We Can’t Make It Here
Versions make a difference, production makes a difference.
My friend Marty Winsch manages Corey Smith, who wrote a great song about drugs. No, let me change that, he wrote an INCREDIBLE song about drugs. Hearing it live I was enraptured and converted. I told Marty they should switch singles, that this was the track.
They did.
But they killed it.
I told Marty to cut it live. To record it at a show. To do it as many times as it took to get it right. Instead, they employed a studio take and made a sophomoric video and nothing happened.
The song is solid, the presentation is not right.
Kind of like Dawes. The album is nothing like the live show. In concert, they’re edgy and ragged, closer to Neil Young than America. But the album is poppy and thin, it enters your head, not your gut. They’ve got to work with someone who can truly get the sound down, then they’ll break through.
Which brings me to the strange case of James McMurtry.
James McMurtry wrote the best protest song of the twenty first century. It’s just that the version he’s promoting, distributing for free, is not a hit. It satiates him, not me.
Originally, it was an acoustic number, it was thrown off, recorded more as an artifact than a perfect record. But then McMurtry went into the studio with his band, did a fully produced electric version, and killed it.
If you want to reach EVERYONE it’s got to be done right.
And if you want to change the world, you’ve got to reach EVERYONE!
McMurtry and I have argued about this. He still believes in the electric take. It’s almost impossible to find the acoustic version, even though it’s been played 202 times on this computer and the electric version has only been played 4.
You promote magic. There’s no magic in the electric version of "We Can’t Make It Here", but the original acoustic version is like taking ayahuasca. It’s a mental trip that lays out the entire economic landscape. It’s a triumph, it’s the anthem of the 99%.
That big ‘ol building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can’t make it here anymore
Those are the facts. You had a job, but Mitt Romney took the corporation private, overpaid the CEO and suddenly your job was shipped to Asia.
Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won’t pay for a roof, won’t pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far $5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can’t make it here anymore
People are not lazy. They’re willing to work incessantly just to get by. But they’ve got the sinking feeling the odds are stacked against them. That the American Dream is only for those wealthy and connected. We’re a can do nation being run by a no can do government. Rather than search for answers, the politicians want to give control to the rich and powerful and let them figure it out. And that ain’t been working so well so far.
And that’s how it is
That’s what we got
If the President want to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you’re listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why
In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That’s done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noon-day heat
There’s rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can’t make it here anymore
We all know the truth, how come the politicians won’t speak it? And the news media ain’t much better, peopled by those who too want to become rich, all they can do is blame the public, stealing their wares on the Internet.
This ain’t my America. My America is a meritocracy. Where you’ve got dreams and a chance of fulfilling them. Where no one gets to be rich forever just because they had an ancestor who worked hard or got lucky once. And until we the people, screwed over by the monied class, stand up for our rights, there will be no change.
And to do this, we need an anthem.
James McMurtry wrote it. Might have been years back, but if songs can be hits more than once, if "Don’t Stop Believin’" can be played at stadia, "We Can’t Make It Here" can come back too. Hell, they should play it at halftime, it should be the hymn of the oppressed, it’s just that everybody thinks he’s a winner and he’s not.
Listen to the two versions. Let me know which one you think works.
It won’t be long before McMurtry has the acoustic take removed from YouTube, act fast!
