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Iris DeMent is a singer-song-writer who, in my book, is one of America’s true prophetic voices. Many think that she belongs up there with these other prophets: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Smothers Brothers, and a host of other inspiring performers who have written soon-to-be-banned songs on taboo subjects and then tried to perform them.
Knowing that writing about “sensitive” or “unpatriotic” subjects might get them black-listed, and knowing that speaking out on issues that the ruling elite doesn’t want mentioned, didn’t silence them, even though they knew speaking out would affect them professionally and financially.
In an interview shortly after her breakthrough third album from 1996, “The Way I Should,” was issued, DeMent talked about one of that album’s most “controversial” songs (controversial, that is, to right-wing conservatives who are into hate mail and censorship and who might object to protest songs about sexual abuse, religion, government policy and Vietnam).
DeMent said:
“I realized that “Wasteland of the Free” could get me killed – and I ain’t ready to go yet. People aren’t used to hearing things like that [the ‘We kill for oil’ line] in public…I had to ask myself if I was up for hate mail…But you know, I think the odd thing is that a lot of people have thought those words. So I guess the main reason I had to put it on there [on the album] is because that’s around-the-kitchen-table talk, and if I have the courage to say it around the kitchen table, and I don’t have the courage to say it out in public, then I’m not as much of a person as I like to think of myself as being.”
One can search the internet in vain for a non-bootleg music video of the banned “Wasteland of the Free,” a song that some promoters will not allow her to sing at many of her concerts.
However, one can find videos of some of her other controversial songs, including her signature song “Our Town,” a commentary on American culture which is almost as disturbing as “Wasteland.” “Our Town” always gives me that choked-up sensation, especially the occasions that I heard her sing it in the final scene of the final episode of “Northern Exposure,” one of my all-time favorite TV shows from another era. (Check that scene out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRlaZ5zBDjA and see if you don’t get a bit choked up yourself (unless, that is, you’re a twenty-something, or younger, into reality TV, cop shows, and celebrity-worship, or are an addicted gamer).
Here are the lyrics of the two songs mentioned above. In a more recent interview DeMent called out for resistance to those institutions that have caused the nation to turn into a wasteland. In that interview, she commented that the America she was writing about in “Wasteland” is actually getting worse.
Wasteland Of The Free
Iris DeMent
Bootleg version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhgb9hYjX3g
Living in the wasteland of the free...

We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
And their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ’s disciples
But they don’t look like Jesus to me
And it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got politicians running races on corporate cash
And don’t tell me they don’t turn around and kiss those peoples’ ass
You may call me old-fashioned
But that don’t fit my picture of a true democracy
And I feel like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got CEOs making two hundred times the workers’ pay
But they fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
And If you don’t like it, mister, they’ll ship your job across the sea
And I feel like I am living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Where the people are treated like the enemy
Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free
:.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/i/iris_dement/wasteland_of_the_free.html ]
We got little kids with guns fighting inner city wars
So what do we do, we put our kids behind prison doors
And we call ourselves an advanced civilization
That sounds like crap to me
And I feels like I’m living in the wasteland of the free

We got high-school kids running ‘round in Calvin Klein and Guess
Who cannot pass a sixth-grade reading test
But if you ask them, they can tell you
The name of every crotch on MTV
And it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We’re killing for oil, then we throw a party when we win
Somebody speaks out against war and we call that a sin
They’re standing up for what they believe in
And that seems pretty damned American to me
And I feels like I’m living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
Where poor working people get treated like an enemy
Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones
That sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

While we sit gloating in our greatness
Justice sinks to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free

Our Town
Iris DeMent
(Dement sings “Our Town” on the final episode/final scene of Northern Exposure.)

And you know the sun’s settin’ fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
‘Cause your heart’s bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

Up the street beside that red neon light,
That’s where I met my baby on one hot summer night.
He was the tender and I ordered a beer,
It’s been forty years and I’m still sitting here.

But you know the sun’s settin’ fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
‘Cause your heart’s bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

It’s here I had my babies and I had my first kiss.
I’ve walked down Main Street in the cold morning mist.
Over there is where I bought my first car.
It turned over once but then it never went far.

And I can see the sun’s settin’ fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
‘Cause your heart’s bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

I buried my Mama and I buried my Pa.
They sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wall.
I bring them flowers about every day,
but I just gotta cry when I think what they’d say.

If they could see how the sun’s settin’ fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
‘Cause your heart’s bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

Now I sit on the porch and watch the lightning-bugs fly.
But I can’t see too good, I got tears in my eyes.
I’m leaving tomorrow but I don’t wanna go.
I love you, my town, you’ll always live in my soul.

But I can see the sun’s settin’ fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on, I gotta kiss you goodbye,
But I’ll hold to my lover,
‘Cause my heart’s ‘bout to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town.
I can see the sun has gone down on my town, on my town,
Goodnight.
Goodnight.