Dec. 27, 2020
MC5 Guitarsist Wayne Kramer: Rock and Roll Pioneer
Wayne Kramer is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, author, producer, and film and television composer. He was co-founder of the Detroit rock group MC5, and Rolling Stone named him one of the top 100 guitarists of all time. Wayne was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan.
Wayne Kramer has written a memoir, The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the Mc5, and My Life of Impossibilities.
The MC5 recorded and performed the song "Kick Out the Jams, which became an anthem for the protest movement of the 1960s. Along with that, came a passion for rock and roll and social & economic justice.
Wayne is now touring again! Check out the story in the Metro Times.
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Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:32.289 --> 00:00:59.250
Welcome, Wayne Kramer.
00:00:59.250 --> 00:01:00.450
This is Arthur Bush.
00:01:00.450 --> 00:01:02.770
Uh, you're on uh Radio Free Flint.
00:01:02.770 --> 00:01:15.409
You were a co-founder and uh the guitarist in Detroit's what some call an incendiary rock band, the MC5, and it's well known in the Flint area, of course, uh performed in the Southeast.
00:01:15.409 --> 00:01:26.689
A notable activist for racial and economic uh equality, uh, which has made you over the years a target of the FBI counterintelligence program, especially for activist throughout the 60s.
00:01:26.689 --> 00:01:31.010
A charity called Jail Guitar Doors, uh, with your friend Billy Bragg.
00:01:31.010 --> 00:01:40.450
Uh, since then, you've released a dozen solo albums, have gone on to score countless feature films, cutting-edge documentaries, and notable series for TV.
00:01:40.450 --> 00:01:42.689
Some people call that a telephic composer.
00:01:42.689 --> 00:01:48.049
Uh, you're also considered a pioneer in both punk rock and heavy metal rock.
00:01:48.049 --> 00:01:51.810
And then from there, you co-founded in 2009.
00:01:51.810 --> 00:02:04.849
You were inspired again, as I said, by Billy Bragg to form this group, Jail Guitar Doors USA, which is a charity that puts on concerts in prisons and donates guitars to inmates for use in rehabilitation.
00:02:04.849 --> 00:02:08.210
And it's a latter that I'd like to spend a good amount of my time with you today.
00:02:08.210 --> 00:02:18.930
I might also say that Wayne Kramer has also in his group, the MC5, uh, have also been nominated multiple times by uh the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
00:02:18.930 --> 00:02:22.129
So, with all that said, uh, you're from Detroit.
00:02:22.129 --> 00:02:23.250
Born and raised.
00:02:23.250 --> 00:02:26.689
And eventually somehow you ended up on Harson's Island.
00:02:26.689 --> 00:02:27.250
Yes.
00:02:27.250 --> 00:02:28.050
How was that?
00:02:28.050 --> 00:02:28.689
Terrific.
00:02:28.689 --> 00:02:29.889
How that happened?
00:02:30.129 --> 00:02:45.250
Well, my dad served in the Marine Corps in World War II and fought in the island to island fighting, and he got um shot up, uh, came back from the war with a severe case of PTSD.
00:02:45.250 --> 00:02:48.610
And I don't think he was comfortable in the city.
00:02:48.610 --> 00:02:53.009
And one of my uncles owned some property on Harsons Island.
00:02:53.009 --> 00:03:11.490
And so we moved up there, and he and my uncle were gonna develop this property, and it was uh heaven on earth for a little boy, you know, to have the woods and wetlands, swamps uh to explore and ice skate in the winter, all the canals would freeze.
00:03:11.490 --> 00:03:13.889
You could ice skate all over the island.
00:03:13.889 --> 00:03:19.569
It w it was it was just a spectacular environment for a little boy.
00:03:19.569 --> 00:03:30.610
And I adored my life there, and was really devastated when um my father's PTSD took a toll on our family because he treated it with alcohol.
00:03:30.610 --> 00:03:39.250
And that made his life and my mother's life together, and that was um pretty rough on me as a little boy, unmanageable.
00:03:39.250 --> 00:03:42.930
And so they divorced and we moved back to the city.
00:03:43.250 --> 00:03:49.729
You became attracted to music, and and that attraction to music occurred when you were a teenager?
00:03:49.969 --> 00:03:51.330
Oh, well before that.
