By John Nichols
The Nation

Wednesday 31 January 2007

Molly Ivins always said she wanted to write a book about the lonely experience of East Texas civil rights campaigners to be titled No One Famous Ever Came. While the television screens and newspapers told the stories of the marches, the legal battles and the victories of campaigns against segregation in Alabama and Mississippi, Ivins recalled, the foes of Jim Crow laws in the region where she came of age in the 1950s and ‘60s often labored in obscurity without any hope that they would be joined on the picket lines by Nobel Peace Prize winners, folk singers, Hollywood stars or senators.

And Ivins loved those righteous strugglers all the more for their willingness to carry on.

The warmest-hearted populist ever to pick up a pen with the purpose of calling the rabble to the battlements, Ivins understood that change came only when some citizen in some off-the-map town passed a petition, called a Congressman or cast an angry vote to throw the bums out. The nation’s mostly widely syndicated progressive columnist, who died January 31 at age 62 after a long battle with what she referred to as a “scorching case of cancer,” adored the activists she celebrated from the time in the late 1960s when she created her own “Movements for Social Change” beat at the old Minneapolis Tribune and started making heroes of “militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers.”

“Troublemaker” might be a term of derision in the lexicon of some journalists – particularly the on-bended-knee White House press pack that Ivins studiously refused to run with – but to Molly it was a term of endearment. If anyone anywhere was picking a fight with the powerful, she was writing them up with the same passionate language she employed when her friend the great Texas liberal Billie Carr passed on in 2002. Ivins recalled Carr “was there for the workers and the unions, she was there for the African-Americans, she was there for the Hispanics, she was there for the women, she was there for the gays. And this wasn’t all high-minded, oh, we-should-all-be-kinder-to-one-another. This was tough, down, gritty, political trench warfare; money against people. She bullied her way to the table of power, and then she used that place to get everybody else there, too. If you ain’t ready to sweat, and you ain’t smart enough to deal, you can’t play in her league.”

Karin Lease (aka wildflower revolution) and her chihuahua friends Coco and Roxanne.

Karin’s been a strong voice for personal responsibility for the environment for a long time. She’s studious about avoiding waste in her life, and not afraid to tell other people they need to do the same. No one wants to be told what to do, but, alas, she’s right. We do all need to stop using disposable things, buying stuff made in sweat shops, using gasoline unnecessarily (and switch to waste veggie oil), and recycle like crazy. I mean, the polar bears are drowning because the Arctic ice is gone.

Karin had a brain aneurysm the same day as the big tsunami in south Asia, on December 26, 2004. Her partner Andy Bunnell organized fundraisers and volunteer round-the-clock care for her. Dozens of people participated to help; Karin was completely amazed at the love demonstrated by her community in her time of need. She emerged having learned the power of community, and now also focuses some of her time as an activist in this realm.

You can order a copy of her environmental manifesto, “Wildflower’s Beautiful World,” by emailing her at wyldflowr@comcast.net.  It’s got instructions, resource lists, relevant quotes, and even a set of rap lyrics by Ms. revolution herself. 

I decided that the best use my time at the TAXI Road Rally would be taking “Driver’s Ed” classes on marketing songs and performances. It was a good choice; I came away with dozens of new options to explore.

My first class was “Indie Artist Marketing, Touring and Promotion,” with Gilli Moon, an Australian singer/songwriter with a lovely voice. She had just returned from a tour with John Cleese of Monty Python fame. “Think about what makes you and your act unique,” she advised. “For me, initially, it was my accent.”

When she said that she often has to reassure students who tell her that they are too old to go on the road as singer/songwriters at, say, 43, I raised my hand and said, “I’m 57 years old, and I just came back from touring a month in Japan.” The whole room erupted in applause. For the rest of the conference, people came up to me and said “I was there when you said…”

I met the adorable Pam Passmore, a singer/songwriter whose bread-and-butter job is entertaining at children’s parties.

My 15 minute individual mentoring session with Fuzzbee Morse (“Composer/Producer/Songwriter/Multi-instrumentalist who has played with Bono, Frank Zappa, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Aaron Neville, and many more. Has had songs and scores in many films and TV shows with Paramount, ABC 20th Century Fox, Comedy Central and on labels such as A&M, Universal, Epic, Geffen and Warner Brothers”) consisted partly in his listening to Floozy Tune and America the Blues, and mostly in remembering our late, great friend in common, Steve Gursky, who was a famous recording engineer in the ‘70’s (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were among his clients) and who designed my first tour website in 2000.

I didn’t sign up to pitch my music to industry professionals, but lots of other people did. I’m content with self-producing and independently releasing my CDs and am not looking for a record deal. One thing I hear over and over again at this conference is that digital downloading is obsoleting the big record company/big record store/big hit record paradigm, and now what’s happening is that consumers are buying individual cuts over the internet and uploading them on their iPods, the more diverse in style, the better. That works for me.