On Tyranny Exclusive: Carriers Celebrate Ohio Gov.-Elect Dr. Amy Acton’s Win Over Vivek Ramaswamy by Covering ‘Look at Miss Ohio’
As we continue to process the relieving results of Tuesday’s midterm elections, we’re also trying to count the number of truly historic outcomes that the high-turnout races produced: Scott Colom about to take office as the first Black Senator from Mississippi in almost 150 years; Methodist Minister Adam Hamilton becoming the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas in 94 years; Maine Senator Susan Collins finally losing her seat to underdog and former logger Troy Jackson after holding her seat for 30 years; and beyond.
Two of the most important takeaways of this year’s midterms, however, aren’t just that a president’s egregious abuses of power lead to a voter revolt; it’s that money, at least in some instances, can only get a candidate so far in U.S. politics. Case in point: Democrat and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico beating Ken Paxton in Texas despite Elon Musk dumping nearly half a billion dollars backing the latter candidate; and that playing dirty with political advertising doesn’t always pay off.
Both instances proved to be true in the race for Ohio governor, where Dr. Amy Acton defeated billionaire MAGA candidate Vivek Ramaswamy after his Hail Mary attempt to damage her support with the most vile political ad in recent memory in American politics.
In this unique installment of The Bad Penny‘s On Tyranny series, which partially revolves around artists standing up for democracy and trying to undo Authoritarian America, we caught up with Ohio artist Curt Kiser, who performs under the moniker Carriers and was ecstatic about Acton’s win. Yesterday we checked in with Kiser – who has collaborated with members of The National and The War on Drugs – after Stereogum caught wind of him having covered David Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s tune “Look at Miss Ohio.”
The song, released on their joint 2003 album Soul Journey, revolved around a Midwestern woman abandoning her confining role as a housewife (similar, in this writer’s opinion, to the main characters in the novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin and the play A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen).
Kiser recorded his rendition of the song at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, co-mixed it with an assist by drummer Charles Alley, and gave it to Beck collaborator Danny Kalb and artist Alex Scaglia to master the tune and make artwork for it, respectively. When we caught up with Kiser, he exclusively played the song for us after we chatted (bear with the audio quality, which isn’t perfect, but respect the spirit in which he graced us with his heartfelt performance).
For more on Carriers, go to their Bandcamp page.
For more On Tyranny installments, check out our extensive archive, which features interviews with J. Robbins, The Locust, Thalia Zedek, INDECLINE, LAPêCHE, Ratboys, Alan Sparhawk, Carcass, Low Cut Connie and many more about how they’re grappling with the horrifying authoritarian trend sweeping the globe.
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