00:03:51.330 --> 00:03:59.569
I was probably really developed an awareness of of uh music when I was about nine years old, I think.
00:04:04.129 --> 00:04:12.770
And one of the things that struck me with a great deal of interest was your it you were interested in jazz music and and you've maintained that interest for a long time.
00:04:13.169 --> 00:04:17.810
In fact, I'm working my way through a course now in in uh jazz improvisation.
00:04:18.129 --> 00:04:20.930
Now, jazz is no stranger, obviously, to Detroit.
00:04:20.930 --> 00:04:23.889
The city of Detroit is legendary for jazz.
00:04:23.889 --> 00:04:28.610
And they have one of the world's best jazz festivals uh in Detroit every summer.
00:04:28.610 --> 00:04:29.649
Have you ever played at it?
00:04:30.290 --> 00:04:37.970
No, I've done uh the concert of colors for a number of years, um, but never appeared at the uh jazz fest.
00:04:37.970 --> 00:04:40.449
That would be a real thrill.
00:04:40.449 --> 00:04:47.009
I made a jazz album a few years ago, and I'd love to be able to perform that music troy.
00:04:47.329 --> 00:04:57.089
Wayne, you eventually you're named one of the top 100 guitarists in in the history of uh of music by Rolling Stone magazine.
00:04:57.089 --> 00:05:00.689
How did you get from there to to punk rock music?
00:05:00.689 --> 00:05:02.209
I I'm not sure.
00:05:02.209 --> 00:05:05.329
Do you accept that label of your music as punk rock?
00:05:05.569 --> 00:05:07.170
Well, I understand it.
00:05:07.170 --> 00:05:15.250
You know, there's an the MC five represented an uncompromising anti-establishment uh stance.
00:05:15.250 --> 00:05:21.009
You know, we were anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and and anti-gravity.
00:05:21.009 --> 00:05:26.290
And so I understand, you know, how the punks claimed the MC five.
00:05:26.290 --> 00:05:30.209
I I get that, the passion that we had for what we were doing.
00:05:30.610 --> 00:05:42.769
One of the things that's impressive is that you have carried on what really is uh is a Detroit Detroit tradition, if you will, of of progressive thought and uh progressive action.
00:05:42.930 --> 00:06:10.209
We can go a long ways back into the history of our region, both both the town I'm from, Flint, uh, with its sit-down strikes, various uh the whole history of organized labor, the union movement in America really took hold with the uh United Autoworker fight for the 40-hour work week, the uh Port Euron Statement of uh Tom Hayden uh and company, the founders of SDS.
00:06:10.209 --> 00:06:21.730
You know, Detroit has a tradition of uh honoring hard labor and and recognizing its value and fighting for uh equality in the marketplace.
00:06:22.050 --> 00:06:34.930
And that led me to to also uh discover that at one point in your career uh in the life of your band, you had John Sinclair uh who was closely associated with the band MC5.
00:06:35.329 --> 00:06:36.529
He was our manager, yeah.
00:06:36.529 --> 00:06:40.290
He was our interlocutor to the business world.
00:06:40.610 --> 00:06:46.209
So for my kids that are gonna uh my millennial children that are gonna listen to this podcast, they don't listen very often.
00:06:46.209 --> 00:06:50.129
Describe John John Sinclair, who he is, explain what his role has been.
00:06:50.529 --> 00:07:02.610
Well, John is from Flint, actually Davison, just outside of Flint, but grew up in Flint and um moved to Detroit to go to college and uh an iconoclast.
00:07:02.610 --> 00:07:35.889
Uh had his had a vision of a way he wanted to live, and it was a nonconformist kind of rejection of uh of the standard American middle class values, and you know, he identified with uh the coming of the Beatnik generation, and he was a poet, loved jazz and dance and graphic arts, and and just wanted to work live in a world of of artists and ran into some problems with the Detroit Police Department.
00:07:35.889 --> 00:07:39.089
They um John liked to smoke marijuana.
00:07:39.089 --> 00:07:47.889
He had a uh source for his marijuana, who was an elderly African-American man from Flint, who was arrested.
00:07:47.889 --> 00:07:55.250
I think he was looking at a third conviction, which was an automatic nine and a half to ten years in the Michigan Department of Correction.
