Too Many Bars Beneath the Stars in the U.S.A.!
by Matthew Wesley Smith
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On Friday the 29th of August there will be what we call a “rock-n-roll hootenanny” at The Blind Pig, put on by Beau Bourgeois, Max Hipp (both of Kill The Ego, E-Meters, and other bands), and myself, with the help of some other local musicians and artists. The show will be prison-themed, concentrating on related songs, some serious, some not.
Another part of the show, which I’m really excited about, is that we plan to have some readings of stories from the Prison Writes Institute—these are writings from inmates at Parchman, a project put together by Louis Bourgeois and Vox Press.
The goal of the show’s theme is to put a spotlight on the fact of our increasingly large prison system. We’ve done a good number of these hootenannies in the last few years, and more often than not, the proceeds have gone to organizations such as Heifer International or Oxfam. The money we raise from this show (and bake sale!) will be donated to the ACLU, which has made a priority of reforming our bloated penal system and increasing prisoner’s rights. This time out, we decided to wed the content to the cause. It’s easily done, there being no shortage of songs about prison.
A window onto the prison subject: Over the last 40 years, there has been over a 500% increase in the incarceration rate in the U.S., far outstripping crime and population rates. There are currently over 2.3 million people in prison here. The U.S. puts a far greater percentage of people in prison than any other industrialized nation; Rwanda and Russia hold the #2 and #3 positions, distantly.
State-wise, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas have the highest incarceration rates, in that order. The Bible Belt is thus also the Behind Bars Belt.
The rise of the prison population also coincided with the “War On Drugs.” Today, over half of federal inmates are in on a drug conviction; few of those were high-level players in the drug trade. Close to 750,000 Americans a year are arrested on marijuana violations alone. Along the way, we spend many billions each year in pursuing the war on drugs and paying for the incarceration of those sent to jail on account of drug violations.
And of course, a disproportionate number of those in prison are either African-American or Hispanic; over 61%. Which relates, in turn, to other recent events in the U.S. involving the police.
Among the most disturbing of all is the entrance of big business into American prisons, by way of many prisons and prison services being privatized. Many now refer to our collective penal system as the “Prison-Industrial-Complex,” or PIC. We have here a warped but not unfamiliar system in which taxpayers subsidize the soaring costs of over-packed prisons, while corporations in the prison business make huge profits from it. These companies gain free labor on top of the money to be made in simply running the prison. It’s the modern continuation of one of the ugliest seams in our history.
The farther you look into all the facets of our current prison system, the uglier it gets. And the facts are in: mass incarceration does nothing to reduce crime; it manages instead to destroy families, perpetuate cycles of poverty, and on.
The totality of this situation is one of those things that has sort of crept up on us. And typically, it’s easy to look back on earlier generations and see things we find morally reprehensible—“How could they have done that? How could they let that go on?”—while we have equally heinous things going on in our time, which we don’t fully recognize, or excuse through familiarity or a feeling of helplessness, or the feeling that we have too much to tackle in our own lives to be able to save anyone else.
But we have the information, and we can do something about it. When we take a look at what time in prison does to the lives of these people, so many of whom are in on minor offenses, it’s the quick and natural thing to think, “We’re better than that.” And by jove, we can prove it.
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ABOUT THE SHOW:
In our version of the hootenanny, we do songs from any genre that strikes us, largely unrehearsed, and anyone who comes can take part- get up and do a song of your choosing, or play an instrument, get in on background vocals, or just scream in our faces and tell us to stop. You play the sax, the kora, the Jew’s harp, the zither? You yodel or you rap? Bring what you got and get in. As well, there will be a bake sale running throughout the show, and your wares are welcome- it doesn’t have to be baked goods, it could be your art or…? Again, all proceeds raised will be going to the ACLU, for their efforts concerning these prison issues.
The hootenannies are a little raw, unpredictable, and always a blast. The cause and our sense of purpose couldn’t be more serious, but in this life, where the road oftentimes is tedious and the way full of snares, you’ve got to have the wherewithal to have a ball, while also attending to what’s afoot. That’s what we aim to do. 
