The World's Grievance Man

Mike Stout is a socially conscious singer song-writer and community leader. He leads crusades against local and global economic injustice, rallying people with his music to take action. His sound and lyrics are influenced by his musical heroes Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Jackson Browne and Bruce Cockburn.

Reviews

Elecpencil

http://elecpencil.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/soundtrack-for-our-childrens-future/
October 16, 2010

Soundtrack For Our Children’s Future

I’ve said it many times and I’m going to say it again. My goal and I hope your goal should be to leave our children a better planet. Imagine my surprise last week to have the sound track for that goal arrive in my mailbox. I’m talking about Pittsburgh singer/songwriter Mike Stout’s new CD, “Americana Dreams: Keeping the Promise.”

Mike’ s has a song on it called, “They are the  Future” that expresses better than I can about why our children deserve a better world.

Mike sings,

“They don’t care what country you’re from,
Or what color you are;
They know we share the same planet and sun,
Wish upon the same star.
They want a world with no hunger and hate,
One where grown-ups behave;
They don’t like violence or bein’ afraid,
Or children working as slaves.”
The ending reminds us of our responsibility:
“They are stuck with whatever we leave,
With what gets left behind;
They got rights just like you and me,
We aren’t the end of the line.”
It’s not only my new favorite song, it’s a really beautiful song. I think some organization for children’s causes is missing the boat if they don’t contact Mike about using this song as an anthem for their cause.

This is what we used to call a concept album as it all works together. It’s flows like  a good documentary should. While the goal is passing the American Dream on to our youth, Mike points out that the powers that be have other plans. They exploit the workers of the world and ruin the Earth’s environment for their own short-term greed.

As far as thinking about hardships workers face, I can’t think of a timelier recording. For example just this week after more than two months trapped deep in a Chilean mine, 33 miners have been rescued.  Here is the story  behind the story, you haven’t heard about the Chilean miners being victims of a greedy mine company. “Americana Dreams” features a song about miners who weren’t as lucky as  the Chilean miners. It’s called, “29 Miners Buried and Gone” about the miners killed six months ago at Upper Big Branch, WV. In the song Mike asks us to honor them by fighting for enforcement of mine safety laws.

It’s great how the media focuses on these miner rescues and the public watches with bated breath. On the other hand, why isn’t the media and public asking why the USA has 18,000 current cases of mine safety violation charges and a two-year backlog of investigations.

Another song about workers on “Americana Dreams”  is, “My Brother Did Not Die in Vain.” It’s about Gary Puleio who died at Meadville Redi-Mix in a preventable workplace accident (that the company was eventually charged with and given a puny fine). Mike notes the outrage we have over 3,000 people who died on 9/11. He wonders why we don’t have the same outrage over the 6,000 workers who are killed annually on the job  in the U.S. As Mike rightly sings that is a figure equal to two 9-11’s.

Mike’s haunting song, “The Tale of Marcellus Shale” covers our nations most recent environmental threat. Marcellus Shale is a layer of sedimentary rock that contains untapped natural gas reserves. Gas companies use a mixture of 596 secret chemicals, they explode underground to create an earthquake that releases natural gas.   This procedure has been poisoning wells, streams, and rivers with cancer causing fluids from these 596 chemical cocktails. Are you asking yourself how can companies get away with poisoning people’s drinking water?

Maybe, you remember hearing about those secret closed-door meetings Dick Cheney held with executives and lobbyists from the coal, nuclear, gas, and oil industries after getting in office. The meetings  released a report that lead to an energy bill with measures that eased federal rules for energy projects and exemptions from key environmental laws (like the Water Safety Act) for natural gas producers. Who would have thought two oil men as president and vice-president would have put the profits of energy companies before the safety of the public? How about anyone with a head on their shoulders.

For more on the Marcellus Shale danger watch the documentary, “Gasland.”  It’s on On Demand, so if you have HBO it should be available. Here is a trailer from Gasland.

