Pop quiz! Name this up-and-coming musician: He shares his name with a famous whisky. He's a member of what the New Musical Express called the "best live band" of 2003. He could be the next break-out star from the Detroit garage rock scene. He's a friend of the White Stripes' Jack White. And he's a "card-carrying libertarian."

Give up? It's Johnny Walker (real name: Johnny Wirick), guitarist and lead vocalist for the Soledad Brothers. The medical student-turned-blues guitarist "makes no bones" about his "highly libertarian political views," according to the Detroit Metro Times (October 27, 2004). In fact, Walker told GAK Magazine, "I'm a card-carrying libertarian, and my hobby when I was a kid was reading political science books." (September 2002)

Walker's views have attracted more attention with the release of the band's politically charged 2004 album, Voice of Treason (Sanctuary Records). The album is a response to the USA/Patriot Act, according to Walker. "After 9/11, [the USA/Patriot Act] was a knee-jerk reaction in Congress," he told The Syndicate Web site. "It's a bill that states if someone feels that something that's being said or done is un-American, then the person who's being un-American is subject to being questioned." Now, said Walker, "I have to be really careful what I say, because I don't want to be hauled in for being un-American. I might be a card-carrying libertarian and the personification of anti-establishment, but when it comes down to it, I'm probably about as American as it's possible to be."

Walker reiterated his civil-liberty concerns in an interview with the Daily Oakland Press (October 29, 2004). "[The album is] provocative; it's in response to the Patriot Act," he said. "It's funny; the country was founded by dissenters, and nowadays, if you speak up against something you think is wrong, it's [called] unpatriotic. That's a total misnomer."

Voice of Treason isn't the Soledad Brothers' first brush with politics. The back cover of their debut album showed Uncle Sam tied up with guns pointed at him. Even the band's name is political. The Soledad Brothers were a trio of African-American inmates who tried to escape from California's notorious Soledad Prison in 1970, and who later became the focus of a prison-reform movement.

But the modern Soledad Brothers are primarily about music. Coming out of the same Detroit blues/roots rock scene that spawned the White Stripes and the Von Bondies, the band combines garage rock, blues, and R&B into what London's The Guardian called a "peeled-to-the-bone garage-band blast." Critics usually have to resort to hyphenated descriptions to try to capture the Soledad Brothers' sound. They've been called "glammed-up rockabilly," "modern boogie-woogie," and "punk-rock attitude melded with Southern country fish fry, all-day sidewalk jamming." They've also been compared to Bo Diddley, the Stooges, Sonny Boy Williamson, MC5, the Yardbirds, and the (early) Rolling Stones.

The Soledad Brothers is Johnny Walker (guitars, vocals), Oliver Henry (guitar, saxophone, vocals), and Ben Swank (drums). The band was formed in 1998 in Toledo, Ohio, and has released four albums: The Soledad Brothers (2000, produced by Jack White); Steal Your Soul and Dare Your Spirit to Move (2002); Live at the Gold Dollar (2003); and Voice of Treason (2004). Although still flying under the radar in the United States, the band has played sold-out shows in Spain and Great Britain, performed twice on BBC/Radio One, and earned raves from the U.K.'s Mojo magazine and New Musical Express.

Despite his pro-liberty perspective, don't expect Walker to start writing explicitly libertarian anthems any time soon. "I have problems with putting a lot of political banter on a record that's meant to be entertaining," he told GAK Magazine. "It's nice to wear that stuff on your sleeve, but I'd like to give people the opportunity to make their own decisions about whether they believe in what we believe in. People don't like politics shoved down their throat."

-- Bill Winter

Quotable

"I might be a card-carrying libertarian and the personification of anti-establishment, but when it comes down to it, I'm probably about as American as it's possible to be." -- Johnny Walker on The Syndicate Web site (thesyn.com), September 27, 2004

Books & Tapes

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