Been working hard this 2009. Here’s to the end of the year !

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hello,


Happy Summer Solstice

There is a show in Denver, CO tonight.....
and below, you’ll find a new Chicago show just announced, along with a show in Santa Barbara, CA


More new shows to be announced soon.....



TONIGHT!
Wednesday, June 24th
Quixotes
2637 Welton St
Denver, CO 80205
(303) 297-1772
Tickets: http://www.cervantes.baselineticketing.com
Shenandoah Davis and Dovekins to support


Friday, July 10th @ 9:15pm
Black Gate Studios
Chicago, IL
Tickets: Please RSVP at: http://www.BlackGateSessions.com
You will then receive an email with details and directions to this Wicker Park location.
Teenage Rage to support


Saturday, July 11th (11am – 4pm)
Tour de Fat
Palmer Square
Chicago, IL
Event Info: http://www.newbelgium.com/tour-de-fat


Friday, July 17th
Backyard Concert (details forthcoming)
Minneapolis, MN
Jon Rodine to support
Space limited -- Please RSVP: seanhayes.in.mpls@gmail.com

Several years ago good friends gave me a book called “Holding On” by David Isay. Inside there were many interviews with strange obsessive artist types, except one interview with a man named Moreese Bickham. At the time of the interview, Moreese Bickham had spent almost 40 years in Angola prison in Louisiana, with fourteen of those years on death row until the death penalty was abolished in 1972.

What struck me most about the interview was the spirit and dignity of this man. Despite being wrongly imprisoned for almost 40 years he still had hope to be released and reunited with his family. He did not seem angry or mad at life, he seemed grateful to be alive. His words inspired me to write a song called “Rosebush Inside”. It is more of a rant than a song, meant to be a reminder to not take life for granted. Not easily done! After a long struggle Moreese Bickham was finally released from prison in 1996, a few years after the interview in this book first took place.

I had always intended to send a copy of the song to Moreese, but he found me first. To my surprise I received an email from him asking to attend a show I was doing in San Francisco in January 2009. At 91 years old he is still not taking anything for granted. Getting out and living life. Inspiring!

For more information on Moreese Bickham’s story visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreese_Bickham








Photos by Adrianne Koteen

The song "Rosebush inside" is inspired by a man named Moreese Bickham…

Moreese was spelled incorrectly on the cd jacket. That one letter makes a big difference when searching the internet for meaning.

To learn Moreese's story, you can read below or look him up...
_

Taken from "Sound Portraits.org"

"Tossing away the keys"

  (Sound of Moreese Bickham clipping roses.)

MOREESE BICKHAM: Come over here. I want to introduce you to the beautifulest rosebush on the whole yard. This one right here is my favorite. I named it after my wife, Ernestine. It's a beautiful pink rose, and some way or another I keep it trimmed and uniform. I call it "My Beauty." I know it sound funny, but these is my company keepers. I enjoy these bushes. See if it wasn't for these bushes, I wouldn't have nothing to do. So these bushes have come to be close -- very close to me.

My name is Moreese Bickham, my number is 75251, and I'm 72 years old. I've been in prison every since 1958. My crime is murder of two white deputies in a small town called Mandeville. They was dragons of the Ku Klux Klan and I was a black man living in a white neighborhood and they came to my house to kill me, and they shot me with my hands up and I fell and loaded my gun and I shot 'em. So here I am, 31 years later and I'm still locked up.

I remember when my first gray hair came in my head, I was in prison in 1960. It was right up front where I could see it good. By 1961 I had one in my mustache, by '63 I had gray hairs all over my head. I've had three heart attacks since I've been here -- the big one happened in 1977 when the pardon board turned me down. Lost all my teeth since I've been here, my eyesight went bad. I have high blood pressure, poor blood circulation. Yea'-- watchin' myself pass away, die a little bit every day here in prison.

http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/tossing_away_the_keys/transcript.php3

--

Taken from Moreese's wikipedia page...

Trial and death sentence

Trial evidence indicated that late at night July 12, 1958, Bickham had had an argument with two sheriff's deputies in a bar called "Buck's Place" in Mandeville, Louisiana. At approximately 11 PM that evening, the deputies drove Bickham's girlfriend home and told Bickham, "we'll take care of you later." The deputies, Gus Gill, 68, and Jake Galloway, 74, were in street clothes, and it was widely believed they were associated with the Ku Klux Klan.

Later that night, the two men arrived at Bickham's home on Villerey Street in Mandeville. The deputies approached Bickham's front door, argued with him, and shot him in the stomach. They entered his house to kill him, and Bickham raised a shotgun and shot both of them. Bickham was arrested two days later in a Baton Rouge hospital room, and after a brief trial was convicted and sentenced to death.

For fourteen years, Bickham avoided execution, winning seven stays of execution. He lived on death row in the Angola State Penitentiary, in solitary confinement 23 hours per day.

Commutation to life sentence

In 1972, after the U.S. Supreme Court determined that death sentences applied in certain ways were unconstitutional, the State of Louisiana converted Bickham's sentence to life without parole. Bickham was at that time released into the general prison population, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he worked in a variety of capacities at Angola. He assisted in the visitors center, maintained a garden in the prison cemetery, learned leather-making, and he became ordained as a prison minister. In Louisiana, prisoners serving life without parole are never eligible for parole: they will die and be buried in a cemetery within the prison walls.

In 1989, National Public Radio producer David Isay interviewed Bickham in a feature-length documentary on lifers at Angola, entitled "Tossing Away the Keys".

--

NY Times Article about Moreese's long-overdue release from prison

"After 37 Years in Prison, Inmate Tastes Freedom"

On the last of his 13,695 days in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Moreese Bickham went to a funeral. While his fellow inmates shoveled clumps of mud on Edward R. Gleims simple gray coffin, Mr. Bickham peered deep into the grave and marveled that he, too, had not finished his time at Angola beneath a white stone cross marked only with his name and prison number.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E1DF1039F932A25752C0A960958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Guantanamo is wrong. We should give those people their day in court where the entire world can judge. Holding people indefinitely without proving there guilt is terrorism!!

Down Load this song pass it along !!!


"No No Guantanamo"

A cowboy song, about a man and his horse.

Recorded September 29th. Produced up by Etienne de Rocher. Written by Sean Hayes.

This song was inspired by an article in the NY Times, Unlikely Adversary Arises to Criticize Detainee Hearings.
Read it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/us/23gitmo.html

also
'No Hope in Guantanamo"
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/325/

In December 2004; I was playing a benefit for Kitchen Sink Magazine. The event was held in a big warehouse space in Oakland California. Rouge Wave played, a women was giving out free hair cuts, but most important for me was that I ran into Etienne De Rocher and he invited me to come to his garage studio to record some songs. One of the first tracks we did, using an old Ace tone drum machine, is the last song on the record Turnaroundturnmeon. Right away I wanted to record my next record in Etiennes garage. It seemed right. I was in a dark space and this was a shining light. He has a small garage, hardly enough room for three people but I felt at home. Plus I have always really loved Etiennes music. It took a few more months and conversations but eventually we recorded more songs. Etienne also had his own record coming out along with a new baby boy born in August. He finished mixing the recording with little Batiste strapped around his chest! Thanks Etienne.
Hope you all like it
-Sean




Sean Hayes - vocals, guitar, banjo, mandolin & drums on ..9
Ara Anderson - horns
Ches Smith - drums
Etienne de Rocher - bass, piano, wurlitzer, backup vocals
Todd Roper - drums on ..13
Kathryn Jenson - vocals on ..6