Tag Archives: international musician

International Musician, Recent News

Metro Workers Bring Safety Concerns to Metro

Following a string of attacks on bus drivers and other safety disputes, members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 brought its concerns to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) board meeting. Representing 9,200 frontline workers, Local 689 has said that employees will stop working if they encounter what the union believes are unsafe working conditions.

“Metro uses any excuse they can to take you away from the narrative that we are working in unsafe conditions,” says ATU Local 689 President Jackie Jeter. “If I am a worker and I encounter an unsafe situation, I should have the right to take myself out of that situation until safety is procured.”

Local 689 and Metro management negotiation reached an impasse this summer—more than a year after the previous four-year deal expired. It will now be up to an arbitrator to settle the dispute over wages and benefits.

International Musician, Recent News

Charity Fights Mental Health Problems Among Musicians

A study published by the charity group Help Musicians UK looked at mental health within the music community. The research was driven by 26 in-depth interviews with musicians drawn from a pool of more than 2,000 respondents to the Can Music Make You Sick academic study. Among the contributing factors to musician mental health problems were money worries, poor working conditions, bullying, insecurity, and isolation from friends and family. Those issues are compounded by the reluctance of musicians to discuss problems due to fear of losing work.

Help Musicians UK made three policy recommendations to help address mental health crisis among musicians:

  • To embed discussion of mental health awareness in music education and promote wider understanding in the industry.
  • To create a code of best practice to demonstrate an organization’s awareness of mental health issues in the industry.
  • To ensure that mental health support services for the music community are both affordable and accessible.
International Musician, Recent News

Union Blasts Company for Using Out of State Contractors to Build Wind Farm

In October, the New York State Laborers Organizing Fund held a rally in front of the American Wind Energy Association investor conference in Manhattan, New York. The union says that the California-based company EDF Renewable Energy hired out-of-state workers to build a wind farm in Lewis County in order to avoid paying prevailing wages.

“EDF’s decision to use out-of-state contractors to perform work being subsidized by New York tax dollars is a disgrace,” says John Hutchings, director of the New York State Laborers Organizing Fund. “Public subsidies should come with public responsibilities. We should be using the state’s limited development resources to fund projects that provide middle class jobs.”

International Musician, Recent News

University of Chicago Grad Students Organize

In October, graduate students at the University of Chicago became the latest to vote to unionize, despite opposition from administrators. Currently, 12 academic institutions host Graduate Student Unions. Penn students faced the same opposition when they voted for unionization last year.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a 1964 UChicago graduate, commented in a letter: “Having a union ends the arrangement where the employer makes all the decisions unilaterally, and institutes a legal process where your union organization collectively bargains with the employer regarding the issues you have identified as needing improvement. I respect the critical work you do every day, and wish you the very best in your efforts to create a democratic workplace where your voice can really be heard.”

International Musician, Recent News

Call for Worker Protections for Hurricane Rebuilding

As workers in Houston’s labor force begin rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey, local organizers are concerned with ensuring they will be properly protected and compensated. Even before Harvey, conditions were tough for area construction workers, particularly among Houston’s large undocumented workforce (about 50% of construction workers).

A study with the University of Illinois found that about 40% of Houston construction workers have no benefits. Industry has dismantled worker protections in Texas for decades. No workers’ compensation insurance coverage is required and one construction worker dies on the job every day. Already there are reports of crews spending hours cleaning up only to be denied their promised pay.

International Musician, Recent News

Study Finds Jazz Musicians Have Unique Response to Unexpected Events

Wesleyan University Scientists used electroencephalography to examine the differences in the brain activity of classical and jazz musicians during unexpected chord progressions. The study, published in the journal, Brain and Cognition, included 12 jazz musicians (with improvisation training), 12 classical musicians (without improvisation training), and 12 non-musicians, observing them while they listened to a series of chord progressions. Some progressions were typical of western music and others were unexpected progressions. Jazz musicians had a different response to the unexpected progressions that demonstrated increased perceptual sensitivity to unexpected stimuli along with an increased engagement with unexpected events.