Mike takes on what can be done about the debt facing our children. He does this in the song, “We Are the Cops of the World.” He sings about how we can no longer afford to spend four-hundred million dollars a day on over 700 military bases in 130 plus countries around the world. While corporations are getting rich from supplying our country’s military outposts and wars, our government is getting in debt  to other nations to finance this militarization. Meanwhile, our nation has a decaying infrastructure, more and more home foreclosures, job losses, cuts in education and people going without medical care. That four-hundred million a day could go along way to taking care of problems in the U.S. and paying down the bills our children will be inheriting.

Globalization seeks the world’s cheapest labor and which ever countries will allow the most environmental rape. The undeniable fact is the middle-class is disappearing while the rich are get richer. This is the system we have and the rich few at the top want to keep it this way. Mike  tells us what needs to be done in the hard rocking, “We Need a New System.”

A movement like the Tea Party that is corporate financed and controlled will not deliver us a new system, only entrench us in the one we need to escape.  Are any of these nutty Tea Party candidates someone you’d want as a leader?

Mike looks around the world and gives us the best example of a system that is working. It is the democratic, horizontal, empowering southern Brazil movement called, the MST. This Brazilian  Landless Workers Movement  started with 400 members and now has 1.5 million. They have taken on Brazil’s wealthiest 3% of the population that owns two-thirds of all farmable lands. The MST has won land titles for more than 350,000 poor families.They have also taught over 50,000 landless workers to read and write. These are reasons why activist, Noam Chomsky, calls the MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) the world’s most important social movement.

In the song, “MST” over a cool laid back island beat Mike sings,

“A new kind of woman, a new kind of man,
New ways to relate, irrigate and work the land;
Teachin’ common people how to think for themselves,
How to share the wealth and be a family called the MST.”

In the honky tonkin’, ” Back in the U S of A.” Mike takes on the world’s Hollywood image of the USA Mike tells how, “we’ve got a few making millions and millions making minimum wage.” He sings about how, “it’s the land of milk and money only if you’ve got the money.” Mike conveys that the real wealth of the USA is her hard-working people who’d give you the shirt off of their back. Speaking of hard work, Mike’s has once again assembled some very talented musicians to give his hard-hitting lyrics the justice they deserve!

Mike let’s us know that we need to work together because what we can accomplish is bigger than our differences. What we can accomplish is the American Dream which we owe to our children. Mike, like me, is not going to accept that B.S. about how our children are not going to have it as good as we had it. It’s high time to make the powers that be dance to a different tune and Mike has supplied the soundtrack for that mission. I believe music can be a driving force for change and I’m glad Mike Stout is behind the wheel.

“American Dream” includes these eight songs (and five more) that are musical vitamins that will nourish your soul and make you heart happy. Do not keep out of reach of children as large doses only make for a better future!

Mike is one those friends that I’m a better person for knowing. You’ll also be  a better person for knowing his music. Get a copy of “Americana Dreams” or any of a dozen of Mike’s other CDs by contacting Mike here. Or call Mike at 412-461-5650 or email him at mikestout619@comcast.net

To hear some music from Mike’s, “Americana Dreams: Keeping the Promise” click on any of the first seven songs available here.

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”

~ Paulo Freire


Concert Preview: Stout of heart -- and opinion
Friday, March 19, 2004
By John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Mike Stout doesn't beat around the Bush. He's mad as hell about the war in Iraq, and he's not gonna take it anymore.

On his eighth politically charged, self-released album, the 54-year-old Pittsburgher wages a shock and awe campaign that he calls "War and Resistance." The opening salvos will be launched tomorrow in a CD release party with activist singer-songwriter Anne Feeney at Bloomfield Bridge Tavern.

There's nothing subtle about Stout's approach to songwriting, no middle ground in his leftist ideology. In the Woody Guthrie tradition, his songs reflect contemporary issues without resorting to journalism. They're more like partisan op-ed columns that grab political opponents by the throat and don't let go.

"I think the trick to doing it like an op-ed piece is to not preach," says Stout. "You tell the story from the heart, not from the head. Whether the issue is the war or unemployment or social justice, you make [the song] a hard-hitting piece that people can relate to from the heart."