00:07:55.250 --> 00:07:56.850
So they offered him a deal.
00:07:56.850 --> 00:08:16.689
So he set up John with a narcotics officer from the Detroit Police Department, and they made a buy and bust and charged him with a terrible offense of possession of marijuana, and he ended up serving a six-month term in the Detroit House of Corrections DOCO.
00:08:16.689 --> 00:08:20.769
I had learned about John from Rob Tiner, the MC5 singer.
00:08:20.769 --> 00:08:32.529
He had gone down to the artist workshop in downtown Detroit and seen John Sinclair perform uh poetry and and work with jazz musicians and you know turned me on to it.
00:08:32.529 --> 00:08:34.769
This stuff is fantastic, Wayne.
00:08:34.769 --> 00:08:35.649
You've got to see it.
00:08:35.649 --> 00:08:37.169
This is what we've been looking for.
00:08:37.169 --> 00:08:57.409
At the time, John uh was at Dahoko, but I had moved down to the neighborhood, and so we we our band performed at John Sinclair's Welcome Home Party, and uh we we origin originally had a little conflict because he didn't he didn't like white rock and rollers.
00:08:57.409 --> 00:09:15.649
But the MC5 was more than white rock and rollers, and once he heard us play and he got to meet us, he saw that that we had big ears, and he turned us on to the free jazz movement and radical cultural ideas and radical political ideas.
00:09:15.649 --> 00:09:36.289
Fight with the Detroit Police Department over the uh marijuana laws in Michigan, um, escalated into a second bust um where he wrote a scathing indictment of a poem for the narcotics officer involved, Warner Stringfellow, which I, you know, I admired all I had admired him no end.
00:09:36.289 --> 00:09:44.129
I thought he was just a pillar of of uh ethics and morality and intelligence and great wit.
00:09:44.129 --> 00:09:46.450
He was a hilariously funny guy.
00:09:46.450 --> 00:09:50.049
Uh convinced him to manage my band, the MC5.
00:09:50.049 --> 00:09:56.529
And uh and that began uh a great friendship that's lasted now 50 years.
00:09:56.529 --> 00:10:04.850
We've had lots of rough times and some great times, and one of the things I'm proudest of is my friendship with John Sinclair.
00:10:05.090 --> 00:10:10.529
And John Sinclair also uh got a lot of attention from law enforcement.
00:10:10.529 --> 00:10:21.169
He started to uh he formed a group called the White Panthers, and that was a group that the police were worried about, the Black Panthers, which had some kind of which they thought was violence.
00:10:21.169 --> 00:10:23.570
That connection sort of drew a lot of it.
00:10:24.129 --> 00:10:38.850
Well, we found the Black Panthers had asked for there to be a group in the white community to step forward as maybe a White Panthers to do parallel work with the Black Panther Party.
00:10:38.850 --> 00:10:40.690
And we said that was us.
00:10:40.690 --> 00:10:43.169
I mean, we admired the Black Panthers.
00:10:43.169 --> 00:10:58.769
The idea that Young Brothers in Oakland, California would confront police officers with guns and law books was just about the most exciting, compelling, brave thing that I could imagine.
00:10:59.090 --> 00:11:02.690
You performed as I understand it, I'm not quite sure where the venue was.
00:11:02.690 --> 00:11:09.490
You performed in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, and that uh that achieved a fair amount of national as well.
00:11:09.490 --> 00:11:10.450
Tell us about that.
00:11:10.769 --> 00:11:14.610
That's well, we would play anywhere they'd let us play.
00:11:14.610 --> 00:11:23.009
I mean, our our philosophy, our management philosophy was play anywhere and everywhere you can.
00:11:23.009 --> 00:11:41.169
And we often played for uh groups and individuals, uh, uh, you know, the movement, anti-war, civil rights, the fledgling environmental movement, local politicians that uh that were sympathetic to our cause.
00:11:41.409 --> 00:11:43.970
The news reports were that you played for eight hours.
00:11:44.210 --> 00:11:44.850
Yeah.
00:11:44.850 --> 00:11:49.250
That would have been pretty heroic.
00:11:49.250 --> 00:11:52.129
I'm afraid we didn't have that kind of stamina.
00:11:52.129 --> 00:11:55.490
We we played a regular one-hour show.
