Maria Dunn has built her career around the kind of storytelling that sits at the heart of protest folk: songs about workers, marginalized communities, and the quiet resilience of ordinary people. Her latest album, Hardscrabble Hope, continues that tradition with a collection of deeply empathetic songs that blend political awareness with human-centered narratives.
Rather than delivering overt slogans, Hardscrabble Hope approaches protest through storytelling. Dunn focuses on individuals caught within larger systemsโworkers in extractive industries, people struggling with mental health, and communities facing social isolation. The albumโs title itself reflects this balance: it’s a hardscrabble path towards a better world – but we must remain hopeful.
One of the recordโs most direct social commentaries appears in โCoal Is a Thirsty Business,โ which examines the human and environmental costs of resource extraction. In 2020, the Alberta government repealed the 1976 Coal Policy that had long protected the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains from coal exploration and mining. The move sparked widespread opposition from citizens concerned about the environmental threats to the region, which supplies much of the provinceโs drinking water. With southwestern Alberta also facing severe drought in recent years, critics argue that coal mining could further strain already scarce water resourcesโsummed up by rancher Laura Laingโs warning that โcoal is a thirsty business.โ
Another track, โReach Out,โ addresses the growing crisis of mental health and suicide with deep compassion:
“Why is there money for our jails, countless legal wars But when it comes to healing minds, endless waits in corridors? When will we realize our greatest measureโs how we treat Someone asking for our help in their deepest need?” – from Reach Out
Another song that captures Dunn’s beautiful storytelling is “A Pill for a Broken Heart”, which highlights the experiences of people experiencing homelessness in Edmonton, Canada, inspired by Eric Riceโs video This is Where We Live. One participant recalls a psychiatrist explaining that many unhoused people are dealing with โbroken hearts,โ reflecting deep emotional trauma rather than something that can be fixed with medication. The text also notes that research shows people are more likely to experience homelessness if they faced childhood adversity such as neglect, abuse, domestic violence, parental addiction, or time in foster care.
โPekiwewin,โ which uses a Cree word meaning โcoming home,โ tells the story of an Indigenousโled relief camp in Edmonton that provides safety, care, and a sense of home for people experiencing homelessness.
Meanwhile, pieces like โMister Potterโ cover whistleblowing within the health care industry, and โAccordiona/Over the Hillsโ is a playful tribute to the patience and support of family, friends, and roommates who live withโand encourageโsomeone learning to play a noisy new instrument during lockdown.
Musically, Hardscrabble Hope expands Dunnโs acoustic folk foundation with brass, Celtic-influenced melodies, and warm ensemble arrangements produced by Shannon Johnson of The McDades. There’s a sense of communal spirit to the album – these songs sound like they’re meant to be sung as a group, as a community, and on the streets.
Ultimately, Hardscrabble Hope stands as a reminder that protest music does not always need to be loud. Dunnโs songs work through empathy, observation, and storytelling, illuminating the lived experiences behind political debates. By focusing on the dignity and resilience of everyday people, the album reinforces one of folk musicโs oldest traditions: giving voice to those whose stories too often go unheard.
A new album by Woody Guthrie (1912โ1967), perhaps the most influential US folk artist, was released late last summer. Woody at Home, Vol. 1 & 2 contains songs โ some already known, others previously unreleased โ the artist recorded from 1951 to 1952 on a tape recorder he received from his publisher. A version of the famous โThis Land Is Your Landโ (1940), with new verses, is among the tracks.
The release reflects the continuing vitality of Woody Guthrie in the United States. There is an ongoing process of updating and redefining his figure and artistic legacy โ one that does not always take into account the singerโs radicalism but sometimes accentuates his patriotism.
The story of โThis Land Is Your Landโ is a case in point. There are versions of the song containing verses critical of private property, and others without them. The first version of โThis Landโ became almost an unofficial anthem of the US and, over the years, has been used in various political contexts, sometimes resulting in appropriations and reinterpretations. In 1960, it was played at the Republican national convention that nominated Richard Nixon for president, and in 1988, Republican candidate George H. W. Bush used it in his presidential campaign.
