Sun 5/4 @ 7PM
Folksinger Phil Ochs, who died in 1976 at the age of 35, was probably the best-known and most beloved topical songwriter/protest singer of the ’60s, forever associated with the political ferment of that era.
With tunes like “Draft Dodger Rag,” “Talking Birmingham Jam,” “Here’s to the State of Mississippi,” and “Talkin’ Vietnam,” his first two albums, 1964’s All The News That’s Fit To Sing and 1965’s I Ain’t Marching Anymore, captured precisely the boiling-over political controversies of the era.
But he was best known for his song “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends,” which used a famous incident in which a New York woman was stabbed to death while neighbors ignored he cries for help, to address the apathy and detachment of modern society. His albums became more pensive as he declined into the mental illness that led to his suicide.
Ochs lived all over the country, dying in New York. But it was in Cleveland that he launched his career as a folksinger in the early ’60s, playing at folk clubs like Farragher’s Backroom in Cleveland Heights.
His older sister Sonny has made a mission of keeping his legacy alive with the Phil Ochs Song Nights she has been organizing since the early ’80s, drawing on some of the best folk performers around. She’ll host one at the Kent Stage with a lineup that features fingerpicking-style guitarist Rolly Brown, South African folksinger/anti-apartheit activist Sharon Katz, eclectic folk duo Magpie, which formed at Kent State University in the early ’70s, and actor/musician Josh White Jr., son of the legendary Josh White who was instrumental in introducing black music into the white folk revival of the ’50s and ’60s.
Tickets are $10-$20.
thekentstage.com/phil-ochs-song-night/