00:11:56.210 --> 00:11:59.330
So that might have been that might have been fake news, eh?
00:11:59.330 --> 00:12:00.690
Um fake news.
00:12:00.690 --> 00:12:07.889
You know, many of the listeners to this podcast are gonna be in southeast Michigan, and a lot of them are from our generation.
00:12:07.889 --> 00:12:14.210
Uh, so let's talk for a few minutes about Sherwood and any memories that you have of playing there and so on.
00:12:14.529 --> 00:12:18.129
Well, I'll I'll I'll recap the tale I told you earlier.
00:12:18.129 --> 00:12:24.210
That we had a booking there, and it was uh lucrative for us in in those days.
00:12:24.210 --> 00:12:28.289
Uh I think the fee was twelve hundred dollars, which was a lot of money.
00:12:28.289 --> 00:12:33.009
The promoter uh asked us, uh he was he was cool with us.
00:12:33.009 --> 00:12:39.730
He he uh he said, you know, uh I'm gonna ask you guys not to say kick out the jams, motherfucker.
00:12:39.730 --> 00:12:44.929
You know, we had the police there, and and he said, just just don't say it if you can.
00:12:44.929 --> 00:12:49.090
And we had we had faced this situation many times before.
00:12:49.090 --> 00:12:51.649
We weren't we weren't stupid, you know.
00:12:51.649 --> 00:12:54.769
We we understood what what was at stake.
00:12:55.169 --> 00:13:00.210
You've then uh ended up the band lasted uh about three years, right?
00:13:00.370 --> 00:13:02.929
Like that eight years from the beginning to the end.
00:13:03.250 --> 00:13:04.289
What happened then?
00:13:04.610 --> 00:13:11.009
It came as a as a unacknowledged blow to me when the band broke up.
00:13:11.009 --> 00:13:14.049
I I didn't I wasn't really conscious of it.
00:13:14.049 --> 00:13:17.250
But you know, it I lost everything.
00:13:17.250 --> 00:13:21.649
It was it was my job, but it was more than just my job.
00:13:21.649 --> 00:13:25.090
It was my uh status in the community.
00:13:25.090 --> 00:13:28.049
It was my these were my best friends.
00:13:28.049 --> 00:13:33.809
The guys in the band were my boyhood, ch almost childhood friends.
00:13:33.809 --> 00:13:39.090
Um uh and uh you know it was my road to a future.
00:13:39.090 --> 00:13:43.889
One day it was all gone, and it really messed me up.
00:13:43.889 --> 00:13:52.450
Um, I mean, I I I'm not asking for any sympathy, you know, having your band break up is part of the deal in in rock and roll.
00:13:52.450 --> 00:13:55.250
You know, most bands uh break up.
00:13:55.250 --> 00:14:00.289
Very few uh can survive over a lifetime or decades.
00:14:00.289 --> 00:14:02.450
Most of them break up in a matter of years.
00:14:02.450 --> 00:14:23.809
But the MC5 had uh other pressures, you know, pressures from uh the FBI, from the Justice Department, from the Detroit police, the Michigan State Police, and just creeps everywhere, you know, security guards and outraged parents and prosecutors and and uh and the like.
00:14:23.809 --> 00:14:27.090
Um so I was kind of adrift.
00:14:27.090 --> 00:14:29.409
I fell in with a with a bad crowd.
00:14:29.409 --> 00:14:34.610
I'd always viewed uh the criminal underworld as a kind of romantic.
00:14:34.610 --> 00:14:37.889
I'm absolutely no good at gangsterism.
00:14:37.889 --> 00:14:40.690
I'm not a killer, I'm not a violent man.
00:14:40.690 --> 00:14:53.169
Um I really didn't even know how to deal drugs, but I was uh caught and and arrested a number of times and ultimately sent to federal prison where I learned how to deal drugs.
00:14:53.169 --> 00:14:56.049
They taught me in prison how to actually do it.
00:14:56.049 --> 00:14:57.889
I know how to do it now.
00:14:57.889 --> 00:15:02.610
I don't, but if I wanted to, I'd know how to do it.
00:15:02.610 --> 00:15:12.289
You know, it w it was uh it was like hitting a bottom and then finding out that you're only at the top of the bottom, that there's a deeper bottom yet to go.
