Slotting at festivals from southern Appalachia to the New England coast, The Pinkerton Raid pushes the borders of garage, blues, retro soul and indie rock, creating a soundtrack that works as well for dreaming on a barstool as marching in the streets. “We want to make you feel, think and move your body all at the same time,” says singer-guitarist Jesse James DeConto.
The Durham, N.C., band has shared stages with Illiterate Light, The Ballroom Thieves, Noah Gundersen, Denison Witmer and Lowland Hum. Touring in support of back-to-back releases in 2017 and 2018 took them from Charleston to Chicago to Brattleboro, Vt., with slots at EnoFest and Shakori Hills, as well as a Daytrotter session.
Frustrated with his parents’ generation, whose hippie politics have turned upside down in the Trump era, DeConto blew up some very personal family vignettes for the band’s new single, “Rebel Mama Blues.” Built on satire and slide guitar, “Rebel Mama” narrates the Boomer rebellion against traditional structures like prescribed gender roles and hierarchical religion, eventually devolving into Facebook conspiracy theories and a generation-wide distrust for everything and everyone with the faintest whiff of establishment power.
“Rebel Mama Blues” is a bluesy raw squawl that purrs with the garage rock swagger of the White Stripes and the irritated kick of Cage The Elephant. Glide is proud to premiere this the video for this call to action song, an ideal listen on this otherwise paramount election day.
“I think we got President Donald Trump because of the lack of trust grounded in the boomer experience,” says DeConto. “It’s not that 60 million people thought Trump would make a great president. It’s that they had so little trust in the Washington establishment embodied by Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t so much the people voting for Trump that dictated the outcome of the 2016 election, it was people not voting at all. That might be overly optimistic, but I hope 2016 was the apex of our national mistrust of leaders and institutions.”
Photo Credit: Nic Lauretano
