Primarily a 50 minute musical presentation, intermingling narrative and songs from the 1930's, John recounts his travels and experiences through depression era west coast towns and work camps.

It's the Great Depression. Prohibition has just been repealed. It is the beginning of the end of a flamboyant era of gangsters and corruption. 

Perhaps with new relevance in light of today's economic crisis, this living history performance takes us back to a time of uncertainty challenging the whole idea of American capitalism.  Massive government intervention; capital infusion to surviving banks; the WPA; the CCC - President Roosevelt is pushing an alphabet soup of public works projects through congress to provide relief to American workers.

Using an authentic 1920's banjo and a Dobro Guitar, Mr. Salicco intermingles narrative with folk music, cowboy songs, early Blues - the songs of the people.  Each tells its own story. 

"And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." (From the 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath)
 

This presentation is suitable for elementary school age through adult audiences.

Fees for this program are negotiable.  Please contact us for details.