If you’re like most folks, the last time you read the Declaration of Independence was in high school. What you may not remember, and what you may not have fully appreciated then amid all the formal language, is that this document is pretty much a breakup letter – a fiery one.
In breaking up with the king (the audacity!) and England as a whole, this document, signed by representatives from the original 13 colonies, doesn’t hold back. It lists out “a long train of abuses and usurpations” and declares it a moral duty to “throw off such government.” The signers tried to work with the crown, they explain. They tried going through established channels to voice their concerns, to no avail. By 1776, enough was enough.
And the rest, of course, is history. For our “Well, I Declare! America at 250” concert event on April 10, PineCone set out to commemorate not only our nation’s birth but also its progress since then. Under our own rule, how well has the United States preserved the “unalienable right” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? And for whom? Sounds like a job for folk music!
PineCone Executive Director David Brower started planning an America 250 event centered on music last year, after a vivid reminder of the power of the Declaration of Independence.
“I got inspired after listening to a recording of Orson Welles reading the Declaration of Independence,” he recalls. “It felt raw, radical, and extremely relevant to the times. The leaders of our fledgling nation were poetic and strident, which made me wonder how those words would sound paired with modern songwriters.”
He tapped singer-songwriter Dawn Landes to bring together a collaborative performance that would meet the moment.
“We worked with Dawn once before on the world premiere of her reinterpretation of The Liberated Woman’s Songbook,” Brower says. “It’s a show that she later took to the Newport Folk Festival, PlayMakers Repertory Company, and even a theater in London. That was a high-concept, heady show that involved a wide array of artists. She’s incredibly skilled at bringing people together under a cohesive theme.”
The songbook, a collection of songs spanning a century, was released amid the second wave of the feminist movement in 1971. Landes’ 2023 Down Home Concert concert featured Alice Gerrard, Rissi Palmer, Charly Lowry, Kamara Thomas, Emily Frantz, and many others. Landes released her own Liberated Women’s Songbook recordings as an album in 2024. In 2020, she released the album Row, a collection of songs originally intended for a musical telling the story of Tori Murden McClure, the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
Landes clearly appreciates stories of struggle, and she welcomed the challenge of finding music to tell the story of our nation’s birth and growth for “Well, I Declare!” She quickly recruited Triangle actor and playwright Mike Wiley to help shape the performance.
“We both really wanted to magnify the [Declaration’s] revolutionary spirit, but then also look at where the pitfalls were and where it was falling short,” Landes says. “Because it wasn’t written for women. It wasn’t written for anybody other than white men. So how do we reconcile that?”
Onstage, Wiley will read the Declaration as its author, Thomas Jefferson, portraying the thought and effort that went into crafting the document. It wasn’t an easy process, Landes points out, with Jefferson having to find ways to represent often conflicting views from signees.
“It’s easy to unite against something and harder to unite for something,” she says. “We’re all against the monarchy. But then after that, what do we do?”
To provide musical responses to the ideas in the text, Landes recruited musicians she knew to be thoughtful in their songwriting and responsive to the world around them. Rissi Palmer, Jacob Sharp (formerly of Mipso), and Django Haskins (of The Old Ceremony) will contribute songs of their own along with some handpicked covers that span genres and generations.
The spoken words, songs, and powerful visuals planned for the show will make for an engaging evening, but Landes hopes for an even longer-lasting effect for audience members.
“I hope that they feel emboldened to participate in democracy, because that’s what this document is about,” she says. “It’s about why we created a democracy in the first place.”
“Well, I Declare! America at 250” takes place Friday, April 10, at 7:30 p.m. in the Fletcher Opera Theater inside the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh. Tickets start at $25 and are available here. You can save money on ticketing fees by calling PineCone’s box office at 919-664-8333.