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Joe Jencks, Rod MacDonald, Carolann Solebello, John Platt, and Mark Dann at Falcon Ridge Folk Fest, 2025

Dear Friends in Music,

It has been a full and busy summer so far, filled with great music and time with family and friends. Good people keep me going. Thanks for being among them.

I have a performance this weekend (August 16) in Schenectady for WAMC’s On The Road series in partnership with the Music Haven Concerts in Central Park, Schenectady. This is a great mini-fest. I am honored to be sharing the evening with Folk music greats: Dan Berggren, Kate McDonnell, and Michael Jerling. Hosted by WAMC’s Wanda Fisher & Sarah LaDuke.

And then I will be off to teach at the Pinewoods Camp in Plymouth, MA. It is my joy to return to teach at TradMad week, and share ideas about singing and songwriting. And to live in community for a week with marvelous people who love to sing, is always a beautiful thing.

Labor Day weekend will find me at The Fox Valley Folk Festival in Geneva, IL. Their brand new website has a full lineup of artists and workshops. And it will be my privilege to close out the MainStage on Labor Day with a solo set, after which I will facilitate an all-star cast of musicians in a collaborative Festival Finale. Then to Greece, NY (Rochester region) to perform at the amazing Turtle Hill Festival. They too have a fantastic lineup, and a full schedule listed on their website.

September 20th, I will be back in Schenectady for a full solo concert, performing at The 8th Step at Proctors Theater. This is spectacular concert series run by an genuine ally of working musicians - Margie Rosenkranz. (Poster below) Then I will be off to Ireland for 2 weeks. YAY!

As the fall progresses, I will. Have performances in the Midwest, Northeast, Canada, and Colorado. Highlights include a fundraiser for the League of Women Voters (Rockford, IL), a co-bill with my friend Kaia Fowler at Caffe Carpe (Fort Atkinson, WI), The Folk Alliance Region Midwest Conference, and a run of shows in Ontario, Canada. Then, the NERFA conference in November, and a concert with my friend Edie Carey at Swallow Hill in Denver, CO (Nov. 21).

I wrote an essay this week in response to current events: For Whom The Bell Tolls. Please find it below.

As always, thanks for supporting live music and the people who make it.

In Gratitude & Song,

~ Joe Jencks (8-15-25)

PS. Many thanks to Anne Saunders and a host of Volunteers who make the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival possible. It was an amazing re-connect with community this year. And it was a joy to share performances with Pete & Maura Kennedy, Lucy Kaplansky, Rod MacDonald, Mark Dann, Carolann Solebello, Sam Robbins, The Slambovian Circus of Dreams and more. Thanks to Jake Jacobson & Neale Eckstein for bringing cameras and documenting the glorious chaos.

For Whom The Bell Tolls: Reconsidering How We Understand Violence

Copyright, 2025 ~ Joe Jencks, Turtle Bear Music

Some may read this and see me as overreacting. To which I say, if you can’t feel the water rising around your legs, you are standing on higher ground than I am. You too will eventually feel the water rising around your legs. And by that time, I may be strapping my instruments together and trying to use them as a life raft. I hope you will throw me a line. Because that’s a terrible way for beautiful, hand-made musical instruments to end their existence.

I think that it’s time for people in the U.S. (and beyond) to reconsider how we understand violence, and what we understand violence to be.

The president of the U.S. is ordering the National Guard into the nation’s capitol, under the guise that, “violent bands of criminals have taken over the nation’s capitol.”

I suspect more of them hold positions in his own administration than rove the streets of the capitol. Based on the overall magnitude of the impact of specific crimes, there are many more criminals in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the U.S. Senate, in positions within the Judiciary and the National Security apparatus, than there are walking the streets of Washington, D.C.

Woody Guthrie wrote in his song, Pretty Boy Floyd:

As though this life I’ve traveled

I’ve seen lots of crazy men

Some will rob you with a six-gun

And some with a fountain pen

But in the U.S. House of Representatives these “bands of criminals” are referred to as coalitions or interest groups. In the Judiciary, they are bold appointees. In National Security, they are stewards of national safety. And in the current administration, they are skilled executives with a vision for the future of America.

They have a vision, alright. It is a vision of an ever increasing upward amalgamation of power and wealth and a restriction of access to resources for the rest of us. A vision of a greatly expanded and indebted class that equals a modern peasantry, a class of lesser people to whom they resent being held accountable. They have a vision of a nation that no longer resembles the intent of the founders, and which is not beset with the pesky checks and balances that the framers of the constitution placed between branches of government. The framers created precise oversight and accountability between branches of government in order to assure that there would never be a rise of a new and equally unjust monarchy, in the United States of America.

But those checks and balances are failing. And the reason, as far as I can see, is that those charged with being stewards of the political and civil process are capitulating to this amalgamation of power from other branches of government, into the executive branch. In the face of a president who would be a king, other branches of government are mostly just saying, “Cool, cool. As long as we get some of the spoils, too.”