00:15:12.289 --> 00:15:15.009
And it was a pretty dark period for me.
00:15:15.009 --> 00:15:39.090
I did survive my prison term and came out uh with with nothing but willpower to deal with my uh I had acquired alcoholism and drug addiction, and it was still gonna be decades before I finally got to the source of of my a lot of my trouble, which was uh my uh addiction.
00:15:39.090 --> 00:15:43.809
Finally, uh at age 50 I was able to outgrow it.
00:15:43.809 --> 00:15:54.690
And it it could be I I give a lot of credit to the uh the 12-step uh programs, uh uh, but also it it could be I just aged out.
00:15:54.690 --> 00:16:09.649
You know, in in my work today in in the prison systems, I see uh a pattern where guys at around age 50 they just stop interested in being gangster or being tough guys or being hustlers.
00:16:09.649 --> 00:16:20.450
They want to get out of prison and have a little house somewhere and have a little wife, a dog, and a job, and they just want to enjoy what life they have left.
00:16:20.450 --> 00:16:24.129
Maybe that's part of what happened to me at age 50.
00:16:24.129 --> 00:16:29.970
I just could I knew if I kept on the way I was going, I would probably die fairly soon.
00:16:29.970 --> 00:16:35.009
You know, your body can take a lot of abuse, but only for about 20 years.
00:16:35.490 --> 00:16:40.610
At some point you you stepped out of the music business and and went on to be a carpenter.
00:16:40.929 --> 00:16:42.769
Well, I never stepped out of the music business.
00:16:42.769 --> 00:16:54.210
I still I always played, but I would get up in the morning and go, you know, build a house or do fine woodworking for wealthy people in Manhattan where I learned the trade.
00:16:54.210 --> 00:17:00.210
I was finally able to tell my mom that I had learned a a job skill to fall back on.
00:17:00.210 --> 00:17:06.450
She always used to say, Wayne, music's okay, but learn a trade so you got something to fall back on.
00:17:06.450 --> 00:17:10.849
And I I never understood what she meant until I was 40 years old.
00:17:11.569 --> 00:17:14.130
When you were in prison, you met some other musicians.
00:17:14.369 --> 00:17:15.650
I met a lot of musicians.
00:17:15.650 --> 00:17:18.609
Musicians have been going to prison forever.
00:17:18.609 --> 00:17:31.250
And I met one in particular, uh, a jazz trumpeter named Red Rodney, who was from Philadelphia, and he was in my prison days, I was in my mid-20s.
00:17:31.250 --> 00:17:39.490
He was in his mid-50s then, and this was his third time back to the prison we were serving our sentences in.
00:17:39.490 --> 00:17:46.529
He had come there in the forties and the fifties, and uh again in the 70s with me.
00:17:46.529 --> 00:17:49.569
He played uh trumpet with Charlie Parker.
00:17:49.569 --> 00:18:04.049
In fact, he replaced Miles Davis in the Charlie Parker quintet, and he was a phenomenal musician and a and a true master of music and the trumpet, and became my mentor.
00:18:04.049 --> 00:18:06.369
I call him my musical father.
00:18:06.369 --> 00:18:23.890
He taught me a Berkeley School of Music course in music theory, and we played together in a band, and he was also a great mentor for me in terms of uh the truth of my addiction and what it means to be a drug-addicted uh artist in America.
00:18:24.210 --> 00:18:28.849
So, Wayne, you uh also uh met up with Billy Bragg at some point.
00:18:29.170 --> 00:18:49.490
When it was actually I met him w right after I was released from prison, I uh got an offer to go to England, and I had a sympathetic parole officer in Detroit, federal pro uh probation office, and uh he let me go, and uh my friends took me to see this this young man, uh Billy Bragg, and I was knocked out.
00:18:49.490 --> 00:18:55.250
I thought, wow, he sounds fantastic, and it's just him and an electric guitar.
00:18:55.250 --> 00:18:57.410
You know, nobody had ever done that before.
00:18:57.410 --> 00:19:08.769
I've seen a lot of singer, songwriter, troubadours with their acoustic guitars, but he played an electric guitar and it sounded great, you know, it had distortion and tone and sustain.