International Musician, Recent News

Eminem Wins $600,000 in New Zealand Copyright Case

In a case hugely significant for global copyright infringements, New Zealand’s high court ruled that their National party infringed on Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself.” The rapper’s publisher was awarded NZ $600,000 (about $414,000 US). In September 2014 they used a version on the tune, a track titled “Eminem Esque,” in an election campaign advertisement. The court’s ruling stated that “Eminem Esque” had substantially copied “Lose Yourself” and that there were minimal differences between the works. The National party advertisement in question was played 186 times over an 11-day period of time.

“This is a warning to soundalike music producers and their clients everywhere,” says Adam Simpson, director of Simpsons solicitors, which acted for Eminem’s music company. Eminem was never approached for permission to use his work.

International Musician, Recent News

New Silkroad Leadership Announced

Twenty years after founding the arts orPganization Silkroad, Yo-Yo Ma of Local 802 (New York City) is passing the baton to three of his collaborators. “I am thrilled to hand over artistic direction of Silkroad to Jeffrey Beecher [of Local 149 (Toronto, ON)], Nicholas Cords [of Local 802], and Shane Shanahan [of Local 802], three extraordinary colleagues who have taught me so much about collaboration, music, and friendship,” Ma says in a written statement.

“Together with Executive Director Eduardo A. Braniff, these inaugural co-artistic directors will shape the next chapter of Silkroad, bringing the passion and curiosity that we have developed to new communities and inspiring radical cultural collaboration that is essential to creating a better world.”

The new directors have pledged a commitment to diversity and inclusion across their board, staff, and ensemble, as well as among collaborators and in its audiences. “It is a commitment rooted in the belief that to ensure Silkroad’s continued impact on the world’s stages, in classrooms, and in our communities, we must engage an ever-broader coalition of voices, one that represents the many perspectives that shape our world,” the directors said in a statement.

They announced a series of US-based residencies for the next year and promised to unveil an “ambitious array” of new commissions “that frame a wide range of traditions, human experiences, and social issues.”

International Musician, Recent News

British Report Says Career Teaching Music Is Becoming Unviable

A new report shows that British music teachers are suffering from low play and less job security than ever before. The British Musicians’ Union (MU), the authors of the report, warns that job dissatisfaction and stress are on the rise due to widespread lack of financial support.

The current music education provision in England provides for “peripatetic” music teachers in schools, who travel from location to location to teach children to play instruments. They are frequently either self-employed or have contracts that provide no regular work and sometimes clauses that restrict them from working elsewhere. They may even be charged for the use of teaching rooms. The MU recommends protecting the future of music in Britain by providing the teachers with fit-for-purpose template contracts.

Unknown Hinson
International Musician, Member Profiles

Unknown Hinson Leaves a Mark with Persona and “Chart Toppin’ Hits”

Unknown Hinson

Stuart D. Baker of Local 342 (Charlotte, NC) performs rockabilly and blues tunes onstage as his redneck, Dracula-inspired persona, Unknown Hinson.

The story of guitarist and performer Unknown Hinson is closer to rockabilly myth than biography. His wild, womanizing, honky-tonk persona has been carefully crafted by Stuart Daniel Baker of Local 342 (Charlotte, NC), a music teacher and studio musician.

Unknown Hinson was first conceived by Baker as a character for the Charlotte, Virginia, public access TV show, The Wild, Wild South. With his creative partner Don Swan, Baker would perform politically incorrect songs and skits and feature Hinson’s music videos. Wild, Wild South came to an abrupt end in 1995 when Swan, who played Rebel Helms on the show, passed away. Baker then spun off Wild, Wild South into the Unknown Hinson Show, which found success, winning Creative Loafing’s “Best Of” poll for Best Public-Access Television Show four years in a row.