Is it because of fear? Not sure.

Is it because they think that if there is a line of demarcation between privilege and not, that they are on the safe side of the line?

Do they think that when the hammer falls, they will not be under it?

Now, to be fair, I am well aware of (and friends with) so many great people in local, state, and federal service. I am aware of the efforts of decent folks from governors and state senators to activists & trade unionists, from civil servants and educators to students, to workers of every stripe; good people in general across the spectrum of society who are trying to do good in the world. They are trying to hold the line for Civil Rights, Human Rights, Environmental Justice, and sustainable Economic Development, and true Democratic process.

Let it be known, there are remarkable people, pushing back against this amalgamation of power and wealth.

But there is a deeper ailment that plagues us. It lays inside an inability to see the actions of CEOs, CFOs, HMOs, lawmakers, national security advisers, corporate military and industrial contractors, and a host of others as being so myopic, so misinformed, so greed-driven, and so out of touch with the experience and wishes of the people, that they go full-throttle barreling forward with dismantling this American Democracy.

The deeper ailment lays inside a pathological inability to see that, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Thank you, Spock.

Legislative actions that adversely affect millions or even hundreds of millions of people, are Violent. And if violence is understood to be criminal - then those same actions are criminal as well.

Woody Guthrie continues in Pretty Boy Floyd:

As through this life you ramble

Yes, as through this life you roam

You will never see an outlaw

Drive a family from their home

But preventing people from accessing medical care is also a form of mass violence. Allowing banks and credit card companies to set predatory lending rates that cause people to go into bankruptcy and lead toward housing insecurity and for many - homelessness, is also mass violence.

And yet, someone convicted of stealing food from a corner store could be sentenced to years in prison. But CEOs of HMOs make sure that shareholders make a profit while people like most of us live on the edge of fiscal catastrophe, just to access healthcare. And this, is rewarded with promotions, rather then prosecuted as a form of mass violence.

And criminalizing homelessness, is simply ridiculous.

Eugene V. Debs was a profoundly influential labor leader and organizer, who ran for president 5 times. (1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920)In 1912, Debs won almost 1 million votes, as a Socialist. That was roughly 6.2% of the popular vote in 1912. He ran against Taft who won roughly 4.5 million votes, Wilson who won 6.2 million votes, and Teddy Roosevelt who won 4.2 million votes. That was an impressive showing for an independent Socialist candidate. He had a vision for working people in the U.S.A. that resonated with a lot of folks.

In 1918 Debs found himself being tried for his Labor and Community organizing under an antiquated clause of the Sedition Act. I reference this because the current administration is advising the Justice Department and the Judiciary writ large, to prosecute people under the very same legal premise.

After the verdict was handed down, and before sentencing, Eugene Debs addressed the court and said, “Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Debs was not referring to organized crime syndicates. He was talking about how being working class was being criminalized. He was referencing the ways in which being homeless or destitute were being criminalized. Debs was talking about “Sundown Towns” where “colored folks” could spend their money, toil in servitude during the day, and then were legally required to be out of town before sundown. The famous singer Leadbelly was at least once arrested for violating “Sundown” rules in a town where he had played a daytime show.

We are as a culture, so collectively invested in materialism, that we cannot recognize privilege when it is a thing we have. We are so propagandized to believe that money and privilege are all-important, that even many Christian churches who preach the teachings of Jesus, a dude who prophetically and frequently spoke about the perils of wealth and privilege, are shrouded in opulence and blatantly support leaders who are steeped in material privilege and moral bankruptcy.

Molly Ivins, quoting (then) Texas State Representative Craig Washington, said, "I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”

She also said, ”It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.”

Indeed it is.

And those now in power want to walk that backward to sometime just before the U.S. Civil War. They want a world of indentured servitude, an American peasantry. They want more entrenched class and gender-based privilege. And they want a read of the U.S. Constitution that sees women, people of color, and anyone who is not a land-owner, as a second-class citizen.

Don’t let them do it.

We can’t let them do it.

It is a terrible practice to allow our lawmakers and leaders to enact laws that make mass violence against the people completely legal. It is immoral to uphold violent executive orders, and to turn a blind eye to policies which guarantee that people all over the U.S. who are living on politically vulnerable “low” ground will be swept away, while we pretend that the water is not rising.

John Donne (1572-1632) an English poet, scholar, soldier, and eventually minister, wrote a poem after which Ernest Hemingway titled a novel: For whom the Bell Tolls.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Do not ask if you will be affected by the policies of the current administration. If you can afford to ask, you probably already have a fair amount of economic shelter and privilege. Don’t presume your house will withstand the flood, when it comes. Assume, like Eugene Debs did, that when the needs of ordinary people are made to be seen by the law as criminal, you are among that diminished class.

But we need not remain diminished.

We can organize.

~ Joe Jencks (8-12-25)