Enjoy music during Bill Rossiter’s program, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Songs (and some fibs and yarns) from the ‘Dirty Thirties'” at Frenchtown Pond State Park on Saturday, August 5th at 7:00pm.
This event is FREE, open to the public, and great for all ages.
About the program:
The Great Depression of the “Dirty Thirties” left Americans with a wicked gallows humor, a sense that we could keep from crying if we could just keep laughing. Popular radio music sturdily ignored the Depression, assuring us that “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” and “We’re in the Money.” But the songs that never made the charts, sung by the parlor, rural and small-town musicians of the time, saw the Depression for what it was and poked wicked fun at Roosevelt, Wall Street, the American dream itself, and, especially, Herbert Hoover: “Look here, Hoover, see what you done; You went off fishin’, let the country go to ruin.”
“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” views the Depression, not through history and literature, but through songs and “illiterature,” looking at what it meant to the working folk most affected by it. This “bareknuckle” musical report of songs and stories of the Great Depression is accompanied by banjo, guitar and autoharp. Bill Rossiter, a professional entertainer, is a retired instructor of literature and folklore at Flathead Valley Community College. He is a 2015 recipient of the Governor’s Humanities Award.
Frenchtown Pond State Park
18401 Frenchtown Frontage Road
Frenchtown, Montana, MT 59834
