The Bad Penny (beta)

As our nation rapidly transforms into Authoritarian America, artists – who are typically among the first to be targeted when a dictatorship takes control of a country – are relocating to countries where their right to free speech is still protected.

One of the more prominent indie-rock artists to make the move is Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow, who relocated to Portugal earlier this year, according to multiple sources who recently confirmed the news to The Bad Penny. None of the sources said outright that Trump’s reclaiming of the presidency was their motivating factor for Yow fleeing the U.S., however.

When yours truly interviewed Yow and Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison last year for a feature on FLOOD, the vocalist whose lyrics were historically apolitical admitted that he felt boxed in by the inexorable partisan strife in America and said he was compelled to address current events on the band’s comeback record, Rack.

“A larger percentage of the lyrics than I wished were based on the political climate in the U.S. for the last seven or eight years,” he confided in a video conference call.