A respectful and traditional tribute to Phil Ochs.
Volume 1 of this collaborative tribute by Phil Odgers of The Men They Couldn’t Hang and John Kettle of Merry Hell was birthed in the dark days of COVID-19, and 2024’s Far Rockaway: The Songs of Phil Ochs was the result. Thinking that was job done, the project garnered acclaim amongst a folk audience and there were no immediate plans for a follow up, but, never say never; and prompted by the increasingly calamitous state of the world and the re-election of a certain American president, Ochs’ work seemed to be increasingly relevant, so back into the studio the pair returned for a further revival of the Ochs’ catalogue.
Featuring a mix of Ochs’ song types, from the political to the personal, the album opens with Automation Song, one of Ochs’ less covered songs; this rumination on the effect of industrialisation (and from this point in time, AI) is delivered in bare troubadour style with just guitar and vocals laying the sentiments about the nobility and usefulness of labour bare.
I ain’t marching anymore is a song that has been covered and used more frequently due to its core pacifist message. Bass and mandolin are added to the guitar and vocal mix, giving the song an urgency but perhaps lacking the angered exasperation of Ochs’ original. Title track, The War is Over, follows with a similar musical arrangement and tempo. The more personal song Celia follows – penned for Celia Pomeroy and her reunion with her husband William, separated by the consequences of devotion to communist activism. The gentle finger-picked guitar and vocals suit the personal-political content here and its examination of the emotional price that is paid for following a cause.
When I’m gone: if ever there was a song that encapsulated Ochs, it’s probably this one. Given a fuller sound here with the addition of bass and harmonica, its plea to make the most of your time in making the world a better place is ever relevant. No version can ever carry the weight of Ochs’ version, though, given the circumstances of his all too short life and its entanglement with the core of the song, so as here, all that the artist can do is carry on the message.
There’s a shift in the personal/political bias towards the stories of the unknown soldiers on Remember Me, given a rousing sing-along treatment; the juxtaposition of human sacrifice set against the jollity of the melody and arrangement will either jar or be seen as ironic, depending on the standpoint of the listener. It’s a song that suits the musical background of the groups that both the participants hail from and, as such, makes for an appropriate musical choice.
The personal link with Ochs goes further still on the shortest track on the album, the one-minute-and-twenty-one-second I’m Tired. Ochs’ version is a two-minute-plus version with guitar, but here it’s been stripped back to 81 seconds of sympathetic a cappella directness about loneliness. Again, taking the context of the writer and the naturally melancholy timbre of his voice out of the remake, it’s difficult to replicate the response elicited by the original, but the choice of a voice-only arrangement goes some way to redressing the balance.
Many have made the link between the life and work of Ochs and the iconic workers’ activist Joe Hill, and it is no surprise that Ochs chose him as a song subject; Ochs lifted the melody for his version of Joe Hill from Woody Guthrie’s Tom Joad in order to deliver the tale of the activist, and that melody and tale remain intact here. It’s a regulation passing on of the banner, done with enthusiasm.
The album concludes with the anthemic rhetoric of What are you fighting for and the gloriously melancholic No more songs. The delicate lead work on the latter almost feels unnecessary when taken against the lyrical darkness at the heart of it all.
Faced with the times that we are in, it’s never a bad time to reintroduce the work of Phil Ochs to a world that needs his voice, and Odgers and Kettle have done that in a respectful way using traditional and appropriate musical means which, if they lead listeners back to the source, will have done their job.