However, Guthrie made his contribution by supporting both the Communist Party and, at different times, president Franklin Delano Rooseveltโs New Deal. He borrowed the idea that music could be an important tool of activism from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union. In the party, Guthrie saw the ideological cement; in the union, the instrument of mass organization. It was only through union โ a term with a double meaning that Guthrie often played upon: union as both labour union and union of the oppressed โ that a socialized and unionized world could be achieved.
โDeporteeโ
The release of Woody at Home, Vol. 1 & 2 was preceded by the single โDeportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),โ a song that had long been known, but whose original recording by Guthrie had never been released. The artist wrote it in reference to an event that occurred on January 28, 1948, when a plane carrying Mexican seasonal workers crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, California, killing everyone on board.
This choice was not accidental, as explained by Nora Guthrie โ one of the folk singerโs daughters and long-time curator of her fatherโs political and artistic legacy โ in an interview with The Guardian, where she emphasized how his message remains current, given the deportations carried out by the President Donald Trumpโs administration.
Woody Guthrie read the account of the tragic plane crash in a newspaper, and was horrified to find that the workers were not referred to by name, but by the pejorative term โdeporteesโ. In their story, he saw parallels with the experiences of the 1930s โOkiesโ from the state of Oklahoma, impoverished by dust storms and years of socioeconomic crisis, who moved to California in search of a better future. It was a โGoinโ Down The Road,โ according to the title of another Guthrie song, in which the word โdownโ also conveyed the sadness of having to hit the road, with all the uncertainties and hardships that lay ahead, because there was no alternative โ indeed, the full title ended with โFeeling Badโ.
The Okies and the Mexican migrant workers faced racism and poverty amid the abundance of the fruit fields. Mexicans found themselves picking fruit that was rotting on the trees โ โthe crops are all in and the peaches are rottingโ โ for wages that barely allowed them to survive โ โto pay all their money to wade back againโ. In โDeportee,โ in which these two lyrics appear, Guthrie provocatively asked:
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil And be called by no name except โdeporteesโ?
Visions of America and radicalism
โWe come with the dust and we go with the wind,โ sang Guthrie in โPastures of Plentyโ (1941, and also included in Woody at Home), the anthem he wrote for the migrants of the US southwest, denouncing the indifference and invisibility that enabled the exploitation of workers. In this way, Guthrie measured the gap separating the USโs reality from the fulfillment of its promises and aspirations. For him, tragedies were also a collective issue that allowed him to denounce the way in which a minority (the wealthy capitalists) deprived the majority (the workers) of their rights and well-being.
This famous photograph taken by photographer Dorothea Lange in California in 1936, titled Migrant Mother, shows Florence Thompson, aged 32, then mother of seven children, who was originally from Oklahoma and had come to the Golden State in search of work. Dorothea Lange/Library of Congress
The artistโs political vision owed much to the fact that he grew up in Oklahoma in the 1920s and 1930s, where the influence of Jeffersonian agrarian populism โ the vision of an agrarian republic inspired by president Thomas Jefferson, based on the equitable distribution of land among citizens โ remained deeply rooted. It is within this framework that Guthrieโs radicalism, which took shape in the 1930s and 1940s, must be situated. These periods were marked by intense debate over the health of US democracy, when Rooseveltโs New Deal sought to address years of economic crisis and profound social change.
Against racial discrimination
Guthrieโs activism sought to overcome racial discrimination. This was no small feat for the son of a man said to have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a fervent anti-communist, who may have taken part in a lynching in 1911.
Moreover, Woody himself, upon arriving in California in the latter half of the 1930s, carried with him a racist legacy reflected in certain songs โ such as his performance of the racist version of โRun, Nigger, Runโ, a popular song in the South, which he sang on his own radio show in 1937. Afterward, the artist received a letter from a Black listener expressing her deep resentment over the singerโs use of the word โniggerโ. Guthrie was so moved that he read the letter on the air and apologized.
