It's Time to Talk about "Justice"

(from Gig Journal entry February 28th, 2023)

It was a good gig, a Duo show with Lilli Worona, on a good stage, in a sizeable listening-room at a winery. But it was soured by a rough moment that left me agitated. Someone in the audience was offended by the lyrics to “Justice.” They plainly said so during our break. (Not to me, but to Lilli.) Thus, I was put in the irritating position of deciding to omit another song from our set, supposedly even more controversial, so as not to further offend. One might say that it was bound to happen… but, no it wasn’t bound to happen.

I can’t explain simply by citing the lyrics in question, because it wasn’t even the lyrics themselves; it was a literal misunderstanding of the lyrics — a conflation of two separate distinct verses into one single verse that I did not write. A verse I would not write. A verse that would have been offensive, even to myself, if I had in fact written it.

“Justice” is the most popular all-time Shipe song, with multiple studio & live versions out there in the digisphere, and a multitude of colleague jam-alongs. Songcraft-wise, it is one of three songs I’ve written wherein each verse is a different story, with entirely different characters, in different settings and situations, to illustrate an overall theme. (My favorite example of this kind of song is Paul Simon’s “Slip Sliding Away,” which I cover, and which we played that night. The other two multi-story songs in my personal Shipe catalog are “J. Edgar Hoover” and “Villain.”)

Verse 1 of “Justice” is a recap of the story of a South American dictator who finally gets called to account for his tryanny and atrocity. Unless you are a fan of the Chilean despot Pinochet, this a verse you can get behind.

Verse 2 gets a little darker, portraying a sick pedophile who finally gets attacked by the family dog. This is quite satisfying in its way, as it comes off with some humor delivered in the delightful rhyming of “nephews & nieces” with “ripped him to pieces.” But, admittedly, the song is taking an unpleasant turn at this point.

Verse 3 is where the trouble arose:

Radio talk show host, screaming at the liberals / Got his hands in pockets, ‘cause he’s playing with his bankroll / I know he’s a tired cliche, but he ain’t gonna last / There’s an ambitious young reporter out there, digging up his past.

Lilli and I were on fire that night. Feeling it hard, hitting it hard, animated and tight. But during the break, someone approached Lilli with “You two are amazing, but I don’t like that song about the conservative who molests children.” Talk about a balloon-bursting buzzkill.

Now, I’m trying to sort out why this bothers me so much, and the word I come up with is “heartbreaking.” To put it wimpily, “it hurt my feelings.” Lilli, tasked with relaying the message to me, was terribly nervous about it. And for good reason: “Jesus” was coming up in Set #2, the context of which is even more nuanced and challenging. (I’m not trying to be obtuse here; I know the deal.)

It’s all upsetting in ways I find hard to articulate. These good folks were offended by something that was not happening, that I was not saying, and would never say. So, here’s what I’m taking away from it: These good folks, honest in their feelings, and meaning no ill-will towards me, were nevertheless willing and ready to believe that I actually would write a song connecting pedophilia with being conservative and merely holding conservative political beliefs (as these good folks presumably do.)

I wonder, why would they think that of me? Is it perhaps that they have listened to no small amount of conservative talk show hosts screaming that that is exactly the kind of thing that liberals like me do?

What’s going on in Verse 3 of “Justice” is something you don’t have to be a raging leftist to understand. Politics aside, a shady, self-aggrandizing, carnival-barking media personality sows division amongst us, in service of his own cynical greed. While here in real-life, the sad irony of it is that the division sown is working its damage through the anecdote I’m relaying herein. Even while I sing about his bullshit, he has already succeeded in so contaminating the relationship between artist and audience, that audience will think poorly of artist over mis-understood lyrics. They conclude, instead, that I am the divisive one.

Let me say this again in all my whiny, defensive, snow-flaky umbrage: The persons offended and hurt in this exchange are not our conservative audience members; it is the artists. We would never suggest that conservatives are intrinsically pernicious, let alone patently diabolical. And yet, there are good folks out there who would deny us the benefit of the doubt, assuming that I would indeed sing such a thing, loudly into a microphone, directly at them, from a stage, after they paid good money to listen to us… All because I’m singing about the dude who’s been making them feel that way.

Does this offend me personally? Probably. But it really offends me as a songwriter.

Consequently, and worse, my hypothetical talk-show host and this otherwise lovely audience member put Lilli and me in difficult spot as duo-partners. When she asked me not to play “Jesus,” she saw my body language, and how much I hated that proposition. She added “I’ve been playing country music in Central Oregon for a long time, and I want to get asked back here again.” It’s true. So did I. The venue is spectacular. (Faith Hope & Charity Vineyards.) And I could see how much she hated talking to me like that. We had been put into a position, as collaborators, of having something to argue about, in the middle of a gig!

I keep wanting to use the phrase “Let me be clear!” (like a politician) about what is happening here: I’m not a mavericky, feather-ruffling kind of guy. I am not an “I-have-a-microphone!” kind of guy. I report on the human condition. I don’t deliver opinions. The final verse of “Justice” has the narrator turning inward, realizing that he too remains vulnerable to Karma, and that making the world a better place has to be more than schadenfreude — mere indulgence in the delight of “taking pleasure in a proud man’s fate.”

I was not in the mood to be stubborn, or “brave.” I was not in the mood to push Lilli into doing something she wasn’t comfortable with. This threatened the dynamic of our working relationship. Lilli hated watching me squirm, and hated reminding me of the hard-earned authority she holds as a performer in this region. She didn’t bring me to this gig to teach me a thing or two about catering to certain demographics. And I didn’t go there to teach her a thing or two about sticking to one’s guns. And yes, it would have been “brave,” in this case, to go ahead and play “Jesus.” Brave, only because some good folks were willing to believe something untrue about us, because of division sown long before, by talk-hosts lining their pockets by screaming about liberals like me.

In retrospect, I might have approached them directly, explained the song. Then I might have shown them my song blog: “It’s Time to Talk about ‘Jesus,’" so they could brace themselves for what was coming.

My gist: “Please take a pause to try to understand before responding to me as an adversary.”

You hear a lot these days of “Cancel Culture.” Famously offensive “edge-lord” comedians occasionally receive harsh criticism, occasionally having to make due with diminished impunity and less lucrative show-biz contracts. Yet here, glaringly ironic, Lilli and I are impelled to remove the funnest, rowdiest, most entertaining set-closer from our night of hard-wrought expressions, for fear we might lose this venue where we come to earn a portion of our monthly living expenses.