Baker’s Hinson persona is a legendary oddball outlaw. The story goes, Hinson learned one chord on the guitar from his mother who mysteriously disappeared when he was 10, leaving him orphaned. His father—and namesake—was “unknown.” Hinson went to work for a traveling carnival, playing the guitar and working as a sideshow act biting the heads off live chickens.

In another chapter in Unknown Hinson’s legend, in 1963, at age 21, he was framed for the murder of his boss at the carnival. Sentenced to 30 years in the Illinois State Penitentiary, he spent most of his time “pickin’” guitar and growing his knowledge on the instrument by listening to the radio in prison. Rumors also persist that he is a 400-year-old vampire.

“If people believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, or call me a vampire, I’m going to let ’em. It doesn’t bother me none. I’m just going to go out and put on a good show for ’em,” says Baker, in character, as Hinson.

Rarely does Baker appear out of character. Baker grew up in a musical family in North Carolina. His father was a musician who taught him to hold a guitar right-handed, even though Baker is left-handed. He also played the drums in a local band he started with his brothers.

Baker decided to move to New York City in 1979. He found the “studio racket” as he put it to be a “dog eat dog” world. “I learned a lot but everything I was making was going to rent and food,” says Baker. After two years of session work, subbing on guitar for bands, and even putting together his own group, Baker returned south. During the day, he would do more session work on the guitar and bass. He began moonlighting in the house band of a honky-tonk bar in Darlington, South Carolina. This is where Unknown Hinson began to materialize.

“I didn’t realize what I was doing in a honky-tonk full of drunks six nights a week. I told myself ‘well, what you were doing then was R&D for Unknown Hinson,’” Baker explains.

Baker also found inspiration for Hinson from his childhood. “Any small southern town is going to have interesting, funny characters,” he says.

In 1999, Baker moved away from the Unknown Hinson Show, taking his act on the road. He started recording albums of the songs he performed on the show. He soon built a cult fan base performing as Hinson with songs like “Unlock This Bathroom Door” and his signature appearance characterized by a tuxedo, silk bow tie, and jet black hair slicked into a high widow’s peak. Baker based this look on a combination of the redneck persona and his fondness for old horror film icons like Frankenstein and Dracula.

Baker’s break from television didn’t last long. He has been the voice of Squidbillies—a cartoon that pokes fun at southern hillbilly stereotypes—as backwoods patriarch Early Cuyler for the past 10 seasons and he is currently working the 11th.

Not surprisingly, admiration for the actor and musician in the industry is expressed in unconventional ways. The grandson of Hank Williams Sr., Hank III, has a tattoo of Hinson on his bicep, which Baker considers “an honor.”

While he’s known for his comedic and outrageous character performances, Baker proves he has chops and has been a frequent touring partner of Reverend Horton Heat and also as a bassist with Billy Bob Thornton and the Boxmasters. Baker has earned accolades and professional recognition, including the Independent Music Awards and Vox Pop vote for Best Alternative Country Song for “Torture Town” in 2009, and the Ameripolitan Music Award for Best Male Outlaw in 2014.

After more than a decade of performing, Baker announced his retirement from touring in late 2012. Shortly thereafter, his wife and manager, Margo Baker, lost her battle with cancer. That fall, he began touring again. “It’s what I do. You’ve got to do something to justify your life,” Baker says. “I didn’t want to sit on the couch all day, watch television. I’m about making music and playing for people.”

Because of his larger-than-life appearance and colorful lyrics, Baker’s character is often pegged as a comedy act, a designation he thinks shortchanges his talent.

“A lot of people pin me as just a ‘hee-haw act,’ but I try to have quality music,” he says. “I’m known as much, if not more, for my guitar playing than my songwriting.” In the end, Baker seems indifferent to all labels, vampire or comedian, concentrating instead on what he does best: pleasing the crowd.

“They can make of it what they will, I’m still going to play the same for a crowd of 300 or a crowd of 3,000,” he says.