Country Joe, from Woodstock to Woody

A tribute on his passing, plus John Oliver, Trump's hat flap, Stipe joins Shannon, and more.

Mar 09, 2026

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John Oliver last night tackled the scandal/tragedy of Trump destroying USAid, leading to death of hundreds of thousands (so far).

Oil prices way up today are (as the saying goes) “rattling” the markets all over the world. Paul Krugman:

But the situation is scary. And what’s even scarier is that the “warrior ethos” gang in the Trump administration seem to have been caught completely off-guard by the fallout from their adventure, even though the military and the intelligence community tried to warn them about the risks.

And if you missed the big flap this past weekend, Heather Cox Richardson:

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump was among the dignitaries who attended the dignified transfer returning the remains of the six U.S. soldiers killed in the military action against Iran to the United States for burial. At the transfer, Trump wore a white USA baseball cap for sale in his campaign store.
Recognizing that Americans would recoil from seeing Trump wear a baseball cap at a dignified transfer, the Fox News Channel declined to show how he had looked yesterday and aired old footage of Trump from his first term without the hat. Caught in their lie, the Fox News Channel admitted they had shown the wrong footage but claimed it was inadvertent. They did not, however, show the real footage from yesterday, showing Trump wearing his merch.

Some Twitter wag posted this photo from the event under the title “The Devolution of Man.”

Music

We’ve covered earlier actor Michael Shannon and his R.E.M. tribute band but on Saturday night they were joined by some fellow named Stipe in Brookly for “These Days” and “The Great Beyond.”

As you may have heard Country Joe McDonald passed away this weekend at the age of 84. I interviewed him for Crawdaddy back around 1973, in the offices of Vanguard Records in NYC, around the release of his post-Fish “War, War, War” solo album though we mainly talked about his obsession with Woody Guthrie. A couple years later I got him to write a piece for us about “Save the Whales” after he released an album on that subject.

I don’t usually do this but I found some interesting nuggets that I never knew or have long forgotten in his Wikipedia entry and, short on time this morning (also Guthrie-related), allow me to reproduce below. First, a version of his most famous song, from a local TV show in 1969 rather than the much-viewed legendary Woodstock performance :

Joseph Allen McDonald was born on Jan. 1, 1942, in Washington to Worden McDonald, who worked for the phone company, and Florence Plotnik, a political activist. Both his parents were members of the Communist Party, and they named him after Joseph Stalin.

At a show in Central Park in 1968, the band’s drummer, Gary Hirsh, suggested they change the word “fish” to the epithet to make a free speech statement. While the crowd deliriously cheered the change, Ed Sullivan immediately canceled the group’s scheduled appearance on his popular Sunday night variety show.

Thinking of Woody Guthrie was one of first major Guthrie tribute albums, and established him as a prominent interpreter of Guthrie's work, which he had admired since youth.^[ The album led to his participation in the 1970 Woody Guthrie All-Star Tribute at The Hollywood Bowl with Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Peter Fonda and Will Geer. For the event, at the request of Marjorie Guthrie, Woody's widow, and Harold Leventhol, McDonald set Guthrie's “Woman At Home” to music. This was the first time the Guthrie family collaborated with a recording artist to add music to Woody Guthrie's lyrics.

In January 1970, McDonald testified at the Chicago Seven Trial.He was one of the over one hundred witnesses the defense called, including Norman Mailer, Dick Gregory, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs and Allen Ginsberg. During the trial Judge Julius J. Hoffman forbade him from singing I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-To-Die-Rag in court. McDonald recited the lyrics instead.

In 1971, McDonald joined the FTA Show an antiwar traveling vaudeville show, performing alongside Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Holly Near, Ben Vereen, and members of The Committee. He grew disenchanted by the show, which his then-wife Robin was a writer on,and left before the filming of the FTA Show documentary, though his involvement with the show landed him on Richard Nixon‘s “enemies list.”^[

Throughout the 2000s, McDonald performed his Tribute to Woody Guthrie show, which featured Guthrie's songs alongside spoken-word pieces drawn from the writings of Guthrie, Malvina Reynolds, and McDonald's father—himself an Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugee.In 2007, he released a live recording of the show, A Tribute To Woody Guthrie Performed by Country Joe McDonald.

Here’s a track from that, Woody’s immortal “Pastures of Plenty.”