It was November of 2004 and Tim Easton had a plan. No matter the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election the night before, he was going to be far, far away from his home state of Ohio, touring in Europe, hidden from the likes of CNN and FOX and catchy sayings that insisted “freedom isn’t free.” Ohio, a state that had switched from blue to red on election night more times than President Bush has mispronounced the word “subliminal” (oh come on, say it out loud for yourself), probably had Easton’s brain and emotional state in shambles. It was in this state that Easton had spent his past several months trying desperately to register voters and make sure every voice was heard. Ohio was John Kerry’s ticket to the White House. Ohio meant everything.
But instead of a victory for Kerry, Tim Easton was rewarded with his fourth solo album, Ammunition, a collection of tunes that frowns upon the conservative people of Ohio, talks of revolution, and warns of going back to the pain. Although not as aggressive and in-your-face as Steve Earle’s The Revolution Starts…Now or Neil Young’s Living With War, Easton’s Ammunition is just as important, as it asks many of the same urgent questions that focus on greed and hatred. Not solely a political album by any means, Ammunition is more a response from a man who has moved forward politically, emotionally, and personally.
Talking with Easton about the war in Iraq and Ammunition is a calm, yet frightening experience. His voice never turns whiny or angry; rather, his tone is informative and confident. He is a man who is secure in his songwriting and positive that corruption is everywhere. What may be scariest though is that Easton does not sound paranoid, making Ammunition a much more powerful album to my ears and heart and definitely one of the best released so far in 2006.
Currently out on the road, Easton recently took some time to speak with Glide about registering voters in Ohio, the war in Iraq, Ammunition, and Lucinda Williams.
How is the tour going so far?
Oh it’s been great. Lots of drivin’ and lots of singin’.
I know you are performing on this tour as a solo acoustic act. How are the Ammunition songs sounding?
Just fine. The “Jesus Protect Me From Your Followers” (J.P.M.F.Y.F.) song is the one that gets the most comments from the audience. And I’ve been playing it every night.
That’s a great song on Ammunition. I know there is a political/religious vibe on the album, but it’s not too overbearing. How did you get to write a song like J.P.M.F.Y.F?
There were a couple of events that sort of happened over the last couple of years that made me write it. Just certain statements from certain politicians. And it just felt like the song had to be written.
Sounds like the songs Neil Young recorded for Living With War.
Yeah, absolutely. He doesn’t beat around the bush! (laughs)
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So you’ve been enjoying Neil’s album?
Yeah, I thought it sounded a little bit…like it was recorded in a bit of a hurry. But, of course, it’s grown on me after a couple of listens. And I’m so happy I was in the room when he (Neil) answered the call, at the South by Southwest music conference, when the interviewer introduced him and said, “We need another song like ‘Ohio’” I also wished he would write another song like “Ohio” because there was a lot of corruption and scandalous things going on in that last election that enabled the President to come out on top. What he wrote about before was definitely dark and a terrible time in our history, but this I’m afraid actually has more repercussions worldwide—what happened in Ohio in 2004.
You were in Ohio in 2004, during the election. What exactly did you do?
Oh, there were so many thousands of us there registering voters. And we were simply registering voters, not for any political party, we just wanted to get people to vote. And as it turned out, no matter what we did, there was a large amount of corruption and scandalous behavior going on and illegal activities going on from the Republican Party and some of their cronies. There was some lawbreaking going on for sure. They won and played real dirty.
Is there anything specific that you saw?
Well, I had to deal with people like the Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, doing things like demanding that all voter registration forms had to be on a certain type of paper, a couple weeks before the election…you know, just ridiculous shit like that. And people having to overturn that in court, like I had to deal with that stuff personally. And the proper color ink on the forms…and then, yeah, the day of the election, it was four plus hours in the rain, which is nobody’s fault, but the waiting…the machines weren’t distributed equally in the Democratic and Republican areas. Yeah, I saw people had to leave lines because they had to go to work. You’re supposed to be able to get off work to vote, but you can’t take the whole day off, you can’t take five hours. And especially if you work in the emergency room, like the guy behind me who had to leave the line. So that was a vote not cast, and that happened several thousand times.
And I imagine for you, since it was your home state and you devoted a lot of time to it, it had to be heartbreaking. Do you get the feeling that people aren’t aware what is going on?
I don’t think they want to be aware. There is a massive article in Rolling Stone, the one with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the cover. It’s a very nice article, and there’s a book coming out, but you can’t undo the war. And 9/11 was going to happen. What we have to do is fix the electoral system, fix the right to vote, we need faith in that system.
Did you write “News Blackout” after all this happened in 2004?
Well, that was just kind of a collection of things that came together, the idea to go on a news blackout. You know, I’m just not going to watch the news, I can’t take it anymore. You kind of black it out for a while and try to live like a caveman! (laughs). Just lay low and hang out, because it was just a constant stream of bad news and it’s hard to find the good—and you know there is good out there. Is it 100% evil? I don’t think so and I don’t want to think so. If you watch the news…at least The Daily Show makes light of it, makes comedy out of tragedy.
You see it, but nobody really wants to listen to it.
Well, they refuse to. Because you have to….could you imagine if you came from a small town and, let’s say your grandson went off to fight in Iraq and he died. How could you admit…you would have to think that everything was for a good cause, for a good reason, or else you would go insane. Like one of the doctors on TV said, “I have to believe something good will come of this–the 24-hour carnage that I have to deal with—otherwise it would just be madness.” I mean, what is war? Why really do we have to go fight that war? How any different would your life be in this country if we wouldn’t have invaded that country—for a second time. Because we didn’t do the job the first time, and we didn’t do the job in Afghanistan. There are such liars and tyrannical dictators all over the world, but we have to go and take that one out because of the fact that he is supporting Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction? Yeah, we’re finding that he does have some ties to Al Qaeda, but so does Canada. It’s just disturbing. So many Americans dead, so many injured…and so many Iraqis dead—and people don’t seem to think that’s important either—going on 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, families dead…and that’s outrageous.
You have toured all around the world. What opinions have you heard about the United States?
I was in Europe the day after the last election. There were people there that were so mad at me, that they could barely talk. You know, I did almost everything I could. People were so mad, and then there were people that would just laugh and say “your country is absurd, blind.”
By playing the songs from Ammunition live, does it give you a new sense of freedom?
That’s part of my contribution to the process. I’m completely grateful to be a citizen of the United States and to be able to do these things. My head would have been hacked off long ago in other countries. And this country is fantastic, but you can make it more fantastic. (laughs)
I imagine one fantastic thing that has happened to you recently is the tour you recently finished with Lucinda Williams. How did you meet Lucinda?
I met Lucinda years ago in a bar in Nashville. And then my manager and her are good friends, so we crossed paths many different times and gigs. And it just made sense. I sang her a song once, “Back to the Pain,” and she liked it, she felt like it spoke to her, so that’s why she said she would like to sing on it.
What were your favorite parts of the tour?
Oh man, everything about it. It was a lot like church, educational. Lucinda’s just consistently strong and powerful and emotional on stage. Very good every night. I’ve been really fortunate to open for a lot of great artists, but the Lucinda tour was the best tour I’ve ever been on in my life.
