This past summer there was murder in America. We live in a violent culture and this, unfortunately, happens all the time. But not like this. A child too young to buy a smoke took the lives of fellow Americans for politics.
In the aftermath it was stunning to realize it really didn’t change anything. Maybe it’ll take time to sink in. Thankfully some artists are addressing the matter.
Songwriter and Doctor of history Lo Faber has written “Kenosha Baby” an eloquent and painful lament. It’s filled with descriptions like: policeman’s suit; burnin’ and smashin; revolutionaries; AR; and oncoming train but as Faber says it’s “When the bottom just falls out and you're in free fall and you know you will never be the same.”
Dr. Faber was gracious enough to answer a few questions in detail about his songwriting, the current state of affairs and hopes for the future.
This year has been an onslaught of overwhelming events. From the pandemic to the election and all the news and disinformation. It can all seem too much. When the shootings took place in Kenosha I thought the country would be so shocked that we'd all take a step back, but no. It just kept on coming. Thanks for addressing this subject.
As a songwriter who has written Rock Operas as well as Americana style material how did you approach this type of song with its topical immediacy?
Not really all that different from writing any other song. I did find myself procrastinating about finishing, because I worried - will people hate that I'm doing a current events related song? Will people think it sucks? Am I a good enough songwriter to take on such weighty material? Also feeling a bit overwhelmed by my idols like Bob Dylan who have written such beautiful and lasting songs about current events. But in the end you've got to just give yourself permission to say what you have to say.
One thing that is very inspiring is that I have an audience that I know will listen. Not a huge audience, mind you, it's actually a fairly tiny audience at this point in time, but at least there's some folks who will be interested in listening to what I come up with. That's kind of awesome and very motivating as far as giving me a reason to complete things.
Not that I always complete my ideas. I think like anyone who's been writing songs for a long time I have an internal catalog of half finished ideas and fragments that I carry around for years. But this one was important to me to finish.
You mentioned that the song began as a free verse poem that had to distill over time but the chorus came suddenly. Talk a little about that alchemy.
In a way that's how all my songs usually come together. I almost always start from a fragment, just a little bit of something I find compelling. Sometimes it might be just a lyric or just a musical idea but most often it's some words and a rhythm and melody together, a hook if you will, that feels promising to me, and then I develop a whole song around it that comes from the logic of the original fragment. In this case the idea was that "Kenosha" wasn't a place where some events happened, it was a woman, and she broke my heart, and so that idea freed me up to write about Kenosha in the register of a heartbreak story, which is something that I, and most songwriters, have done a lot.
But then the verses had to add some specificity, and I found there was a lot of danger of making it too particular, too current, not universal enough. So it ended up, although this was not really the plan, focusing on Kyle Rittenhouse, and the sadness of what happened there, and that kind of fits the chorus too, because Kyle is kind of a "baby" like figure, he has a certain innocence, although that's complicated, obviously. But complicated is good.
When you recently posted the video ‘Kenosha Baby’ on your Facebook page you quoted Parker J Palmer. Are you a student of his?
I recently started a two-man reading group with a friend I went to grad school with, who studied the Modern Middle East at Princeton at the same time as I was studying Early America. We both found ourselves missing the intense engagement with ideas that we experienced in grad school. You don't get that as much in teaching, or in being a musician. So now we have a Zoom meeting every two weeks and discuss books and articles from a database that we both contribute to. Palmer's Healing The Heart of Democracy was one of my friend's contributions to the list. But I found it very compelling, and refreshing too, in that Palmer is not a typical scholar or historian. He speaks in an emotional vocabulary and register that scholars tend to stay away from.
He believes that growth as a society, and as a democracy, can only come out of heartbreak and healing. And that resonated with me both because of my own personal growth that has come from personal heartbreak, and because of the heartbreak I felt over the events in Kenosha.
As a Doctor of history how do you see the events of 2020 and the shootings in Kenosha as part of a larger cultural moment?
It's hard to understand events that are happening in real time. I mean you understand them on one level, as a contemporary participant. Scholars of history are very attuned to the difficulties that people have in making sense of events as they are flying by.
The early summer of 2020 was one moment we will be studying for many years, trying to make sense of it, arguing competing theories about it. So many things were happening at once: the polarization of society, the unprecedented nature of the Trump presidency, the race for the Democratic nomination, the police brutality incidents and the violent and peaceful protests that followed, and shadowing over everything, the fear and anxiety of the pandemic.
I guess what I'm saying is, if my formal study of history teaches me anything, it is to be cautious in reaching judgements. So, I don't know yet how to see all the events of 2020. I'm processing them. Writing the song is part of that process.
In the song, speaking of Kyle Rittenhouse, you say,
"You could have stayed home in bed, Now you shot 3 men dead
Who put all those dumb ideas in your head?"
