Joseph Hudak
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Low Cut Connie is making protest music to unite, not divide, a fractured America on the new album 'Livin' in the USA.' Danny Clinch* Adam Weiner knows you’re angry. So, when the Philadelphia singer-songwriter began writing a new album for Low Cut Connie — both the band he leads and the stage name under which he performs — he looked to a specific great American hero for inspiration: Fred Rogers.
“Mr. Rogers said, ‘What do you do with the mad that you feel?’ Remember that speech while he’s putting his sweater on?” Weiner tells Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast. “We all get angry; we’ve got to use it. We’ve got to use it to motivate us: get in the streets, use your voice, vote, talk to your community, organize. Do that first, and then we’re going to have fun. But we’ve got to do both things.”
Weiner channels that energy to activate and organize into Livin’ in the USA, Low Cut Connie’s eight studio album, which dropped on Friday — just in time for Independence Day. A collection of 10 songs, the album leads off with the forlorn title track. It’s a song about feeling alienated in your own country that Weiner wrote in response to the current administration’s assault on its citizens. “Livin’ in the USA, but it ain’t my home,” he sings.
Some in his camp advised him not to perform it.
“I actually had somebody on my team that I let go because they were advising me to stop singing the song, that it was going to get me in trouble, and it was going to ruin my career. I didn’t necessarily think that person was wrong, I just didn’t agree with them,” Weiner says. “I have to look in the mirror every day and feel good about what I’m doing.”
While Livin’ in the USA may be based in protest, it’s not a downer record. Weiner says classic songs and LPs from Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” to Prince’s Sign o’ the Times showed how artists can balance the protest with the party.
“You think when you hear the words ‘protest music’ that it’s going to be depressing or very dour and serious. No. Think about Sly and the Family Stone. Sly was doing music that was inspiring and fun and social commentary at the same time,” Weiner says. “That’s what I’m trying to do. We can reclaim joy and protest at the same time.”
