The “Truth” tour goes where few have dared in the months since the Dixie Chicks courted controversy for publicly criticizing the president last spring. Launched as a collaboration between British punk-folkie Billy Bragg and the nonprofit research group, Future of Music Coalition, the tour was designed to “put issues of media reform, economic and environmental justice and democracy at the top of the American political agenda this fall,” according to its Web site. To that end, it performed songs of protest against mainstream media and corporate globalization alongside demonstrators at the Free Trade Area of the Americas talks in Miami earlier this month.
Tom Morello, former guitarist for the ideological rap-metal outfit Rage Against the Machine and current guitarist for supergroup Audioslave, has joined Earle, Bragg and the others in performing his own songs in pared-down solo sets as “The Nightwatchman.” Paying homage to the activist music of a bygone era, the Harvard-educated Morello shirks his usual chunk-funky metal licks in favor of Woody Guthrie-style acoustic strumming. Standing in the lobby of organized labor’s headquarters, he recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker about the issues the “Truth” tour addresses and the response its gotten so far. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Who are you asking to tell the truth, and about what?
Tom Morello: It’s a tour that connects two issues: media consolidation and corporate globalization. They are two issues that greatly undermine democracy and go underreported in the mainstream press. With media consolidation, the mass media can virtually control every thing you see and hear on television, radio, and print and that severely narrows the number of gatekeepers who control political discourse and access to the arts and music. We think of that as bad for you, bad for me, bad for democracy.
Apparently it doesn’t stop you from doing interviews with mainstream media outlets like NEWSWEEK.
[Laughs] Exactly. You are to be commended for having the courage to run this. Many haven’t… Alternative rock stations, for example, have refused to touch this tour as being too hot a topic.
The first leg of the tour is over. What’s next?
One of the few problems we had with the tour was there are more artists who want to play than we had space for on the stage. So we have a cache of other artists who are ready to jump into the “Tell us the Truth” breach at a moment’s notice. We have not yet played a West Coast leg, so there’s talk about that happening.
Who are some of these artists?
Anti-Flag, Dead Prez, which is a hip-hop group, and Public Enemy are some that have expressed interest.
Talk a little about globalization. There are a few liberal thinkers who make very compelling arguments for globalization.
Well, the people who listen to our music work for a living. We’ve witnessed how corporate globalization has hurt working families throughout the hemisphere in our travels as touring musicians. This is probably the only tour that you’ll write about that was tear-gassed, which we were on the streets in Miami at the FTAA protests.
While you were on stage performing?
Not when we were performing. It was during the march. We were proud to march shoulder to shoulder with 10,000 steel workers and the AFL-CIO in the streets of Miami and were also proud to stand with the students and activists and anarchists in the streets as they were mowed down with tear gas.
You mentioned the AFL-CIO. They’re sponsoring the tour, which is a little odd.
That’s one of the reasons that this is a really unique tour. Most tours are sponsored by Seagram’s, Toyota or Jagermeister. This tour is sponsored by Common Cause, the Future of Music Coalition and the AFL-CIO. It’s a tour which is highlighting issues that are important to working people and it’s great to have them by us.
You’ve got labor backing you and your music appeals to kids. Who’s been coming to these shows?
The audience has been as diverse as the artists. From Lester Chambers to Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, myself, [rapper] Boots Riley. [Bassist] Mike Mills from R.E.M. has played some of the shows as well. The style of music they’re hearing on the stage and the gathering of tribes in the halls has been something that has been very inspirational to us as artists to see on a nightly basis–this cross section of America, this coalition that has come together to hear this music and support these issues.
So who’s the Nightwatchman?
The Nightwatchman is my political folk alter ego. In my day gig, it’s about shredding guitar solos and big riff rock. The Nightwatchman is all about three chords and the truth.
Are you going to record as the Nightwatchman?
There’s no plans to. I am lucky enough to be in one of the greatest American rock bands right now. Audioslave’s just passed the double platinum mark a couple of days ago and it’s thrilling, thrilling to play that kind of music. This is a kind of music I am a fan of. I really enjoy mixing my political activism with the Nightwatchman music on this tour.
There must be a delicate tension between lecturing your audience and rocking them.
Right. On a tour like this it’s not so much preaching to the converted as it is galvanizing the troops. The feedback we’ve gotten from the audience is that it has been a unique and historical tour and I’m really proud to be a part of it.
You’re in a political climate where the Dixie Chicks can cause a firestorm for saying one word of criticism. Yet even the title of your tour is a call to arms.
Right. I think that these are times when it’s more important than ever to demand the truth, when there’s been a squelching of political debate in this fog of deceitful patriotism. I think it’s more important than ever that people give thoughtful consideration to the issues at hand and that they have access to a variety of opinions to help them make up their own minds about what they think about what’s going on in their community and country and the world.
You’re saying media consolidation limits the scope of the debate. What’s your beef with corporate globalization?
Simply, it’s that American workers will lose their jobs to workers south of the border who are willing to work for starvation wages because their local economies are destroyed by corporate globalization. They’re forced into multinational-owned sweatshops. It’s a race to the bottom where American workers are then leveraged. They find the poorest, most desperate spot on the planet, and threaten everybody who’s one or two rungs above by saying “we’ll move the plant away unless you cut your environmental standards, unless you cut your health care, unless you cut your wages.” That’s been the result of NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement]. With the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas], they’ve just endeavored to extend it to the rest of the hemisphere and it’s going to be devastating for workers here and throughout Latin America.
That may sometimes happen, but aren’t there instances where globalization is opening rural and impoverished communities to opportunities that otherwise they would never have?
One of the opportunities that rural communities in Mexico were exposed to under NAFTA was that local farmers were put out of business by cheap American produce coming down and were forced into these sub-subsistence wage jobs in these sweatshops along the border. We’ve talked to a lot of, and seen the devastating effects happening to, American families here, where over the last 10 years millions of jobs have been either lost or people have been forced into underemployment because of the negative effects of this corporate globalization. On the other hand a few CEOs and a few shareholders get rich. That’s the driving force. Those are the ones who are donating the money to the presidential campaigns. And it doesn’t come for free…
Oh. I think I am being called to rock right now. I believe I am now late for my rocking the AFL-CIO, so I must rock for the workers and the people. The Nightwatchman is off.