Well, obviously he should have stayed home in bed. Then there wouldn't be 2 men dead, one badly wounded, and he wouldn't be going in for a long prison sentence. In terms of outcome, obviously it would have been better for Kyle to stay home. Do his homework. Watch TV with his parents. Play Fortnite. Anything better than going heavily armed to a violent protest.
As far as "who put the dumb ideas in his head," a lot of what I cut from the lyrics was about that very question. I had a whole verse there about Fox News and Tucker Carlson, how they have nothing on the line and nothing to lose, and encourage losers like Kyle to act out, just for ratings and fame and their own agenda. And then losers like Kyle end up paying the price. But that verse honestly felt a little wrong in tone. It made the whole thing too specific and too axe-grindy. I mean, I have strong views about how irresponsible the right wing media is, and really the whole adult community is that led Kyle astray. But those views didn't fit in this song. It's about heartbreak, and it can't be about several things at once.
And
"Cause this is America where shit is insane."
Obviously it's insane that a 17-year old can even get access to an assault rifle, let alone carry one openly and publicly. It's insane the number of legally owned guns in the United States, and it's insane that people believe that someone like Kyle having an assault rifle makes us more secure. It makes us far less secure, as all available statistics show, but that's not even the main point. It's insane, and morally wrong, to build an armed, militarized society. It's also incompatible with democracy.
And
"Burnin' and smashin' it's all in good fun,
But now revolutionaries, look what you've done."
Well, I'm opposed to all violence, and I have to be consistent. The so-called "protesters" who burn car dealerships and smash windows, I can't take them seriously or have any respect for them. Violence is bad, morally, and also bad as a political tactic. To their credit, I believe that the majority of Black Lives Matter leadership understands this very well. They know that when the protests were peaceful they gained the sympathy of the nation, and when they became violent, they lost peoples' support. And I know that the violence comes from a fringe element, and sometimes it is even right-wingers trying to discredit the protests. All that is happening. But in order to succeed in any way, let's be crystal clear, the protests have to enforce tight discipline and be nonviolent. The same was true in the 1960s civil rights movement. So in these two lines I'm really disavowing any solidarity with the burners and looters. I'm not on their side. Never will be.
As far as "look what you've done" - those, to me, are sinister words. It's what a violent domestic abuser says to his victim. "Look what you made me do! I didn't want to hit you baby, but you left me no choice." So by choosing those words I'm trying to say how empty the argument is that the protesters bear responsibility for Kyle's actions in any way.
What I'm getting at is the question of who's responsible? Certainly young Mr. Rittenhouse but what about the culture at large?
Well yeah, I already mentioned Tucker Carlson, Fox News, the right-wing mediaverse, the gun lobby, the President of the United States -- so many powerful adults with powerful platforms, invested in filling Kyle's head with the message that he could be a hero by sauntering forth bravely with his gun. They led him astray, and he, not they, will pay the price.
They're still leading him astray, too, by the way. If Kyle turns into some right-wing hero, which it looks like he might, I don't see that as a win for Kyle. To me a win for Kyle would be to acknowledge his wrongs and ask forgiveness from the families of those he killed. To confess his crime and serve his time. Not to become some sort of poster boy for the gun lobby.
And also, as you say, some of the responsibility is also Kyle's. He chose his actions and he killed two human beings. But, and I say this from experience both as a parent and from teaching college, a 17-year-old is really not a full grown adult. He's a kid - getting close to adulthood, but not there quite yet. He's not capable of making adult choices. Of course, neither are many adults. And everybody, even the wisest, messes up sometimes. So I lean strongly towards forgiveness in most cases, especially with kids, and especially if there's some genuine penitence.
Or maybe it's just a song. Can we expect more along these lines?
Maybe. Writing music about current events can be awful tricky. I did release one song about Trump, back in July. I wrote one song back in the 90s about the Persian Gulf War and another one about the Oklahoma City bombing. So, this is a thing I do from time to time. But something has to hit me in two ways at once for it to work -- I have to have a strong feeling about it, but that feeling has to also be something that can also work in my chosen medium, the four or five minute song. And not every feeling really compresses easily into that form.
But as for Kenosha Baby, it's really a song about heartbreak. When the bottom just falls out and you're in free fall and you know you will never be the same. And that's a topic that has a lot of songs about it, and for good reason. Because music is kind of a medicine that allows you to come to terms with your heartbreak. Whether the broken heart stems from a relationship, from grief, from remorse, or from civic and social events, it's all the same.
I want to thank you for your interest and for asking me about the song. I hope people like it, but maybe even more I hope people just engage with it and think about it. Above all I hope that the current fear, anger, and polarization in America subsides and we abandon this dangerous path we're on and go back to caring for each other and forging a democratic community.
Thankfully Dr. Faber didn’t wait to record a polished studio version. He’s given us a raw and honest rendering. Let’s let the music speak:
For more information on Dr Lo Faber including his rock operas, God Street Wine and his prize winning book ‘Building The Land Of Our Dreams’ please visit him at http://lofabermusic.com/about-dr-lo
Thank you Dr. Lo Faber