Longfellow resident Larry Long started writing songs and singing them when he was 20, and 54 years later he has not stopped. As he has traveled the country and shared his voice, he has practiced the values he believes in, raising money for social causes and standing up for the rights of the people.
Although many of his songs call for social justice, a good number of them also reflect love and compassion and building community, and those will be performed June 20 at 7 p.m. at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis.
Noted Twin Cities storyteller Kevin Kling will join Long at the Father’s Day weekend performance, with Will Kjeer at the piano.
“I am really excited about this,” Long said. “We really just have a nice energy with each other. I will be performing with my guitar, and he will tell stories. This show is about family and life, and I will get to sing songs I never get the chance to do.”
Kling and Long met in 1983, when Kling was part of a theater group with Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater. Long was working on a Mississippi revival project. The two took part in a boat trip along the river, with one boat called the Calypso and the other, the Collapso, which resulted in many stories. “We’ve been friends ever since,” Long said.
“What a gift Kevin is to the community,” he added.
Long also commended his wife, Jacqueline, and Kling’s wife, Mary Ludington. “It’s been a team effort for all of us. Fortunately, we married persons who could put up with us.”
CREATIVITY AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM
Long very recently performed with the American Roots Revue, a group that he and JD Steele started in 2011. The group includes Long, Steele, Robert Robinson, Tonia Hughes Kendrick, Dorene Day Waubanewquay and Larry Dalton. Also performing were Billy Steele, David Feily, Greg Schutte and Joe Savage. American Roots Revue worked with Indivisible and Neighbors Helping Neighbors to raise funds for rental assistance for residents who were affected by ICE’s Operation Metro Surge.
“I would like to take the group on tour,” Long said. “When JD and I started American Roots Revue, we wanted to form a group that could celebrate the many cultures of America, and that gave birth to this. We have had other rotating artists perform through the years, but this was mainly the core group.”
Long also sang recently with Joan Baez and Bruce Springsteen at the No King’s event at the Capitol. Over the past decades, he has sung at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration and toured with Kris Kristofferson in Moscow. He joined Willie Nelson at Farm Aid.
“Political activism has always been an integral part of my life,” Long said, “and it is most often what gets publicized. I have always been active, and now it seems more dire, and I have been brought into bigger events like No Kings. But what is most impressive is the amount of incredible creativity that has come out of Minneapolis and St. Paul.” Long said that over 100 songs have been written by local musicians around Operation Metro Surge.
“I have never been more proud to be a part of Longfellow, the Twin Cities and Minnesota neighborhoods,” Long continued.”Good community people are doing the right thing for the security of our children, the elderly, homeless and those of us who have been blessed with a home.”
Long recalled his neighbors driving kids to school and bringing people to shelters. “The young folks wanted to put up lights, and we all strung lights outside. They are still up.
“Renee Good was murdered two blocks from Park Avenue Methodist Church that I attend, and Alex Pretti was killed two blocks from where I recorded ‘White Sheets in the White House.’” That is a song Long wrote during the first Trump administration.
Long said protest songs still are powerful today. But he cited social media as a reason there are not as many classics as in past protest movements during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights era.
“It was much easier to get a song out to the masses at that time; there was less competition,” he said. “Today you have a thousand opportunities to listen to a thousand different songs. But those thousand songs may be part of one big song, reaching as many people as a single song did back in the day.”
Long said he was hopeful based on something Pete Seeger had said: “I have grown weary of the big things. I think the world is going to be saved by a million little things.“
A MILLION LITTLE THINGS
Long has been accomplishing big and little things over his lifetime. Writing songs and performing them, meeting fellow activists and musicians and raising funds for numerous causes have nurtured him socially, philosophically and creatively.
He spent several years working with kids at Sanford Middle School creating a program called Elders’ Wisdom Children’s Song, an inter-generational and multicultural curriculum. “The fruit of that is that my archives have been accepted by the University of Minnesota. A grant provides for their digitization. All the interviews at Sanford Middle School and histories from Longfellow will be made available. We’re having a celebration when I turn 77.”
He added that Elders’ Wisdom Children’s Song has been incorporated into the music curriculum at St. Louis Park Immersion School by David Davis, the 2026 Minnesota Teacher of the Year.
Long has made other contributions to community life. In 1979, he was part of Tractorcade, a convoy of farmers from across the country who drove their tractors to the White House. “At one point it was 100 miles long,” he said. The farmers were protesting embargoes at that time. Today they are battling high tariffs.
Long filmed the lengthy parade of tractors and produced a video called “Tractorcade USA.”
He also produced the complete soundtrack for the film “No More Pipeline Blues” directed by local filmmaker Keri Pickett that featured activist Winona LaDuke.
Long and his wife spend their winters in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and he created a video and music for his neighborhood there, working to build mutual support of nonprofits and charities in Puerto Vallarta.
“My wife loves Mexico and could be there all the time,” Long said. “But to be honest, Minneapolis is my home. Exactly one year ago, I was feeling very sad and depressed. I said I love Minnesota. Those are my people, and I have to get home.”
He returned to Minneapolis. Long said he set out to do things, and he felt like a miracle occurred. “When you move with intention, people come into your life. My mother said that when doors open, don’t be afraid to go through them.
“I met Rebecca Larson from Indivisible and she invited me to sing at a St. Paul rally. Then Farm Aid came to town. I worked all last summer creating a movie and working on the Puerto Vallarta thing and playing live music. So this last year has been magnificent in my life. I’m back.”
Long said that now that he is 74, he gets to focus on young people. He and his wife moved to the Longfellow neighborhood in 1990.
“We were the young people and looked out for some of the older people on the block. Now the young people look out for us,” he commented. “I would sing about the elders, and now I have been given that name,” he said. “Elder is an earned title. But now I can shine a light on the young people coming up.”
Long said he is known as a political activist/singer, but he claims the best ballad he ever wrote was about his dad, who died when he was 12. ‘”People’s community work comes out of one’s personal life,” he said. “My activism is not a protest but an affirmation of my values.”
Long has an additional role now. He is a grandfather, and he just released “Songs for my Grandchildren.”
“They are going to sleep at night hearing their grandfather sing,” he said.