00:19:08.769 --> 00:19:23.569
So years later, you know, uh I I clocked his his growth and development over the years and saw that he was developing a political consciousness uh as an artist, and then discovered that it had been there all along.
00:19:23.569 --> 00:19:33.490
And uh after watching prison populations go up exponentially after I was released, I was finally so angry about it.
00:19:33.490 --> 00:19:41.089
I kept waiting for some conscious, uh responsible politician to say, um, something's wrong here.
00:19:41.089 --> 00:19:45.970
We're locking up hundreds of thousands of more people every year.
00:19:45.970 --> 00:19:55.730
When I went to prison in 1975, there were 350,000 people in prison in America, state and federal.
00:19:55.730 --> 00:19:58.930
There were only 50,000 people in the federal prisons.
00:19:58.930 --> 00:20:01.089
The rest made up the state prisons.
00:20:01.089 --> 00:20:07.329
Today we know there's 2.3 million of our fellow citizens under lock and key.
00:20:07.329 --> 00:20:11.009
So finally I decided I had to do something about it.
00:20:11.009 --> 00:20:21.970
I had to I had to take some ethical action, action that moves in the direction of human happiness and away from the direction of human suffering.
00:20:21.970 --> 00:20:23.089
What could I do?
00:20:23.089 --> 00:20:24.769
Well, I'm a musician.
00:20:24.769 --> 00:20:27.970
Music meant a lot to me in prison.
00:20:27.970 --> 00:20:31.089
I performed regularly for my fellows.
00:20:31.089 --> 00:20:37.730
Um it allowed me to be part of the community in prison, to be of service to my fellows.
00:20:37.730 --> 00:20:43.809
Um, maybe I could do that from the outside by bringing concerts into a prison.
00:20:43.809 --> 00:20:46.849
And I asked Billy Bragg to come with me on one.
00:20:46.849 --> 00:21:03.890
And he told me about an independent initiative he had launched in the United Kingdom to use guitars, acoustic guitars, as tools to help prisoners find a way to express complex, often painful emotions and memories.
00:21:03.890 --> 00:21:09.089
And the more we talked about it, the more I thought this is exactly what I'm looking for.
00:21:09.089 --> 00:21:19.569
So that night after the concert at it was at SingSing in New York, Billy Bragg, my wife Margaret Saudi Kramer, and I formed Joe Guitar Doors USA.
00:21:19.569 --> 00:21:27.250
Today our instruments and our programs are in over 160 American prisons.
00:21:27.250 --> 00:21:39.970
Um, and we've in the last year launched a youth-directed program called CAPO, a community arts programming and outreach, to work with young people.
00:21:39.970 --> 00:21:54.369
Um, if I can put a guitar or a turntable and a microphone in front of a young man and show him that there's another way to live, he might be able to avoid spending his life in the state prison system.
00:21:54.369 --> 00:21:57.890
And I won't have to give him a guitar later at San Quentin.
00:21:58.130 --> 00:22:00.210
You've done quite a bit of self-reflection.
00:22:00.210 --> 00:22:06.210
Unlike a lot of people who do self-reflection, they sometimes don't get to the next step, which is do something about it.
00:22:06.210 --> 00:22:08.450
And uh, but you wrote a book.
00:22:08.450 --> 00:22:09.809
Tell us about your book.
00:22:09.809 --> 00:22:11.490
First of all, let's get the name of it.
00:22:11.490 --> 00:22:12.369
I wrote it down here.
00:22:12.369 --> 00:22:13.250
It's hard stuff.
00:22:13.730 --> 00:22:14.210
Hard stuff.
00:22:14.210 --> 00:22:21.730
The MC5, crime, prison, drugs, and my life of improbability or impossibility.
00:22:21.730 --> 00:22:22.930
I think it's impossibility.
00:22:23.170 --> 00:22:26.369
So we'll put we'll put put uh a link to that book.
00:22:26.369 --> 00:22:32.049
So if the listener wants to follow up and and read this book, they'll be able to find it for you.
00:22:32.369 --> 00:22:53.009
I just wanted to write a book that that uh was honest, actually turn out to be the most valuable thing I have, because I can say to another guy who's going through the same thing, and there are millions of us, that I understand, I know how he feels because I did that too.
