Ryan Harvey
Baltimore, MD | Established. Jan 01, 2016 | INDIE
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2016 isn’t the only year musicians have sung out against “Old Man Trump.” A somewhat-buried Woody Guthrie track by the same name, written in outrage more than 60 years ago against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s father, Fred Trump, laments the bigotry and injustice of Trump’s housing projects, Beach Haven, in which Guthrie leased an apartment. Now, riot folk singer Ryan Harvey has teamed up with Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello and Ani DiFranco to cover Guthrie’s “Old Man Trump.”
Guthrie’s lyrics make his position on “Old Man Trump” clear:
“I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project”
The folk legend even invokes the apartment by name, singing:
“Beach Haven ain’t my home!
I just can’t pay this rent!
My money’s down the drain!
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven looks like heaven
Where no black ones come to roam!
No, no, no! Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!”
All proceeds from Ryan Harvey’s cover of this once-again-relevant song will benefit CK Team Relief and the Baltimore Right to Housing Alliance. - American Songwriter
As a leading songwriter of the politically minded Riot-Folk music collective, Baltimore artist and activist Ryan Harvey is used to writing his own lyrics.
But “Old Man Trump,” a song he released last month, is a unique exception.
The words were written by folk legend Woody Guthrie in the early ‘50s, but only recently did Harvey — along with his famous collaborators Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine/Prophets of Rage) and Ani DiFranco — put the words to music.
Ryan Harvey, 'Old Man Trump (feat. Tom Morello and Ani DiFranco)'
The video for Ryan Harvey's protest song "Old Man Trump" was shot in Baltimore. - Baltimore Sun
Ani joined Ryan Harvey and Tom Morello to produce catchy as all hell cover of the 'lost' Woody Guthrie track, "Old Man Trump."
"Old Man Trump" was recently rediscovered by Will Kaufman, a professor at UK's University of Lancashire, on a visit to the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa, OK. The song had sat, unrecorded, in his notebook for the next 66 years. Now, as the new old man Trump is once again using hate to stir people up for all the wrong reasons, Ryan Harvey, joined by Ani DiFranco and Tom Morello, and with the approval of Woody Guthrie Publications, have recorded Woody's words from all those years ago, which unfortunately, could just as easily have been written yesterday:
"I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
He stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts"
(c)2016 Ryan Harvey/Woody Guthrie Publications - Ani DiFranco
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Still working on that hot first release.
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"It's a good feeling knowing Ryan Harvey is out there living and giving voice to the global struggle for peace and justice." - Ani DiFranco
“Ryan Harvey is one part activist and two parts radical riot-folk musician, he packs a punch like The Clash fronted by the songwriting prowess of Woody Guthrie” - Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine, The Nightwatchman
"Every time I see Ryan Harvey perform I am captivated. There is a vulnerability to his voice that pulls me in, a real power to the art he creates, and a real impact from the work he's doing." = Chris #2, Anti-Flag
Ryan Harvey captures the unplugged story-telling of American folk & the compassionate alarm of early punk.
Ryan Harvey captures the unplugged story-telling of American folk & the compassionate alarm of early punk.
In the 2016 Ryan Harvey collaborated with Ani DiFranco, Micah Nelson, Tom Morello, and the Woody Guthrie family. Performed with Ani DiFranco, Joan Baez, Tom Morello, and Rancid’s Tim Armstrong. He has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, SPIN, American Songwriter, BILLBOARD, and the San Francisco Globe.
Bringing a James Dean feel to the American traditions of folk and punk, Ryan Harvey's music has been compared to legendary folk punk band Chumbawumba, early Dylan, and an "urgent, angry, Woody Guthrie."
Ryan Harvey has performed in the epicenters of recent global uprisings from the Arab Spring to the Spanish Indiginados movement, the Greek "OXI" anti-austerity movement to uprisings in France, Iceland, and Occupy Wall Street encampments around the globe.
In 2015 Ryan launched Firebrand Records with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello as a platform for politically radical artists.
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