If you like Ole Blue Eyes you’re going to love this Blue America contest
by digby
Frank Sinatra started Reprise Records as a haven for artists who didn’t want to be pushed around by corporate dictators, an ethos that epitomizes Rick Weiland’s “Take It Back” Senate campaign in South Dakota. We’re offering an RIAA-certified plaque that was made when Sinatra’s greatest hits album, The Very Good Years, went double platinum… two million records sold in the U.S. This gorgeous, historical collector’s item will go randomly to one contributor this week who helps get Rick’s first television spot up on the South Dakota airwaves.
The winner will be chosen at random. It doesn’t matter how much you contribute. Click here to enter. The contest ends on Monday so don’t put it off.
Now, about Rick Weiland. I’ll let Howie introduce you:
On the day Blue America-endorsed Rick Weiland, the prairie populist and progressive candidate for the open U.S. Senate seat in South Dakota, he visited tiny Hudson (pop. 296) which made him the first candidate to have ever visited every one of the state’s 311 incorporated towns and cities. And this morning he released a song about doing it.
Joined by his daughters, Taylor and Alex, and brother Ted, Rick re-worked the Johnny Cash classic “I’ve Been Everywhere” (written by Geoff Mack in 1959). Weiland and his family like getting together and playing music– his son Nick shot the video– but, as good as it sounds and as inspiring as the film is– his motivations for this one weren’t purely musical.
He talks about he growing up on stories of another prairie populist, George McGovern, standing in the family living room telling his dad, Bud, how he would break the GOP’s stranglehold on the state by taking his compassionate populism directly to the people. He believes the U.S. is due for another course adjustment, like it was when McGovern represented South Dakota in the Senate. “Big money has stolen our government and turned it against us,” Rick says, “and I’m trying to set the caring of my friend George McGovern, and the wisdom of a woman I admire very much, Senator Elizabeth Warren, to a modern tune, and sing it in a voice ordinary folks will hear.”
Here are Rick’s lyrics:
I was on my way to meet with voters at the local coffee shop
When my opponent called and said “when are you gonna stop?”
All this listening to what voters say
Don’t mean a thing, you know my money will rule the day
I said you can raise all your millions by the sack
The time has come for us to take our country backChorus: I’m goin’ everywhere, man I’m goin everywhere
Our country needs repair, man
Gotta make it all more fair, man
I’m runnin’ ‘cause I care, man
I’m going everywhere
I’m going to:
Millboro, Flandreau, Lodgepole, Bloomingdale Provo, Roscoe, Dakota Dunes and Yale Scenic, Frederick, Smithwick, Red Shirt Black Hawk, Dimock, Hitchcock, Holabird Dupree, Hurley, Emery, Westerville Selby, Gregory, Goodwill, what a thrill –
By the way, if you want a prairie populist in the Senate who also has some amazing ideas about climate and the environment, you should support Rick Weiland.
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