Photo Via Lil Rev - lilrev.com
Lil Rev
Is Larry Penn the most famous Milwaukee musician most Milwaukeeans never heard of? The folksinger toured festivals around the world, reaching as far as Russia. His enormous catalog encompassed songs about trucks and trains, and the value of family, as well as organized labor. One of his more whimsical numbers, “I’m a Little Cookie,” was recorded by Pete Seeger on Live at Carnegie Hall and covered by dozens of other artists and became the theme song for a CBC kids’ show. He ranged widely for topics, addressing pollution with “Plastic in the Trees” and minimum-wage work on “Tommy the Dishwasher.” Penn released 10 albums including one with his younger Milwaukee acolyte, Lil Rev, Around the Campfire (2012).
Since Penn’s death in 2014, Rev has worked with the singer-songwriter’s family to stage a memorial concert each fall. This year he collaborated with Craig Siemsen of the popular Milwaukee folk duo Patty & Craig for the 11thth Annual Larry Penn Tribute.
“Larry was a union guy foremost,” Siemsen says. However, Penn began in the early ‘60s as a drummer in a local jazz combo before turning up later that decade at civil rights rallies, including marches led by Fr. James Groppi, singing and playing guitar in the tradition of folk music broadside balladeers. “All his early songs were about civil rights, then he wrote union songs, then songs about trains,” Siemsen continues.
Teamster Singer
Penn was a burly Teamster who drove a truck for Central Steel & Wire. He was a genuine working man who sang about the working life. He helped to cofound the Bay View Tragedy, the annual observance in May of the 1886 massacre of striking workers by armed troops on Milwaukee’s South Side.
“Larry didn’t go to college, but he was astute, knowledgeable—he didn’t write about anything he didn’t research,” Siemsen says. “He was very thoughtful and kind, a generous person who helped wrap other musicians into the fold. And he was one of the funniest guys I ever met. You never knew what kind of quips came from him.”
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Earlier this fall, Siemsen performed at the Milwaukee Troublemakers School held at Steamfitters Local 601, playing Penn’s “Trickle Down Song” along “Solidarity Forever” and one of his own tunes. “A lot of young unionists are picking up the mantle,” he says. “Taking up the organizing in an uncompromising way. The young activists will carry on.”
Changing America
“Larry documented a quickly changing American landscape that was both rooted in history and an ever-gazing eye on the future,” Rev adds. “His poetry and song didn't whisper, it growled, and in doing so, demanded justice for all.
“I became enamored with Mr. Penn's songs and stories at a very early age, and I’m still chasing his ghost, trying to make sense of how history repeats itself, and what would Larry say or do if he were here today to see the chaos, hate and dishonor that has become the American body politic.
“Larry Penn served his community in song, protest and storytelling, giving back as much as he could to local charities, the Wisconsin labor history society, the Coffee House where he often played and many other causes that he and his lovely wife Pat believed in,” Rev concludes.
The roster at this year’s Larry Penn Tribute will include Rev, Craig & Patty, Tom & Barb Webber, performing songs by Penn and originals “in the spirit of Larry,” as Siemsen puts it.
What would Penn do if he lived to see the current political situation? Siemsen says he’d be writing. One of his last songs, “The Shovel is the Brother to the Gun,” reflected on the spike in gun violence. “He was writing up to the end.”
6-9 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7 at Anodyne Coffee Roasters
