This month’s Roadhouse Ramble is for the songs of the worker’s struggle.  A fine collection for this FolkWorks theme is the collection Classic Labor Songs from Smithsonian Folkways | Smithsonian Folkways Recordings with songs performed by Pete, Mike and Peggy Seeger, Paul Robeson, and Woody Guthrie among many others.    

But, I’m going on off-the-beaten-path in search of some songs for the workers that might not have been considered until now.  

As a parenthetical sidebar, my personal labor history goes back to my teen years. It has always involved working with communities of people who, by society’s judgment, have been considered disadvantaged and labeled as somehow less than. The labels have proven stigmatizing and include titles like under-employed, unemployed, disabled, economically disadvantaged, vocationally dislocated, and disenfranchised because of experiences of homelessness, addiction, and mental illness.  

My years of vocation has been a time of great joy and such fulfillment, I can hardly call it ‘ labor.’  I currently serve a community of people affected by homelessness which comes with a variety of secondary challenges & roadblocks that include deeply rooted social determinants based on race, gender identity, and sexual preference, among many others.  

In considering songs about the worker’s struggle, I look to my community for stories of struggle that illuminate their hopes, dreams, loss, tragedies, humor, redemption, and a sense of searching for meaning in a world that often hides its compassion behind fear, anger and defensiveness.  

I’ve chosen songs that reflect this experience.   

These seven songs illustrate some of the stories I’ve heard. There are seven, one for each day of the week since these workers struggle daily.  Finally, even if they are not employed, they labor in a field of suffering many have never imagined. And these songs speak to that reality.  

The Songs in unranked order are:

1. “Take This Job and Shove It” Recorded by Johnny Paycheck and written by David Allan Coe 

This song is about anger, attitude, and a bit of comedy. Johnny Paycheck took the view of the worker who has had his fill of life in a dead-end factory job. In the mundane existence of the work, he has a nightmare about losing the one thing that keeps his nose to the grindstone: the love of his life.  “That foreman is a regular dog, and the lineman he’s fool. He’s got a brand-new crew cut haircut; the boy thinks he’s cool.” He sings this with a good-natured sneer as his sarcastic wrath comes out on the familiar chorus. For Paycheck’s character it’s all about escape.  The song is a tribute to the worker who does the job because they must, not because they love it.  But it’s the love for those close to them that keeps them going. Meanwhile, a little fantasy doesn’t hurt anyone. Just maybe, it helps the worker get through the day. At the end of his shift, he probably does out for a beer with his buddies and keeps on dreaming. 

2. “Keep the Wolves Away” Recorded by Uncle Lucious and Written by Kevin Galloway 

This song tells a bleaker story than Paycheck’s classic. But, for the songwriter and frontman of the band, Uncle Lucious, it’s a personal tale of his father.  The title tells how we struggle with keeping the wolves of hardship away.  He effectively describes how he grows up in the shadow of a toxic refinery where someone is getting rich on the labor of many who are poisoned daily at the plant. His father is injured in a tanker explosion in Galveston Bay. As life seems to drift away his father rises against it and flees with his family to find health.  In the final verse Galloway tells us how the chain of burden has now been laid on him and as he sings each song ‘now it’s my turn to the wolves away.’   

3. “Marie” Recorded and Written by  Townes Van Zandt 

This Townes Van Zandt masterpiece of storytelling in song could be considered a companion to William Kennedy’s novel Ironweed. It is a story of two disenfranchised characters lost in a nightmare of grief and loss. The narrator tells of the loss of his job at Pennsylvania’s Pocono Rail Line. He falls in love with a homeless addict named Marie, which causes them both to be thrown out of a mission shelter. With his unemployment payments dried up, he dreams of taking a job at a junkyard and finding shelter for Marie in a burned-out van. As the song ends, Marie, pregnant with the narrator’s child, dies in surrender to hopelessness. He hops a freight and leaves Marie with his son, ‘safe inside.’ It’s a haunting story sung with a casual low-key resignation by Townes Van Zandt. “Marie” is an illustration of the life of people caught, trapped really, in a downward spiral where hope seems like a long-forgotten dream. In a few short lines, Townes, the songwriter, captures this reality in a way that lasts long after the song is over 

4. “The Rich Men North of Richmond” Written & Recorded by Oliver Anthony Music.  