Stout fleshes out his editorial opinions with a band of brothers who have for decades waged war against local musical timidness. Co-produced by Fred Nelson, former guitarist for Pittsburgh's raunchiest hair band, Triple X, recording sessions at Soundscape Studios included Triple X drummer Chris Procopio, The Granati Brothers' Hermie Granati and jazz saxophonist Robbie Klein.

"This album was a major breakthrough for me," says Stout. "The musicians came in with their artistic visions and helped to reinforce what I was trying to say.

"Rachel Corrie," written for the American social activist who was run over by an Israeli vehicle in the process of knocking down a Palestinian house, reflects in music what Stout says in words. "I think it's a solemn song," he says, "a folk requiem. That's why I used violins and cellos."

While "Homestead Town" was co-produced by Nelson and Matt Herrington with a homespun bluegrass ambiance, much of the music explodes with bunker-busting fury equal to Stout's lyrics.

"I think people [at the show] can expect to hear a lot of truth and have a good time," he says. "Part of the time it will be quiet and laid back, but I'm gonna rock their socks off, too, because I have some of the best musicians in town playing with me."
 

Blue-collar rocker sings with cause in his heart
Saturday, June 23, 2001     By Scott Mervis, Weekend Editor, Post-Gazette

There are a lot of guys out there who pass themselves off as blue-collar rockers, but Mike Stout is unquestionably the real thing.

The singer-songwriter, who releases his new CD, "Working Infinity ... Love from the Bottom," at the Club Cafe tonight, was not only a steel worker for 10 years, but he also was the last grievance chairman at the Homestead Works. In that role, he fought to win more than $10 million in lost wages, pensions and other benefits for 3,000 displaced workers.

At the same time, this self-proclaimed musical lobbyist, who played the folk clubs in New York in the late '60s, was writing issue-oriented songs and performing them at picket lines, rallies and labor conventions.

On his fifth album, Stout remains as topical as the headlines. "Phila-POSH and Moran" is a folk-rock song that addresses the Right to Know law, calling for workers to be informed of what chemicals they are using on the job. "Armies of the Working Class Poor" is an attack on retail companies that sell products made in sweatshops.

Songs like "I Will Be There" and "The Day Has Come" are working-class anthems in the Tom Joad mode.

"I'm always trying to promote different ways of doing things," says Stout, who now works at the employee-run Steel Valley Printers. "I don't think the same old ways work, and I'm trying to promote the peace and labor movement and the justice movement.

"I don't care what movement you are, guerrillas in some foreign country or Martin Luther King, if you don't talk about the poor, you don't talk about the bottom, you'll never pull society forward. I try to reflect that in my music."

Stout, an avowed Springsteen fanatic who saw the Boss eight times on the last tour, sings with gritty passion and is backed by an all-star local lineup, including Reb Beach (Winger, Alice Cooper), producer/guitarist Buddy Hall, B.E. Taylor, Kenny Blake, Pete Hewlett and Jeff Thurston.

Tonight's record release party is a benefit for the "living wage" campaign, which would require employers awarded city contracts to pay workers at least $9.12 an hour. It was approved by City Council and is about to go before County Council.

It's the latest in a long line of causes that Stout has adopted. And the issues never stop coming. He says that with the global concerns rising to the surface now and the new administration in the White House, "I don't think I'm going run out of material anytime too soon."
 

CD REVIEW: 'The Human Spirit Will Prevail'
By DAVID SALLINGER, Daily News Entertainment Editor     07/05/2002

Stout's new CD celebrates 'Human Spirit'

Mike Stout has a niche, and that's kinda too bad.  He actually should be heard by those comfortably ensconced in other niches, not just by those who see him as a champion for the working class.

As far as Stout is concerned, "The Human Spirit Will Prevail," which, coincidentally, is the title of his new CD on his American Blue Collar label.
He argues his case in a variety of styles and tempos, and in the case of the new collection, over a number of years (earliest date on a song is 1981; most recent is 18 days after Sept. 11).  That post-attack track, "There Are No Real Winners in War," reflects Stout's anger at man's continual inhumanity. Haunting, a flute giving it a spooky atmosphere and with a Celtic feel to the chorus, the song ought to inspire a producer somewhere to gather such Sept. 11 responses for an anthology.

