The Prison Music Project Will Livestream A Reform Benefit Concert On June 12th 2020

Live From Out There and Righteous Babe have announced the Prison Music Project Sessions: Long Time Gone Album Release Concert featuring Ani DiFranco, Zoe Boekbinder, Terence Higgins, free feral, Launa Reed and more for this Friday, June 12 at 9pm EST, 8pm CT via music entertainment platform LiveXLive. 

The broadcast will also include call-ins from incarcerated poets Spoon Jackson and Samual Brown and documentary footage of Alex Batriz, Abraham Banks, and Greg Gadlin.

The album Long Time Gone  has been in the works for ten years and was recorded by the non-profit artist collective known as The Prison Music Project, "a collaboration between free artists and incarcerated or formerly incarcerated writers".

All profits of the album sales will go to the Southern Center for Human Rights, an organization that "strives for equality, dignity, and justice for people impacted by the criminal legal system and fights for a world free from mass incarceration, the death penalty, the criminalization of poverty, and racial injustice".

The full album will be available via Righteous Babe Records. The lead single and title track "Long Time Gone" are available now right here.

Profits from the concert will benefit Sister Hearts Re-Entry Program and The Center for Life Without Parole Studies. Sister Hearts Re-Entry Program provides ex-offenders with "a safe environment to heal, achieve goals, and reintegrate into society through personal development courses, transportation, driver’s license support and other integral resources".

The Center for Life Without Parole Studies aims to "eliminate life without parole sentences and sentences that exceed the human lifespan while helping California prisoners with low-cost and pro-bono legal services".

Tickets are available now at PrisonMusicProject.com and at LivexLive.

Between now and June 12th, fans can also tune in for free to Righteous Babe Radio for Prison Prism: Refracting Out from the Prison Music Project, a radio festival dedicated to discussions about our criminal justice system.

Here's a little more information about that radio program:

"Concentrated programming will look at the history of American prisons through the cultural lens of Woody Guthrie and Alan Lomax and the modern-day realities of mass incarceration during COVID-19 era through the lens of a Bernie Sanders-led town hall entitled Incarceration in Crisis. We will hear from public figures such as Angela Davis and Howard Zehr about their experiences with the alternative methodology known as Restorative Justice. The Prison Prism will also provide a platform for organizations that sponsor arts and education programs in prisons today, the very kind of organization that made this record, this radio festival, and this virtual concert possible."

More about the Prison Music Project:

In 2010, folk-singer and songwriter Zoe Boekbinder (they/them) visited New Folsom Prison for the first time. What they thought would be one interesting day turned into a decade-long collaborative project. Boekbinder visited the prison often over the next five years; performing and teaching music workshops quickly turned into the beginnings of collaborations with writers and musicians who were incarcerated within New Folsom's walls. This was the seed for the Prison Music Project and the culminating album, Long Time Gone, produced by Ani DiFranco.