Remembering the life and legacy of protest musician Anne Feeney.
For the early part of her career, Anne Feeney was Pittsburgh’s own guitarwielding, protest-singing hellraiser, turning up, like Tom Joad, wherever injustice was being done. In the ’90s, she hit the road with a vengeance as a traveling troubadour.
“For about 20 years or so, she just toured relentlessly,” says Mike Stout, friend and fellow protest singer. “She would literally get in her car and go. We were trying to guesstimate, about five or six of us, that she did well over 4,000 shows over the last couple of decades.”
A lot of those destinations were chosen because action was happening there: a union battle, an anti-war protest, an environmental issue or a women’s rights issue.
During that era, Feeney touched a lot of people and encountered a wealth of other musicians, which is evident in the roster of the virtual memorial event on Saturday honoring the singer, who died of complications from COVID-19 in February at age 69.
The program will feature songs, memories and storytelling from Stout along with Emma’s Revolution, Peter Yarrow (Peter, Paul and Mary), Peggy Seeger, Tom
Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Liz Berlin (Rusted Root), Holly Near, John McCutcheon, Duncan Phillips (Utah Phillips’ son), Chris Chandler, Evan Greer, Bev Grant and Feeney’s kids, Amy Sue Berlin and Daniel Berlin.
“It comes up as no surprise,” her daughter says of the lineup, “being that my mom was the powerhouse and connector that she was.”
Stout, a Kentucky native, came to Pittsburgh in 1977 to take a job at U.S. Steel’s Homestead Works, where he became a union organizer. Feeney heard about his history as a protest musician, and “she just called me up one day, out of the blue,” he says. “I had no clue who she was. She said, ‘We have this club down on the South Side, Wobbly Joe’s. Would you come down here and play?’ ”
Stout had just written a rocker called “The Unemployment Song,” which has the chorus, “Unemployment, it ain’t funny/I need a job that’ll pay me some money.”
“I got up and did it and she just jumped on stage and started doing the chorus with me,” he says. “I was pretty blown away.”
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and their paths would cross frequently at clubs, rallies, picket lines and social justice events. He loved her activist approach as the first female president of the Pittsburgh Musicians’ Union in the late ’90s, trying to bring benefits to club musicians.
“She stuck up for the rights of musicians more than any union person I’ve seen in Pittsburgh, or anywhere, quite frankly, and they ended up getting rid of her after one term,” Stout says. “They couldn’t handle her style of doing things. She would go out on Front Street and say what she thought and that was a little over the top, I guess, for the old guard.”
Yarrow comes to the virtual event having recorded one of her songs, ‘Have You Been to Jail for Justice?’ with his legendary trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, in 2004.
“Anne Feeney was a deeply committed songwriter/activist in the grand tradition of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie,” he said in a statement. “She was joyous and fiery in her determination to use her music to elevate those who are most marginalized and to move towards greater justice in the land. For Annie, it was a way of life.”
It speaks to Feeney’s wide appeal that she would also get plaudits from Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. “The great folk musician Anne Feeney,” he said, “was a fearless and formidable force for justice and workers’ rights onstage, in the studio, and on the picket line. Through her art and through her example our I.W.W. [International Workers of the World] comrade will continue to be a beacon of hope and solidarity for future generations.”
Morello likely doesn’t know he played an important role in turning her kids on to her music.
“My brother was telling me the other day that he feels like writing Tom Morello a fan letter,” Amy Sue Berlin says, “because growing up, it was a little confusing listening to our mother’s music and not knowing what it was about. And even once we started understanding, it was a little bit of an embarrassment, like ‘Why do you have to sing about all this weird stuff? Why can’t you write normal songs?’ And then when Rage Against the Machine got popular, that kind of changed everything for both of us, understanding that politics in music can be really cool and it actually helped us understand our mom’s music better.”
Although she lived with her dad while Feeney was touring in the ’90s, she later became a musician herself and began to travel with her mom and help manage her career.
“We got to share a lot of stages together,” Berlin says, “and she also invited me to the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C., in 2004, where we got to sing in front of a million people together. As I was reading all these newspaper articles and obituaries, they talked about some of the most profound things that my mom got to do in her life, and I was realizing that I was with her for most of them.”
Stout says there aren’t many like her still around, but that some will be on display at this tribute.
“I think the mark she left and the example she set was real important: that musicians need to pay attention to people’s lives and people’s struggles and need to be part of that, and need to express that in their art and their music — and she was all about that.”
It will run from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday. Register at www.annefeeney.com/memorial. Those who register will be able to join breakout rooms after the event to share stories and songs, mourn and celebrate Anne’s life together. They ask that viewers consider making a donation to the Anne Feeney Hellraiser Fund, managed by the Labor Heritage Foundation.