Artist:
Joe Uehlein

Description:

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The music this month is not just music. At the Great Labor Arts Exchange In Silver Spring in 2006, the Labor Heritage Foundation presented its annual Joe Hill Award to Joe Uehlein.

Photo: FBI. Click for pop-up.

In accepting the award Uehlein sought to express how artists see the world. They can reach inside people, motivate and inspire them, and give them a sense of their heritage. Ultimately, he said, they have the capability to change the world they see.

Quoting Baldemar Valesquez on the immigration issue, for example, Uehlein asserted the only way we can address it is when we connect with those on the other side at the level of our souls.

Uehlein's talk seguéd to Dave Alvin's "California Snow." The song speaks through the voice of a border patrolman. The patrolman represents the INS, the enemy, Uehlein said. But he is also a working class guy -- and most likely a union member -- touched by the horror of what his job entails.

California Snow
by Dave Alvin

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I’m just tryin’ to make a livin’
I’m an old man at thirty-nine
With two kids and an ex-wife
Who moved up to Riverside
I’m workin’ down on the border
Drivin’ back roads every night
Mountains east of El Cajon
North of the Tecate line.

Joe Uehlein and Anna Grace at the 2006 GLAE. Photo: Harry Plummer

Where the California summer sun
Will burn right through your soul
But in the winter you can freeze to death
In the California snow.

I catch the ones I’m able to
And watch the others slip away
I know some by their faces
And I even know some by name
I guess they think that we’re all
Movie stars and millionaires
I guess that they still believe
That dreams come true up here.

But I guess the weather’s warmer
Down in Mexico
And no one ever tells them
‘Bout the California snow.

Last winter I found a man and wife
Just about daybreak
Layin’ in a frozen ditch
South of the interstate
I wrapped ‘em both in blankets
But she’d already died
The next day we sent him back alone
Across the borderline.

I don’t know where they came from
Or where they planned to go
But we carried her all night long
Through the California snow.

Sometimes when I’m alone out here
I get to thinkin’ about my life
Maybe I should go to Riverside
And try to fix things with my wife
Or maybe just get in my truck
And drive as far as I can go
Away from all the ghosts that haunt
The California snow.

Where the California summer sun
Can burn right to your soul
And in the winter you can freeze to death
In the California snow.

Studio version of sthe U-Liners'
California
Snow, plus 16 other tunes:

.

Music Archives

January 2008
Joe Uehlein

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Joe Uehlein, Dave Alvin
Photo: FBI

December 2007
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Photo: unknown

November 2007
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Florence Reece
Photo: Harlan County Library

October 2007
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Avery Robinson
Photos: Alan Lomax, Joseph John

September 2007
Billy Bragg

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Eugène Pottier, Pierre Degeyter, Billy Bragg
Lithograph: Unknown

August 2007
Si Kahn

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Si Kahn
Photo: Earl Dotter

July 2007
The NewLanders

The Altoona Freight Wreck

Fred Tait-Douglas, Carson Robison
Photo: unknown

June 2007
Zack de la Rocha, Tom Morello

And Now What?

Zack de la Rocha
Poster: Ahmed Resistol

May 2007
Coco Brown

I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night

Alfred Hayes, Earl Robinson
Oil: M. Baer

April 2007
Ry Cooder

Strike!

Traditional, new verses by Ry Cooder
Drawing: Vincent Valdez

March 2007
Teresa Healy, Tom Juravich

Bread and Roses

by James Oppenheim, Tom Juravich
Painting: Ralph Fasanella

February 2007
Detroit Cultural Workers and Artists Caucus

Walking 500 Days

by Bob Vasseur
Photos: Pat Beck, Daymon Hartley

January 2007
New York City Labor Chorus

Ode To Workers

by Friedrich Schiller, L. V. Beethoven, Jeff Vogel
Photo: unknown

December 2006
Charlie Bernhardt

Children Of Abraham

by John McCutcheon
Photo: Jerry Anderson

November 2006
Ted Warmbrand

Who's The Criminal

by Ted Warmbrand
Photo: Mizue Aiseki

October 2006
Woody Guthrie

Buffalo Skinners

by Woody Guthrie
Painting: Neil Waldman.

September 2006
Freedom Song Network

Rockin' Solidarity

by Ralph Chaplin, David Welsh
Painting: Irving Fromer.