News
Time Community
10/1/2006
Adrienne Young: Food Fighter
By Joel Fowler
To bluegrass artist Adrienne Young, who will bring her band Little Sadie for a concert to Jammin' Java Oct. 29, there's only one political issue this campaign season.
"It's pretty simple really. We have to take better care of our environment, since it's the only one we've got," Young said. "But, thinking about it can be a pretty strong depressant when you realize that greed is really the only cause of all these problems."
If you think Young sounds progressive for a country musician, you could not be more wrong.
"If anything, I'm regressive," Young said. "I'd like for us as a society to go back to a place and time when we didn't have such a harmful world. Can we go back to when we relied on ourselves for the food on our table? Probably not, but it's a nice idea."
If Young, however, sounds a little food driven, it's because farming is in her blood. As a seventh-generation Floridian, though Young was raised in the house her grandfather built, the land on which her forefathers had grown countless bushels of vegetables had to be sold to the government to make way for a superhighway.
Now as an adult in her early 30s who made it through a tough teenage experience that included her parents' divorce, Young has gone back to the land, growing ears of corn, tomatoes, squash and assorted green things in pesticide-free splendor on her Tennessee farm.
This longing for a better, righteous life pulsates in Adrienne Young & Little Sadie's latest album, "The Art of Virtue." Inspired by Ben Franklin's pamphlet "13 Virtues" (a copy of which is included in every CD), Young expresses in song the ways we can improve our lives by moving to a higher moral plane, though she realizes the task is not an easy one.
"A total breakdown of our whole [political and social] system wouldn't be such a bad thing," she said. "We've gone so far off the path; I don't know how we fix it. ... I was out West on tour, and we passed a dam that had a power company's logo painted on it. I mean, do they think they own that river? No one owns that river. It's God's river. That's how corrupt we've become, when a company can claim natural ownership like that."
Young, who considers herself a Quaker, tries to bring a message of hope and joy in her live performances (accompanied by her all-male backing group). Whether it's supporting universities that teach sustainable agriculture or helping her Fredericksburg-based boyfriend in his pursuit of manufacturing mass quantities of bio-diesel fuel, this singer is convinced of the power in her profession.
"There really is no difference in being on stage with an audience or talking with them individually, one-on-one, after a show," she said. "Whatever way I can enlighten people and help them live a healthier, better life is the only way I want to live."
By Joel Fowler
To bluegrass artist Adrienne Young, who will bring her band Little Sadie for a concert to Jammin' Java Oct. 29, there's only one political issue this campaign season.
"It's pretty simple really. We have to take better care of our environment, since it's the only one we've got," Young said. "But, thinking about it can be a pretty strong depressant when you realize that greed is really the only cause of all these problems."
If you think Young sounds progressive for a country musician, you could not be more wrong.
"If anything, I'm regressive," Young said. "I'd like for us as a society to go back to a place and time when we didn't have such a harmful world. Can we go back to when we relied on ourselves for the food on our table? Probably not, but it's a nice idea."
If Young, however, sounds a little food driven, it's because farming is in her blood. As a seventh-generation Floridian, though Young was raised in the house her grandfather built, the land on which her forefathers had grown countless bushels of vegetables had to be sold to the government to make way for a superhighway.
Now as an adult in her early 30s who made it through a tough teenage experience that included her parents' divorce, Young has gone back to the land, growing ears of corn, tomatoes, squash and assorted green things in pesticide-free splendor on her Tennessee farm.
This longing for a better, righteous life pulsates in Adrienne Young & Little Sadie's latest album, "The Art of Virtue." Inspired by Ben Franklin's pamphlet "13 Virtues" (a copy of which is included in every CD), Young expresses in song the ways we can improve our lives by moving to a higher moral plane, though she realizes the task is not an easy one.
"A total breakdown of our whole [political and social] system wouldn't be such a bad thing," she said. "We've gone so far off the path; I don't know how we fix it. ... I was out West on tour, and we passed a dam that had a power company's logo painted on it. I mean, do they think they own that river? No one owns that river. It's God's river. That's how corrupt we've become, when a company can claim natural ownership like that."
Young, who considers herself a Quaker, tries to bring a message of hope and joy in her live performances (accompanied by her all-male backing group). Whether it's supporting universities that teach sustainable agriculture or helping her Fredericksburg-based boyfriend in his pursuit of manufacturing mass quantities of bio-diesel fuel, this singer is convinced of the power in her profession.
"There really is no difference in being on stage with an audience or talking with them individually, one-on-one, after a show," she said. "Whatever way I can enlighten people and help them live a healthier, better life is the only way I want to live."
