Local 1000 AFM

The Traveling Musicians Union

Guitar

Susan Lewis

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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.  

 

BIll Garrett

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Bill Garrett is a musician, producer and occasional songwriter. Involved in folk music for decades, he has performed internationally, recorded several albums both solo, and with partner Sue Lothrop and has produced some 65 albums for other artists. Until its sale in 2021 He was a partner in Borealis Records. He has sat on the boards of Folk Alliance International, the Canadian Folk Music Awards and  Folk Music Canada. He is a proud recipient of Folk Music Ontario’s Estelle Klein Award with whom he had the privilege of working on the Mariposa Folk Festival.  Prior to Borealis he worked for several years as a music and program producer at CBC Radio. He currently stays busy in the studio producing other artists including James Keelaghan, Mamas Broke, Shelley Posen and The Durham County Poets. When not producing others he performs and records with his wife Sue Lothrop.

Ken Giles

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Ken Giles teaches violin/viola at D.C. Youth Orchestra Program and in private lessons.  He also sings with the D.C. Labor Chorus.  Longtime peace and civil rights activist, Ken was a member of the topical song group “Bright Morning Star” and played for peace demonstrations, environmental activists, and human rights groups.  Ken teaches his students all kinds of music, including classical, folk, blues, labor songs, and civil rights songs.

Rick Goldin

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Hello. When I was a kid being a songwriter seemed like a cool thing to do. Now, 500 songs later the world has really changed, but there’s a lot about the music that’s still the same.

Trying to write songs that have heart is a worthwhile destination. It’s hard to know when you’re there, or if you’ve ever been there, but I’m still trying.

My latest recording for adults is called “Crazy In The Heart”, released in 2019.

I also write and perform music for children, and my most “recent” children’s album, “I Like To Read” (1997) features my most popular song “The Sit Down, Stand Up, Sit Down, Stand Up, Sit Down, Stand Up, Sit Down Song”.

When a new LP record cost $2.49 I had twenty, then thirty, then fifty albums, and I listened to them from start to finish with headphones, late into the night. I read the lyrics on the album covers, I fell in love with the musicians, and I went wherever the songs would take me, again and again, and even now the music still takes me there. I’m still listening.

 

Bev Grant

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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

Ben Deschamps

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Multi-instrumentalist Ben Deschamps plays regularly with Celtic artist Heather Dale, and also tours internationally as a side musician for other folk and blues acts. Ben’s long recording career includes producing and/or engineering over 40 albums, and running live sound for performances. Ben Deschamps and Heather Dale have played 1500+ shows across 3 continents. Together they run the musician-friendly OnlineConcertThing.com music platform. Ben has been a proud Local 1000 member since 2011.

Daniel Boling

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Balladeer / Songwriter based in Albuquerque, New Mexico and touring the U.S. and abroad full-time.
In addition to being a touring solo act, Daniel is a member of the 1960s folk trio The Limeliters and the group remains active.
Former Western Regional Representative for Local 1000.

David Borough

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David Borough appears with the band, Radio Rail.  Radio Rail has performed at The Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering, The Songs for the Transcontinental Railroad Concerts, The California State Railroad Museum, The Cold Springs Tavern, and The Old Town Sacramento Gold Rush Days Festival. As well as venues from Cisco’s Creekside in San Luis Obispo, to The Urban Village Farmers Markets in the San Francisco Bay Area…

A fiddle player with the Celtic Rock band, O’Craven, David has appeared at The Northern California Pirate Festival, The Pirates of the Pacific Festival in Brookings Oregon, and the Northern California Renaissance Faire…

David is Singer/Songwriter honored by the South Bay Songwriter’s Association, and the Napa Folk Festival.

David also hosts “The Rising of the Moon” Celtic themed radio program, which airs at 6:00 am Pacific time, on the fourth, and fifth Mondays.   

Recordings:

“I’ve Gone Home/Down on Santa Clara Street”,  45 rpm vinyl. (1981)

“Liberacion de Amor”  Cassette. (1982)

“Viva Nicaragua Libre/Rollin’ Solidarity Down”. 45 rpm vinyl  (1983)”

“BurnsBorough”. Cassette   (1988)

“Radio Rail”. Compact disc.   (1997)

“The O’Daveys Irish Band, Raw”.   Compact disc.   (2008)

Beth Cahill

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Beth Cahill is a musical raconteuse with quirky tales to tell. She has found her own, true voice – it can be intimate, explosive, soothing or even forlorn. Her style rises from the broad roots of a cultural tree that spreads its leafy branches high above her Illinois Celtic-ness. It leans casually up against an Americana-esque array of blues, jazz and other traditional influences to come to gracefully rest alongside the river that flows past her Québec home. While she calls Wakefield, Quebec home she tours extensively across North America, both solo and with The Malvinas. She is currently the Secretary Treasurer of Local 1000.