music website: www.bevgrant.com
Kim Harris
Heather Dale
Heather Dale’s original Celtic music explores world legends and history. She finds contemporary themes within old material, and fuses folk traditions with blues, jazz, and world music influences. Often compared to Loreena McKennitt and Sarah McLachlan, Dale’s rich vocals are paired with more than a dozen folk instruments in live performances with multi-instrumentalist Ben Deschamps. In her 25+ year career, she’s released 18 studio albums, 5 live albums, 3 songbooks and a full-length musical theatre work based on the King Arthur legend titled “Queens of Avalon.” She and Ben have played 1500+ shows across 3 continents, and together they run the musician-friendly OnlineConcertThing.com music platform. Heather & Ben have been proud Local 1000 members since 2011.