00:22:53.009 --> 00:23:07.650
You know, his the his parents can't say that to him, uh his rabbi can't say that to him, his priest can't say it, the police can't say it, his therapist can't say it, but I can say I know what you went through because I did that.
00:23:07.650 --> 00:23:23.170
So if I could if I could just tell that story in a book form and keep it interesting, that people stick with the stick with the reading all the way to the end, uh, then you know I've I've I've taken another action uh in the right direction.
00:23:23.490 --> 00:23:30.130
So Wayne, if people want to help you out with your uh endeavors with the guitars for door, is it?
00:23:30.609 --> 00:23:31.650
Jail guitar doors.
00:23:31.650 --> 00:23:33.569
It's hard to say if you're not used to it.
00:23:33.809 --> 00:23:35.329
All right, so it's awkward.
00:23:35.329 --> 00:23:40.450
So your your charity that you're working with is actually an active charity, it actually does stuff.
00:23:40.690 --> 00:23:41.009
Yes.
00:23:41.009 --> 00:23:58.130
And uh if people want to get involved in that, how would they they can go to jailguitardoors.org and learn all about what we do, how we do it, who we are, and they can uh make a donation if they care to help us with money.
00:23:58.130 --> 00:23:59.410
They can join us.
00:23:59.410 --> 00:24:15.250
We're always looking for uh fellow activists around the country that uh are willing to uh join in the effort to bring uh the creative process into the correctional environment.
00:24:15.250 --> 00:24:26.930
We know from empirical studies that prisoners that participate in arts and corrections programming uh have about a 60% better recidivism rate.
00:24:26.930 --> 00:24:34.769
You know, art, learning to create art, and in our case music, um teaches one uh some secrets.
00:24:34.769 --> 00:24:41.970
One of them is how to complete a job, um, how to see something through from the beginning to the end.
00:24:41.970 --> 00:24:46.609
Uh it teaches them how to collaborate with other people.
00:24:46.609 --> 00:24:51.250
These are skills that are useful in life out here in the world.
00:24:51.250 --> 00:24:58.049
You know, we all have to collaborate with people that we may not really agree with, but there's a higher purpose.
00:24:58.049 --> 00:25:11.250
You know, we we have some rules in our workshops, and one of them is we do not recognize any gang affiliations, any racial boundaries, any sexual boundaries, any class boundaries.
00:25:11.250 --> 00:25:17.009
In our workshops, we are all artists and we are all human beings first.
00:25:17.009 --> 00:25:35.569
And believe me, people that live in prisons love the opportunity to just be what they are, which is just guys or girls in the women's prison, just to be themselves, to be free to talk about whatever they want to talk about without disrespecting anybody.
00:25:35.569 --> 00:25:39.089
We have to treat each other with dignity and to wind up here.
00:25:39.089 --> 00:25:51.569
Any projects I have a bunch of projects going.
00:25:51.569 --> 00:25:55.170
I'd be lost without a bunch of stuff to do.
00:25:55.170 --> 00:25:58.849
Well, uh I've got a I'm looking at a new film score.
00:25:58.849 --> 00:26:01.569
It's a terrific film in in the works now.
00:26:01.569 --> 00:26:03.250
I I I hope it comes.
00:26:03.250 --> 00:26:13.970
Um I'm writing new material with a fantastically talented uh songwriter and a band leader and singer up from Oakland, a guy named Brad Brooks.
00:26:13.970 --> 00:26:15.890
We were writing together.
00:26:15.890 --> 00:26:28.369
Um I have a uh you know, last before the pandemic, I was touring the world with a a band I called MC 50 um to perform the music of the MC five.
00:26:28.369 --> 00:26:35.809
And uh I have a a record in mind uh that I want to uh record um and perform.
00:26:35.809 --> 00:26:40.130
And uh so I'm in the middle of of writing all of that music.
00:26:40.130 --> 00:26:53.009
Ja guitar doors is a lot of our operations are suspended because we can't go in the prisons right now, because prisons are a a hotbed of uh of COVID-19 infections.
00:26:53.009 --> 00:26:56.450
Prisoners are really taking it on the chin for this.
00:26:56.450 --> 00:26:57.650
Very, very bad.
00:26:58.049 --> 00:27:03.809
Yes, here in Michigan we have a horrific problem that doesn't a lot of will to solve it in a way.
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