The Project

Woody Guthrie once said “A folk song is what’s wrong, and how to fix it.”  One wrong is that there’s a lot of preventable suffering in this world, and one way to fix it is for the folks at the top to stop taking all the money.

All my adult life I’ve aspired to create songs that tell stories and lyrics about love and fear, resignation and resurgence, in the tradition of  Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen.  Guthrie himself left a legacy of over 3,000 songs, many of which powerfully testify against injustice or bear witness to the needless infliction of pain on working people.

With “Hard Times Hundred & One” I decided to marry my admiration for that musical tradition with the need I felt to bear witness to the continued preventable suffering of these latest hard times. During the Great Depression, photographers in the employ of Federal programs like the Farm Security Administration poignantly documented life in those  hard times, now digitized and archived online by the U.S. Library of Congress.

My goal is to write and record  101 original Americana songs inspired by photos from the Great Depression that do justice to the images, the stories, and the urgency that justice be done, then and now.

You can find out about where we are on the journey at the blog.

The Artist

I am a musician and technology executive.  I work on technology I know will change the world and create music that I hope will make it kinder.

You can contact[at] bryankirschner.me I tweet @bryan_kirschner I send project updates @hardtimes100and1