This song, which charted at number one on the country charts in 2023, is “Take the Job & Shove It,” unhinged with the comedy stripped away to the reality of the working man’s life as he sings in the opening lines, “I’ve been selling my soul working all day overtime hours for bullshit pay.” And it’s all for the rich men north of Richmond who want nothing but total control. As Anthony blazes his way through the straightforward lyrics he finds the pulse of the restlessness of the worker’s deepest anger and frustration. The song was momentarily embraced by the political right-wing movement. But Anthony shunned the attempt to “stick me in a political bucket.” He also made clear he didn’t support the Democratic party. For a short time, the song and Oliver Anthony’s Music seemed to represent the competition for the soul of the American worker. The songwriter, however, has taken a stance in his recovery from depression and addiction recovery that excludes and eschews politics. Still, the anger in his best-known song echoes into the chasm of the political divide in America today.  

5.  “Oney” Recorded by Johnny Cash and Written by Jerry Chesnut

Released in 1972, this is one of a series of songs for the working man. It’s a lighthearted narrative that draws from the same frustration as “Take This Job and Shove It,” but, now our narrator is retiring. He gleefully tells how he is ready at 4:30 pm with his retirement watch in hand and his physical strength from his years of hard labor, he’ll give old Oney his. He’s gonna deck the guy that has caused him so much irritation all these years. It seems so much of the struggle of workers on the surface is about power, control, and attitude. In the end, the reward is freedom from the power and control that’s been held over the worker.  It’s hard to not chuckle at Cash’s performance as he engages in this fantasy. The best part of the song is the prologue where Cash reveals the real purpose of the story: 

I dedicate this song to the working man.
for every man that puts in
a hard eight or ten hours a day of work and toil and sweat.
always got somebody looking down his neck
trying to get more out of him
than he really ought to have to put in.

6. “The Border” Recorded by Willie Nelson and Written by Rodney Crowell 

Released last month on the eve of Willie Nelson’s 91st birthday, “The Border” is another collaboration between the country legend and songwriter extraordinaire, Rodney Crowell. The lyrics visualize a day in the life of a border patrol agent. For this worker, compassion and corruption lay side by side in his everyday existence. Both come with a price which has caused people on either side of the border to face mortality. But this isn’t only a border of land, country and opportunity.  It is a border where the soul goes to escape from prison of oppression and uncertainty. The only comfort is found in the recurring chorus as the narrator remembers going home to Maria, his lover, his friend knowing well the fear and anger lurks in the shadows waiting for him to re-enter. Along the border he tells us what he sees:   

From the shacks and the shanties
Come the hungry and poor
Some to drown at the crossing
Some to suffer no more.

The strength in the song is the close raspy near whisper of Willie Nelson’s voice as he sings Crowell’s carefully crafted lines. The only peace to be found for this worker is in his confession and the reality that Maria waits for him. For the world of this song, there is no right or left, no political cause or point to make. There is only survival in the darkness of the times.  Across the border, there will be no relief.  And our narrator is well aware of this. 

7. “Across the Borderline” Recorded by Freddy Fender and Written by Ry Cooder, John Hiatt and Jim Dickinson

The final song was first recorded for the Tony Richardson/Jack Nicholson film, The Border. The worker here is from the other side of the border. He/she has been despised and misunderstood by so many in mainstream, white America. It’s remarkable that these three songwriters, Ry Cooder/John Hiatt/James Dickinson, articulated what so many migrants have been through with such empathetic accuracy. These workers struggle has been to find the land that promises relief and release from their homeland hardships. The chorus says it best:

When you reach the broken promised land 
And every dream slips through your hands 
Then you’ll know that it’s too late to change your mind 
‘Cause you’ve paid the price to come so far 
Just to wind up where you are 
And you’re still just across the borderline

This song has been covered most notably by Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and Fender’s old Tornado bandmate, Flaco Jimenez. But only Freddy Fender’s empathetic vocal raises the lyrics into something that transcends the current stereotypes and knee-jerk conservatism at play in our national conversation about immigration.  

These songs all have a thread of darkness through them. When digging for songs about struggle it’s inevitable to walk through these dark valleys. Today we can collectively hope that moment by moment, song by song, person by person, as we hear these songs, we can find ways to uncover our compassion, mercy, and kindness to make life better for us all.