LISTEN & RESPOND: EVERYTHING'S GONNA TURN OUT FINE
SELF-GUIDED STUDY DESIGNED TO BRIDGE PRISON WALLS
Bridgeworks Oregon is working with Edovo.org (the free platform on prison tablets) to design and publish resources and self-guided study courses for folks inside and their family and friends. We believe crossover activities in the humanities provide much needed shared experiences for everyone — and we feel that is critical to cultivate creative expression for people in prison.
ABOUT EVERYTHING’S GONNA TURN OUT FINE
Bridgework’s own Danny Wilson and house band Luther’s Boots follows up Darkened Road Ahead with this record in 2024. Danny Wilson assembled the original band to play a few prison shows in Oregon, recreating Johnny Cash’s “At Folsom Prison” record to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its release. The summer of 2018, the band toured Oregon prisons playing to folks who rarely experience music outside of their personal headphones.
Since, 2018 the band has reformed, adding and subtracting members. This current configuration of players has been actively involved in transforming this set of Danny’s songs. Guitar player Zach Holden and bass player Wyatt Unger both studied jazz and have been playing together since they were teens. Jarred Bozza also a student of jazz joined the band during Covid.
The first of these songs date as far back a 2018 and have been collected and played in a few local bars with Luther’s Boots, and in solo shows inside prisons. The ghost of musical crushes and honky tonks have melded with the players, and those first songs sketches to make this record. Danny carries a small soft-cover journal into prison with him for the weekly writing workshop we run at Oregon State Penitentiary. The five-minute warm up writing exercises are sketches to loosen up all the writers and we write alongside the group. We talk a lot about the distillation process in our group. One of us will get up and collect the words and ideas we hear as the group members read their reflections. It is a way of distilling ideas that sing and looking them on the board with fresh eyes.
This 17-page downloadable PDF corresponds with the course on the Edovo tablets under the heading Bridgeworks Oregon courses. You can listen to Everything is Gonna Turn out Fine here. The course and the music are free on Edovo for folks inside. Try a few activities and share the resulting writing with a friend or family member.
