Utah's Bio

He was not only a great songwriter but also a great advocate for folk music to remain the purview of the people not music companies. He recorded and played many Traditional songs that other assholes had tried to claim as their own work when they were centuries old folk music.

He was excellent.

I would see him every chance I got, ever since the first time at Mariposa in the early seventies.

quote:

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We, the American People, are enormously wealthy. You know that? Who owns all of those trees in the national forests? (This is not a rhetorical question.) We do! Who owns all of that off-shore oil you read about in the newspaper, huh? We do! Who owns all of those minerals under the federal lands? We do! It’s public property, you know. But we elect people to go to Washington—who are those assholes?—what have we gotten ourselves into now?—they go to Washington, they lease off what we own, public property, to private companies to sell us back our own stuff for the sake of a greasy buck. That’s dumb.

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Fellow Workers

[ 05 June 2008: Message edited by: Scott Piatkowski ]

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yep, a great album

Utah Phillips will be missed ; he made the world a better, kinder place

First, in Salem, Oregon(my home town)in the early '80's.

Secondly, in Juneau, Alaska(my adopted town)in the early 90's(that time, he stayed overnight at our Governor's mansion, as a guest of our then governor who had played Utah's records for his then wife while courting her).

Thirdly, last summer at the Vancouver Folk Festival.

On each occasion the fire in his voice and spirit filled the room. The stories were funny and pointed, the songs, ranging from turn of the (20th)century Wobbly tunes to Utah's own, were tough, poignant and as alive then as the day they were written.

Utah was simply one of the toughest, gentlest, most uncompromising people that ever walked the planet.