Pictured: Tom Brennan (second row with guitar), Ken Fuelling, Ernie Modestino, Frank Wisniewski, Craig Rice, Spencer VanDerhoof, Mike Ales, Hal Slatin, John Ford, Liz Ciaglo, Barb Jackson.

The band came to life in 1986 when drivers got out their guitars at their "breakfast club" in a newspaper truck. "We heard of the merge on the 6 o'clock news," the song says. A couple of friends from another band joined them. They practiced one day, and went to the studio the next. Ten members of Teamsters Local 372 joined in for backup, and the rest is history.

Photo by Hugh Grannum.

Kris Peterson(6).

Kris Peterson, pictured here with guitarist and locked-out Free Press feature writer Keith Owens of Blue Spirit Tribe, recorded "Mama's Little Baby (Is A Big Girl Now)" for Capitol Records in 1968. She made an album "A Child's Dream" produced by Eddie Kramer in 1971, and appeared on Frank Zappa's "Waka-Jawaka" album in 1972. Blue Spirit Tribe, now with Bobby Vasseur on keyboards, was nominated by Metro Music Awards as the Detroit area's best R&B band in 1997. The band's CD, "Down There Underneath It All" is soon to be released.

Detroit Cultural Workers & Artists Caucus(2-6).

Detroit CWAC started when Ellis Boal and Bob Vasseur met at a Saturday picket in Sterling Heights. Bob plays keyboards and had jammed with other striker-musicians. Ellis had been around folk and labor music, and showed up with his vintage Martin. Bob was shocked when Ellis left it sitting on a lawn chair. Anyway, they talked and started up DCWAC with friends from each crowd. DCWAC recorded three strike songs, added the music from Anne Feeney and Finland Station for a "DNA Rag" cassette, and appeared on a bill with Michael Moore at the Majestic Theatre. The "500 Days" CD re-records the strike songs, and adds two more plus the Paper Boys. Kris Peterson came in for vocals on the title track. The name Detroit CWAC is taken from national CWAC, a grouping of artists and musicians formed at the founding of the Labor Party in Cleveland in 1996.

Photo by Marty Krist.

Anne Feeney (7)

Anne, the "queen of labor rock 'n roll," works with acoustic guitar. She won our hearts one Saturday night in 1995 when she came from her home in Pittsburgh and sang with us on a Detroit picket line at a distribution center in the freezing cold till the break of dawn. Not a single newspaper got out that night. Then in June she took a break from a folk festival in Texas to appear at the Labor Party convention. Her CD "Heartland," including "War On The Workers" lifted here, is available at (800) 497-FOLK or from Anne Feeney.

Photo by Patricia A. Beck.

Finland Station (8-20).

FS was a folk band of Detroit activists together in 1979-89. Ten years is longer than the Beatles. FS specialized in vocal harmonies. We quit after making a tape in 1989, "We Still Have A Dream," which is also the title of the Betsy Rose number. The FS oldies here were remastered from that tape.

Photo by Jim West, Impact Visuals.