Lizzie No has been watching rather skeptically this year while the Declaration of Independence is held up as the ultimate word on American freedom.
“Imagine you’re an enslaved person and you overhear that the people that put you in shackles have written a long letter about their freedom,” she begins. “What standing did the Founding Fathers have to speak about freedom at all? Working-class people of all colors — Black and brown and white and indigenous — we are who needs to be consulted on freedom.”
And that’s exactly who you’ll find on the compilation album she received grant funding to make ahead of the nation’s semiquincentennial.
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After working the folk circuit as an independent singer-songwriter, grassroots activist and intellectual and for a decade; co-hosting a podcast on folk music; and finding likeminded lefties along the way, Lizzie had her ideal list of musicians ready. Fifteen of them appear on “Outlaws’ Almanac,” a collection arriving not on the Fourth of July, but on Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people.
One performer Lizzie enlisted was frequent country bluesman tour mate Kapali Long, whose Native Hawaiian ancestors were stripped of their sovereignty by the U.S.
“It was a huge honor not just being the only Kānaka Maoli or Hawaiian on the compilation,” he says, “but Lizzie and I have grown such a brotherhood of touring this country together and experiencing racism firsthand in between some of the states in which you’d think would never be there.”
The song, “Vigil for Medicaid,” was a Kapali contribution.
“The opening line,” he quotes, “‘You want to act like you are one of us / You sit in a jet while we ride the bus.’ Well, I mean, I grew up catching the bus everywhere. They got us down here on the ground, fighting in between colors, between (political) parties, when they’re all up in the same jet, sipping the same cognac, smoking the same cigars behind the doors that we don’t know.
“Shouldn’t we all kind of be banding together? I thought that was the American dream.”
He put that angst to words the night before he and Lizzie drove to Washington D.C. last year. There they sang on the National Mall at a protest against government cuts to Medicaid.
“I had the ideas,” he recalls, “but I didn’t finish it until it just hurt so much and the pot was boiling and everything came out.”
Lizzie thought those lived realities should take precedent on the album more so than lofty ideals.
“How are we going to talk about the Fourth of July and not talk about the fact that most Americans can’t afford a health crisis, or are one paycheck away from not having housing?” she asks. “It’s not one of the big ideas addressed in the Constitution, but I am willing to bet that if you were to poll most Americans on what it’s really like to live here right now, the affordability or lack thereof of healthcare, food, and housing, that’s the main thing.”
‘Music and movements together’
Many of the historical events referenced on “Outlaws’ Almanac” are resistance movements. And they don’t feel so distant to musicians like Brandi Waller Pace, who performed the traditional Civil Rights spiritual “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” Her rendition grew out of her current involvement in community organizing against voter suppression and other injustices in her Texas community. In that setting, the activists carry on the Black cultural tradition of bolstering their spirits by lifting their voices.
“So when we were in the [‘Outlaws’ Almanac’] session, there was some stuff that I remembered, just because I know the song,” Brandi recalls. “And then there was, ‘Let’s put this in.’ And Lizzie said, ‘Let’s put that in.’ To me, that really aligned with a lot of how people make music and movements together.”
The artists themselves made up the uninhibited string band accompanying each other on most tracks. And Brandi, a multi-instrumentalist playing bass on a session for the first time, found it powerfully affirming to be embraced as a serious musician. She’s previously been identified with her roles as music educator and facilitator of Forth Worth African American Roots Festival.
Thomas Jefferson gets no love on the album. But contributors put forth their own pantheon of heroes, like Paul Robeson, the Black renaissance man and advocate for workers’ rights who was penalized for his communist sympathies. His best-known song, “Old Man River,” got an otherworldly remake from Will Greene.
Lizzie treats her fellow artist Kaia Kater as a folk hero. Not only did she ask Kaia to perform an original about an 18th century revolt against British enslavers in Grenada — in Lizzie’s own song, “The One I Love and the Freedom Road,” she toasts how Kaia uses her voice.
“It felt really important for me to have both of those things be true, especially as a Black woman producer,” Lizzie reflects. “Canonizing ourselves and one another is a strategy that Black women have always used, because society doesn’t center us.”
‘An expansive view’
You may deduce from the fact that Kaia, who’s Grenadian and Canadian, is on “Outlaws’ Almanac” — along with Black and Filipina artist A.J. Haynes — that the album’s scope is broader than the U.S.
“In the rest of the world, America is the Americas,” notes Lizzie, “which includes North, South, Central America, the Caribbean. The revolution in 1776, yes, a pivotal historical moment for this whole region, but that doesn’t mean we need to keep our focus to these 50 states and territories. I wanted to have an expansive view.”
That also goes for what counts as American folk music. There’s avant-garde jazz in the mix, both in the form of Will’s surreally doubled and lo-fi saxophone instrumental and A.J.’s reedy, sumptuous vocal phrasing, along with an array of guitar, banjo and harp styles.
And however ancient or recent the material, all of it’s been newly recorded so that it conveys the burdens, pressures and concerns the performers feel in this moment.
Lizzie was eager to hear what the musicians she considers part of her community would bring to the table.
“As we move through the album,” she says, “I’m thinking about Tray Wellington singing an incredible contemporary version of ‘Take This Hammer.’ I want to know what Tray thinks about being free. And I want to know what Kapali has to say about hard work. And I want to know what Kimaya has to say about the ancestors and about sisterhood. And I want to know what Nick Shoulders has to say about what is permanent.”
At a time when grand patriotic ceremonies abound, Lizzie sees “Outlaws’ Almanac” as a celebration of a different kind.
“This album is a celebration of our survival. It’s always a celebration when you get a chance to define and expand the notion of us. And that’s what this felt like.”
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