Jubilee
Summer is jubilee time. July brings the start of heritage days, town jamborees, and street fairs – all precursors to the state and county fairs that will begin in August and blossom into great bountiful events come the fall. Chief among these is our celebration today and this weekend of Independence Day. Amid all the celebrating this weekend, I am celebrating an anniversary. It was this weekend a year ago that I began hosting Crooked Road Songs on WICN 90.5fm in Worcester, Massachusetts. Simply put, a dream come true.
I usually don’t telegraph my shows in advance but this one is special. Tomorrow – which you can hear globally at www.wicn.org – features some classics. Here’s a little taste: Dave Alvin’s “Fourth of July” from his King of California album, Billy Bragg and Wilco, Dinah Washington interpreting Hank Williams, Sam Cooke, Lucinda Williams, and probably the most misinterpreted protest song of all time – “This Land is Your Land,” with two uniquely, fantastic versions. This is a perfect weekend to slow down and listen to the radio. Or, for joining your community with some cotton candy or a hotdog on Main Street in Somewhere, USA if your Main Street still exists.
Jubilee
Small town jamboree
Sticky, summer evening
Rickety tilt-a-whirl rumbles
Painted ponies ramble
Townspeople prattle, mosey
All going nowhere
Hoping to escape
A life stuck, like
Cotton candy
Catches the sandstone dust
Faded neon store signs
Flickering streetlights
Frame the local hero
Still playing all the songs
You want to hear
But…..
The most important thing to remember this weekend is why we are celebrating – freedom from tyranny and oppression. I would hope that this weekend takes on an added importance as our democracy is being tested like it never has in our short history as a country. We must not be complacent. I have already heard the dispirited, “I don’t want to hear about it. There’s nothing I can do.” Unacceptable. If we stop talking about how horribly reprehensible this all is, we’re one step towards it being ‘normal’ and accepted – one step closer to an autocratic state. We the People vanquished a king once. It is time to band together and, once again, show our might and fierceness in the face of a would-be king and his loyal subjects. We the People have the power.
Peace.
“Jubilee” is from Waiting for a Better Day – a book of poems and lyrics that I have being published in 2026.
Catch me on the radio dial every Saturday afternoon 4-5pm EST with Crooked Road Songs on WICN 90.5fm locally in Central Massachusetts, and globally at wicn.org. My playlist from Saturday, June 28, 2025:
Frank Stokes “Downtown Blues”
Delaney & Bonnie “Soul Shake”
Bonnie Raitt “I Got Plenty”
Leon Russell “Delta Lady”
Swamp Dogg “Total Destruction of Your Mind”
Ann Peebles “Beware”
Donnie Fritts “If It’s Really Got to Be This Way”
Arthur Alexander “If It’s Really Got to Be This Way”
Bobby Womack “More Than I Can Stands”
Dusty Springfield “Son of a Preacher Man”
Solomon Burke “Shame on Me”
Wilson Pickett “I’m in Love”
Esther Phillips “From a Whisper to a Scream”
Shuggie Otis “Inspiration Information”
Dorothy Moore “Misty Blue”
Van Morrison “Real, Real Gone”