Recorded at McKeesport's Soundscape Studios, "Human Spirit" is likewise buoyed by "We Need a Movement" which, in the wake of terrorism, might now mean more than originally intended. Though Stout is promoting the organization of those he sees as downtrodden, he's circumspect in his multi-layered and textured approach. It reminds a bit of that transition period from folk to folk-rock.

"Hey, Mr. Gooberhead" likewise finds itself in the keeper pile. Countrified, humorous yet pointed, it's likely to inspire sing-alongs from those who've had a few.

Joining the keepers is "Don't Let Them Put Out the Fire," which is more about a spiritual blaze than something tangible (or something sprinkled with chilis). Good fiesta arrangement.   Stout further prevails with the mid-rhythmic "I Think You Need Some Solidarity" and "We Ain't Going Away," one of the oldest selections, and angrier, a little more strident than his more contemporary compositions (wouldn't hurt if we knew who "we" are, and what "we're" not going away from).

In the aggressive "We're Still Sisters and Brothers Here," Stout went for more conceptual lyrics. "Enough's Enough" falls into the old hot rod category of zipping along some dark country road; it plays on us vs. them.      Stout's classic interpretation of Rick Hoyt's "White Corporate Man in a Business Suit" is rockabilly, a theme song for the New World Disorder. "When the Judgement Day Comes" is a theme for those who oppose that disorder, a flag-waver for the oppressed and those who realize they're responsible for allowing power to center on a few.  Concluding the collection is the title track, a post-apocalyptic promise, more balladic, allowing it all to end on a hopeful note.

Stout was aided by Robbie Klein on sax and flute (no wonder there's some jazz flavoring), John Parrendo on violin and fiddle (no wonder there's some country flavoring) and Chris Procopio on drums (no wonder the album frequently rocks).   Also adding their skills were Fred Nelson on guitar, Matt Harrington on keyboards and strings and Steve Landay on bass.

    ©The Daily News 2006

Molly Rush for the Thomas Merton Center  - March 2004
http://www.thomasmertoncenter.org/the_new_people/March2004/stout.htm
New Mike Stout CD "War and Resistance"

"I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder." –Wm. Shakespeare

Mike Stout runs a business in Homestead, Steel Valley Printers. He writes and sings his own songs and has performed at labor and peace rallies. He chairs the board of Just Harvest and has been the spark for PUSH, the new national health care coalition.

I met him when he was a grievance man for steelworkers local #1397 in Homestead before the steel-making complex was replaced by a mall. We struggled for years as board members of the innovative Tri-State Conference on Steel to keep the mills from closing. My husband Bill, was a draftsman who worked on steel mill designs at 32 local engineering companies before they went bust. He was laid off after drawing plans for new plants in Spain, the then Soviet Union and China. So the die had been cast.

"War and Resistance," Mike’s new CD offers spirited rock and blues, intimate melody and, in Homestead Town, (used to be the story of a glory boom town) a lively tune with a country flavor. Rachel Corrie, is the story of a warrior for peace, who while acting as a human shield in Palestine, was mowed down by a bulldozer. Mike called Rachel’s mother and poured his heart into a song celebrating her humanity. Just a Pawn in their Game, states, "Landed in the eye of a desert storm. They said we went to liberate, not occupy. But it didn’t take long to see the real reasons why." And in There Are No Winners in War, Not in Our Name or Stop the Wars the lyrics identify the real victims "..on the poor, working women and men.." Then listen to the creepy Big Brother’s Watching, "you don’t even know he’s here" and the rockin’ Big Time Corporate Blues "ripping off the people, tearing up the land, when it’s all for them and the rest of us be damned."

The arrangements and the strong accompaniment by terrific musicians and vocalists give power, energy and sweetness that, along with Mike’s vocals, bring the songs to life. It’s good the first time, then replaying, grows on you.

    - Molly Rush