He then began a process of questioning himself and what he believed the United States to be, going so far as to denounce segregation and the distortions of the judicial system that protected white people while readily imprisoning Black people. These themes appear in โBuoy Bells from Trentonโ, also included in Woody at Home. The song refers to the case of the Trenton Six: in 1948, six Black men from Trenton, New Jersey were convicted of murdering a white man by an all-white jury, despite the testimony of several witnesses who had seen other individuals at the scene of the crime.
โBuoy Bells from Trentonโ was probably included on the album because of the interpretation it invites concerning abuses of power and the โNew Jim Crowโ, an expression that echoes the Jim Crow laws (late 19th century to 1965) that imposed racial segregation in the Southern states. These laws were legitimized by the Supreme Court ruling Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which established the principle of โseparate but equalโ, before being abolished by Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965). Popularized by Michelle Alexander in her book, The New Jim Crow (2010), the contemporary term refers to the system of racial control through penal policies and mass incarceration: in 2022, African Americans made up 32% of convicted state and federal prisoners, even though they represent only 12% of the US population, a figure highlighted by several recent studies.
Guthrieโs song can thus be reread as a critique of persistent racism, both in its institutional forms and in its more diffuse manifestations. Once again, this is an example of the enduring vitality of Woody Guthrie and of how art does not end at the moment of its publication, but becomes a long-term historical phenomenon.
If I had to say a single thing about Australian folk musician Gaillaโs debut EP, Over The Earth, Under, itโs that it shows she has a clear understanding of what makes the genre special. With gorgeous musical arrangement, poignant and sweet lyrics, and a concept that ties everything together, Gaillaโs introduction to the recording music scene is something to be paying attention to. The keyword here is ambition, as Gailla not only effectively gets her point across, in just over 17 minutes, but also lets us know she is an artist with much more to say.
Over The Earth, Under could simply be described as a protest EP, one centered around the current climate crisis, but Gailla and her band decided to take the concept even further. The first track of the project, midden, is a quick thirty-second invitation to the universe she is setting up, with nature sounds that eventually get overshadowed by protesters chanting: โWe will not stop, we will not rest.โ This mirrors the final track of the EP, pippi, another interlude where nature sounds seem to be the focus, as the vague presence of people can hardly be heard. These two tracks alone already give the EP a conceptual feel, as the longer and lyrically focused songs are contextualized within them. In a way, with this structure, it almost seems as if Gailla is attempting to capture the essence of a real protest, with a clear focus, a striking beginning, and a somewhat fleeting conclusion.
Adding to this idea, the EPโs middle part also feels like the stream of consciousness someone would have in a real-life protest. We know the cause is just, we know that the fight is bigger than ourselves, but we canโt help but think of how this affects us, the people we love, loathe the people that brought it to be, have doubts, hopes, and more. Take, for example, the song Shape of Change, where Gailla sings about people whose โshape of changeโ necessitates that folks like her are poor, estranged, hurt, or even dead. Considering the context of the EP and the explicit mention of these people’s desire for other countriesโ oil, we can easily imagine which power structures the song is aimed at.
I could go further with this concept, like with the songs 536 and Running on our own, both of which show Gailla embracing different feelings around the climate crisis, like doubt, collective strength, hope, etc. However, I would like to bring attention to the songs Run to and its partner Run to (the water), as these tracks show Gaillaโs chops as a folk musician. On the first one, Gailla ponders where sheโll run to if the crisis reaches critical levels and, almost as importantly, if the person she loves would come along. With sharp writing, and a pinch of humor though overall a gloomy perspective, the song ends with unanswered questions about what this future would hold for them. In its partner song, Run to (the water), the nature imagery becomes vivid, as this running away with someone turns into a poetic and hypnotic metaphor about embracing nature. โWe can just go anywhere she takes us/ Over the Earth, under dark blue mudโ. Like the great folk musicians that came before her, Gailla amps her fight for nature by almost becoming one with it, making us connect more fiercely with every single one of her words.
In conclusion, Over The Earth, Under is a fantastic, short, and to-the-point, EP about the current climate crisis and the way it affects us. It shows that Gailla and her band deeply understand the genre and that they will use this talent and knowledge for a just cause moving forward.
As for us, we can only wait to see what sheโll do next.
