Fellow Workers (CD - 1999)

Personnel: Utah Phillips (vocals, acoustic guitar); Ani DiFranco (vocals, acoustic, tenor, baritone & steel guitars, banjo, mandolin, thumb piano, percussion); Jason Mercer (vocals, banjo, acoustic bass, percussion); Julie Wolf (vocals, piano, Fender Rhodes piano, Wurlitzer piano, organ, melodica, percussion); Daren Hahn (vocals, drums, percussion); Andrew Gilchrist, Ethan Allen (vocals); Dave Pirner (trumpet).

Recorded at Kingsway, New Orleans, Louisiana. Includes liner notes by Howard Zinn.

FELLOW WORKERS was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Though veteran folkie Utah Phillips is old enough to be DiFranco's grandfather, the two have much in common. They both believe in music as a tool for social change, practicing the art of folk music in the manner of politically motivated artists like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. The socialist tinge of the title is borne out in Phillips's decidedly leftist politics, and his young colleague echoes his sentiments. Most of FELLOW WORKERS features Phillips telling stories about the struggle of the working man against a capitalist overdog, over the percolating "folk-funk" of DiFranco and her band. Despite the inherent potential for didacticism in such a project, Phillips's warm humanism and DiFranco's unerring sense of rhythm make this an album whose pleasures are both aesthetic and ideological. minimize