Locals Only: : Jake Sez

In the late ’30s, American music icon Woody Guthrie began writing the “Woody Sez” column in the People’s Daily World newspaper. The column — a collection of musings and political cartoons — gave Guthrie another outlet to espouse his humanistic beliefs, becoming a voice for the working man and less fortunate, but in a tone that spoke directly to the people. (Guthrie even purposefully misspelled words to adopt a non-scholarly, non-didactic persona.) In a timely fashion, Guthrie was able to send ideals across the country on a weekly basis, dealing with issues from war to Dust Bowl migrant workers to classism and economic inequality. Upset with the distanced way the press covered such events, Guthrie strove to paint a more intimate portrait, allowing people to connect on a more personal level with the issues of the day.

If there’s anyone who could be called the “Woody Guthrie of Cincinnati,” it’s folksinger Jake Speed, a vital presence on the local Folk/Americana scene whose albums (with his band The Freddies) and songs often deal with social issues of local and international interest. Speed is a devout disciple of Guthrie’s, discovering him in his early twenties after Bob Dylan’s music pointed him in that direction. Previously a Pop/Punk fan and musician, Guthrie’s music opened things up ideologically for Speed, who had outgrown more youthful song themes.

“I started being more conscious of the things around me,” Speed says. “Your younger years, you just get consumed with you and why you don’t have a girlfriend or something.

And then once you get those things resolved you kinda move on to what’s going on in your community and stuff.”

This week, Speed is again making moves that would do Woody proud. Speed’s weekly “songatorial,” titled “Speedy Delivery,” debuts Wednesday at

In the late ’30s, American music icon Woody Guthrie began writing the “Woody Sez” column in the People’s Daily World newspaper. The column — a collection of musings and political cartoons — gave Guthrie another outlet to espouse his humanistic beliefs, becoming a voice for the working man and less fortunate, but in a tone that spoke directly to the people. (Guthrie even purposefully misspelled words to adopt a non-scholarly, non-didactic persona.) In a timely fashion, Guthrie was able to send ideals across the country on a weekly basis, dealing with issues from war to Dust Bowl migrant workers to classism and economic inequality. Upset with the distanced way the press covered such events, Guthrie strove to paint a more intimate portrait, allowing people to connect on a more personal level with the issues of the day.

If there’s anyone who could be called the “Woody Guthrie of Cincinnati,” it’s folksinger Jake Speed, a vital presence on the local Folk/Americana scene whose albums (with his band The Freddies) and songs often deal with social issues of local and international interest. Speed is a devout disciple of Guthrie’s, discovering him in his early twenties after Bob Dylan’s music pointed him in that direction. Previously a Pop/Punk fan and musician, Guthrie’s music opened things up ideologically for Speed, who had outgrown more youthful song themes.

“I started being more conscious of the things around me,” Speed says. “Your younger years, you just get consumed with you and why you don’t have a girlfriend or something.

And then once you get those things resolved you kinda move on to what’s going on in your community and stuff.”

This week, Speed is again making moves that would do Woody proud. Speed’s weekly “songatorial,” titled “Speedy Delivery,” debuts Wednesday at citybeat.com. Each week, Speed will unveil a new song on the site, dealing with different social issues of the day in much the way Guthrie’s column once did. Think of it as a singing editorial with a healthy dose of wit and humanity.

Speed conceived the new project as part of his New Year’s resolution. After the release of last year’s phenomenal Christmas album, Losantaville, Speed realized that a holiday project necessarily loses its importance once the lights and trees come down. Feeling a void and in need of some new songs, he began to plot what would come next. The concept for weekly writing sessions emerged, giving him not only a pile of new material, but also a lesson in discipline. Speed wanted to set aside a particular block of time to write each week, so he settled on a day many others are kneeling in pews.

“Every week, a lot of people devote about three hours on Sunday morning to church,” Speed explains. “And the people that I knew who went to church never seemed to love the experience so much. I mean, they were goin’, but it wasn’t like, ‘Yes! Let’s go!’

“I’m not going to lie to you — writing a song is a very painful, arduous process. I think people fantastically believe songwriters just (he snaps his fingers) come up with these songs with verses written in their minds and the chorus. But we work at it. It’s not just, like, ‘Go! Hey, I’ve got a good idea and the whole tune came to me!’ It’s just so painful and hard and it’s full of revision and you’re never happy and you never know when it’s done.”

So while some of his fellow Americans are biting the Biblical bullet and trying not to fall asleep during Mass, Speed has been busy with his laborious devotion to song.

“Me and my wife call it ‘Church’ now at my house,” Speed says. “So I say, ‘I’m going to church,’ and I close the door in my room at 9 o’clock every Sunday morning.”

So far, Speed already has a handful of songs in the bag, dealing with everything from the West Virginia coal miner tragedy (which Speed writes about from the perspective of the lone survivor) to “Cinergy Bill,” in which he decides the only way to get caught up on his bills is to sell the naming rights of his first-born.

Speed — who says his new project has made him even more aware and thoughtful about the world around him — says he thinks “Speedy Delivery” is something Guthrie would commend.

“I could see Woody doing something exactly like this ‘songatorial’ thing. Because he would whip out these songs a week, maybe borrow a tune here and there, or rework some old song, but make it relevant. That was an important role for people. They loved that about him because he spoke for them and he was them.”

This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2006.