March 18-24, 2004

cover story

The Cover-Up

Folkie John Flynn finds inspiration in God and country.

by Mary Armstrong | Photo by Michael T. Regan

John Flynn the irreverent?

It came as a surprise to many who knew Flynn from years of singing the national anthem and "God Bless America" at Phillies games. Or had kids who listen to public radio.

Most of the CDs he's sold around here have been for children, thanks to Kathy O'Connell's Kids Corner show on WXPN. Those songs have a humorous edge, of course, so how far of a stretch was it to poke fun at a sacred cow like John Ashcroft?

"Minnie Lou" is the song in question, the one that snapped heads around, the one that finally made it clear John Flynn, the pride of Prospect Park, was more than good looks and a fine voice.

In case the story escapes you: Ashcroft had an $8,000 curtain placed over Minnie Lou -- aka the Spirit of Justice statue in the Great Hall of the Justice Department building in D.C. Minnie Lou's exposed breast -- like Janet Jackson's -- was deemed inappropriate, especially since the attorney general often found himself giving press conferences at her feet.

"I think it was a piece by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times that clued me in. I looked for other news and couldn't believe it had gotten a pass from the rest of the media. I decided I had to do something, it was so boneheaded," recalls Flynn, who first played the song two years ago on the Folk Train, the overnight express to the Folk Alliance Conference in Jacksonville, Fla. The song vaguely suggests a calypso in its rhythm and comic use of wordplay, and most importantly, in its intention: information with attitude. By the end of that weekend, the song was on everyone's lips and scheduled to be reprinted in Sing Out! magazine.

That success led to a flood of topical songs from Flynn. At Temple he was a political science major, so maybe it's surprising they hadn't come pouring out sooner. "But it wasn't until I got so torqued up in the last year or so that I had to speak my mind. I was having these internal dialogues, wondering if I should actually speak regularly."

He worried about his reputation as a family music artist, all the while pondering if it was his place to get on the soapbox. "I came at it with some reticence, but it was false humility, to think, "Who am I?' We all have to speak out!"

Another song on his new CD, Dragon (Metta Four), addresses his epiphany. "Hey Vicente" memorializes what he calls "every artist's worst nightmare: being booed by 60,000 people" about the time an irate Vet Stadium crowd razzed his version of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." It was during the seventh-inning stretch and pitcher Vicente Padilla had just given up a homer. Oh yeah, it was Harry Kalas Day and the crowd was expecting the man of the hour to sing the song. Bad circumstances.

"It was a wake-up call for me, a liberating experience! I found out, it's not so bad! Now, at least if I get booed, it will be for standing up for something."

"I've been booed since for singing my own songs. At my concerts. I've had people walk out, stopping by the record table [to say], "Tell John we used to love him, but get off the politics.' Now I do "Minnie Lou' and say we have been hanging curtains over many things. We even hung a curtain over Picasso's Guernica at the U.N. when [Colin] Powell went to speak prior to the Iraq War."

Flynn took a year off from family concerts. "I knew I wanted to do these songs whenever I sang." He was uncertain if an activist's voice should silence his work with kids.

Returning to Nashville, the site of his earliest songwriting efforts, for a Johnny Cash tribute concert at the Ryman Auditorium, Flynn was seated next to Mary Miller, widow of Roger "Dang Me" Miller. "She said, "I heard that the Kristofferson kids love your CDs.' I told her the kids' stuff was out of print. She told me Roger always said, "If you can influence a child, you'll be immortalized.'" Flynn calls that another "voice from God." Like the Vet experience, he was moved in a way that surprised him.

There has been a spiritual element to much of his life recently. A lifelong Catholic -- "one of the last altar boys to have to learn the mass in Latin!" -- Flynn has often worked with parochial schools. Assemblies and workshops let him make music but skip touring in favor of being home to father his four kids, ages 8 to 17.

"A couple years ago, as artist in residence at a Catholic school, I worked with kids three months and played Jesus in Godspell. There were 100 people in the cast, I fell in love with the experience, my first with musicals." The principal loved it and wished for more appropriate material.

"It occurred to me that St. Francis would make a great musical," so he began to research the saint. God's Pauper [a novel based on the saint from Assisi] really caught me on fire. It lead me to a storefront across from the Grand Opera House on Market Street in Wilmington." That's the urban mission of the Franciscans not far from Flynn's present home in Delaware. A year and a half ago he started visiting with the Franciscans and has, for the last year, begun attending daily Mass there.

Reverence for human life is an obvious response to this blossoming, hence "Full Circle," -- Flynn's anti-death-penalty song from the perspective of the condemned -- and "Not With My Jesus." That one's a protest against fundamentalists who murder and hate in the name of God. One verse ends with "not with my Allah." After one show, Flynn says, a woman in a headscarf approached him to express gratitude at hearing herself, at long last, being included.

Minnie Lou John Flynn Hall of Justice vestibule in front of your pedestal

Mr. Ashcroft did commence to hold the weekly press conference

But the attorney general boiled 'cause the photo ops were spoiled

By sight of statue's lewd alabaster pulchritude

Chorus:

Oh, Oh, Minnie Lou

There was nothing we could do

Cops won't let you drive about

With one of your headlights out

Now Grecian statues tend to be known for taking liberties

When it comes to togs and frocks still the general was shocked

Fix that statue, Ashcroft cried, makes me look undignified

Some decorum is a must. By George, it's dignity or bust

(Chorus)

He said our eyes should not absorb this statue's pert alfresco orb

A little modesty is best … Please someone cover up the breast!

So they got somebody sharp, $8,000 and a tarp

That they found in the garage to obfuscate the decolletage

(Chorus)

Now photos show no marble globe perched behind old John's earlobe

Message could not be more clear. No milk of human kindness here

But art is ours for treasuring so if it makes blood pressure sing

Cut back on the sodium and move the freakin' podium

(Chorus)