About Larry Long
Larry Long is a modern day troubadour. He has written and performed ballads celebrating community builders and history makers. While in his early 20s, Long wrote a song for farmers fighting a high voltage powerline Pope County Blues and traveled on a tractorcade with family farmers to Washington, D.C. to demonstrate for fair prices..
It was then he met Pete Seeger, who inspired him to organize the Mississippi River Revival, a decade-long campaign to clean up the Mississippi River. In 1989, he assembled the first hometown tribute to Woody Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma , which has evolved into the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival. In 2001 Long sang for Rosa Parks at the 45th Anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott.
A Smithsonian Folkways recording artist, Long has sung at Awesome Africa Festival (South Africa), Winnipeg Folk Festival (Canada) and Smithsonian Folklife Festival(Washington DC). He performed at Madison Square Garden with Joan Baez and others for Pete Seeger‘s 90th Birthday Celebration.
“a true American Troubadour”
“Larry takes the real sound, the real words and gives us back our songs and we hear what singers we all are and how beautiful, and how strong.”
— Meridel Le Sueur, Author of “The Girl” & “North Star Country”
“A true American Troubadour.”
— Studs Terkel, Radio Personality & Author of ``Division Street: America”, “Working”, & “Hard Times”
“When senior members of a community talk about their lives and work and children write songs with Larry Long about what they have learned from the elders, they create a remarkable celebration of humanity and hard work.”
Dr. Anthony Seeger, Director Emeritus of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
“The guy has never been recognized for a long life of wonderful work,” said Seeger in a phone interview, “He has done decades of wonderful things and rarely got any publicity about it.” When it was suggested that in some ways, Long might be the Pete Seeger of Minnesota, Seeger chuckled. “I’d be proud to be known as ‘the Larry Long of New York.”
Star Tribune, February 24, 2009, “Songs of the Elders by Randy Furst”
“He’s been the subject of newspaper stories in every part of the United States. “No ordinary country boy,” said the Washington Star. “The farmer’s troubadour,” is what the Birmingham Alabama Post calls him. He has sung for working people and their causes from coast to coast. His name is Larry Long, and as Studs Terkel says of him, he’s “A true American troubadour,” a modern-day Woody Guthrie.”
— John de Graaf, Writer & Director of “Labor’s Turning Point”, “Dairy Queens”, & ``From Sea to Shining Sea: Katharine Lee Bates and the Story of 'America the Beautiful'``
``Larry Long is doing what more singers and songwriters should be doing: using music to help people learn to work together, and bring a world of peace.``
Pete Seeger
Music Releases
Living In A Rich Man’s World
Available digitally for the first time through Larry Long Music & Rock the Cause Records.
“Living In A Rich Man’s World” is indeed peppered with characters out of John Steinbeck, and places as remote as Scranton, North Dakota wheat field or as near as Hennessey’s Bar up in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
There are good songs well sung and played about violin makers, southern preachers like Dr. Maisey whose attempt to make Long “born again” is artistically tempered here with personal ambiguity.
Long didn’t have much money, but he could make music. So before taking off, he wrote ballads on paper bags, in colored pencil with illustrations, and left them pinned to the fridge with a magnet as thank-you’s.
Well May the World Go
Telling the stories of hard-working people in a way that highlights the courage, deep personal experiences, and heroism found in their lives is a tradition for which Woody Guthrie is famous and which Larry Long continues.
For twenty-five years Larry Long has been traveling around the United States and visiting some distant countries, meeting people, listening to their stories, and writing songs about them that depict their hard lives in a way that presents them as vibrant, active individuals rather than facelss members of a class or some ethnic group. Like Woody Guthrie before him, he celebrates the specificity of individual lives and actions. An activist troubadour, he and his guitar have accompanied farmers’ movements, demonstrations, and community action activities. He has produced six previous CDs and several tapes and videos.
Videos
Composed and produced by Larry Long with support from recording engineer Brett Huus. Available on multiple platforms including iTunes, Tidal, YouTube and more! Featuring Pura Fe, Bonnie Raitt, Mumu Fresh, Indigo Girls, Waubanewquay, Winona LaDuke, Day Sisters, Soni Moreno, Jennifer Kreisberg, and the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States,Joy Harjo.
A supporting music video by award-winning filmmaker and photographer Keri Pickett posted to the Honor the Earth YouTube channel underscores the battle on the land and water and in the courts to #StopLine3. The “No More Pipeline Blues (On This Land Where We Belong)” music video is an action-packed mini-documentary, shining a spotlight on the Indigenous women-led resistance to the tar sands pipeline.
America Roots Revue—Live in Concert
AMERICAN ROOTS REVUE LIVE IN CONCERT AT THE ST. MANE THEATRE IN LANESBORO Featuring Larry Long, JD Steele, Tonia Hughes, Billy Steele, Daryl Boudreaux, George Parrish, Yohannes Tona A good excuse to cook up some popcorn with the one you love. Relax and enjoy the blest gift of music together. This concert in Lanesboro was the final performance of American Roots Revue’s 2019 FIVE-CITY LEGACY TOUR. Other concerts were held in the Lower Sioux Indian Community; Live at the Levee in Winona; Milan Community Festival of Story & Song; Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota Community. Available for 48 hours after its premiere, so don’t miss your chance!
Podcasts
Larry Long is an American singer-songwriter who has made his life work the celebration of everyday heroes. He has written and performed hundreds of ballads celebrating community and history makers. Tom Thibodeau is the Distinguished Professor of Servant Leadership at Viterbo University in LaCrosse, Wisconsin where he has been teaching for 37 years. He is the founder of the Master of Arts degree in Servant Leadership at Viterbo, the only master’s degree in servant leadership in the country.
Community of Goodness is merely one more extension of Tom and Larry’s shared work with hopes that it will help inspire and reinforce your love and commitment to others.
Recorded at Sound Strations Audio in La Crosse, Wisconsin by composer, producer, and engineer Brett Huus. Brett founded the studio in 1993 and is the recording rngineer for the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra, and Professor of Recording Technology at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota.
