Stokes gives politics, activism a beat
Many of the songs on Chad Stokes new album, “Chadwick Stokes & the Pintos,” came together before the last presidential election. That can be hard to believe considering the political tone of the record.
A dreamy dub wash of a song, “What’s It Going To Take” cries out at the epidemic of gun violence. A tribute to 38 Dakota men killed in a mass execution in 1862, “Chaska” reminds us of our history of statesanctioned genocide. “Love and War” speaks of the trauma service men and women carry through life; “Blanket on the Moon” examines America’s immigration policy.
“Every song I write is about our relationship with each other,” Stokes said. “And that is politics. So while I am writing about stories that I read about or experience that hit home, these micro stories can be about the macro.”
It’s heavy stuff. And the love songs on the album only provide short breaks from the intensity.
“I did have a sense, as an album, it needed a couple short, raw, love songs that would invite people further in,” he said.
Stokes began his career in Boston-based Dispatch in the mid ’90s. A trio of hippies who looked to Bob Marley, Joe Strummer and Woody Guthrie during the heyday of grunge and hiphop, Dispatch laid the groundwork for Stoke’s aesthetic and activism (the band’s early reunion concerts raised thousands for charity and incorporated fan service projects).
Through 20 years, Stokes has continually tried to be an ally to the oppressed (see the album’s feminist anthem “Joan of Arc”). Right now that means pairing the Pintos’ release with a campaign to combat sexual harassment and assault at music venues through Calling All Crows, a social activist organization founded by Stokes and his wife, Sybil. The 12th annual benefit for Calling All Crows will be Dec. 21 at House of Blues.
Now a husband and father, Stokes has constraints on his time that didn’t exist in the Dispatch-takes-the-countryby-van days. But somehow he has become even more prolific. The Pintos’ album marks his fourth solo release of the decade; he has also put out an LP with side band State Radio and three with a reformed Dispatch during that time period.
“I’m already working on the next Dispatch record and I’d like to do a rock opera,” he said.
Wait, what?
“I’d love to create a loud rock record that tells one story over the course of an hour,” he said. “I’ve been dreaming about (it) since early Dispatch and I have a bunch of songs but I’m just waiting for the time and space to jump into it.”
Of course, he will still keep writing political anthems.
“I know people have Trump fatigue but I have, like, six new songs that are all about the situation that lead to his election or Trump himself,” Stokes said. “It’s almost too much but I can’t stop writing about it.”