The MC5 name and legacy get redeployed by Wayne Kramer as he launches tour in Detroit
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In 2020, Wayne Kramer found himself in a funk. Frustrated by the Trump presidency, distressed by the COVID-19 pandemic, he was grumpy about America’s state of affairs.
And so the Detroit-born guitarist says he turned to “the biggest megaphone” in his arsenal: the MC5.
Half a century after the dissolution of the late, great Detroit rock band, Kramer has reactivated the MC5 brand as he sets out on a round of spring touring and an album planned for release in October.
“I concluded that the only way I can militantly oppose my own apathy, my own nihilism, my own cynicism is through taking direct ethical, creative action and using the most powerful tool I have, which is my imagination and my creativity,” Kramer says.
Kramer, one of two surviving members from the MC5’s original core lineup, will kick off his eight-show run, dubbed the Heavy Lifting Tour, with a Thursday show at Detroit’s El Club — just around the corner from his boyhood Clark Park neighborhood.
He’ll be joined by vocalist Brad Brooks, bassist Vicki Randle and guitarist Stevie Salas, along with drummer Winston Watson, who replaces originally named drummer Stephen Perkins. The show will mostly feature vintage MC5 material, with a couple of new songs thrown in as an “acid test,” Kramer says.
In reigniting the MC5 name, Kramer says he’s “using the legacy of this band to carry a message to the people of today, which the MC5 has carried since inception: We need to be taking action.”
“You know, we don't pass out the jams. We don't hand out the jams. We kick out the jams. It's a physical thing,” he says. “And democracy demands participation. The forces we’re up against, I’m going to call them what they are: fascist.”
It's a brand of rhetoric that harks back to 1968, that tumultuous watershed year when the MC5’s agenda included a daylong performance amid the chaotic scenes outside Chicago’s Democratic National Convention.
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The new project comes on the heels of Kramer’s MC50 adventure, launched in 2018 with an all-star band to relive the MC5’s music — including a trio of Halloween-week Detroit shows marking the 50th anniversary of “Kick Out the Jams.”
That debut album, recorded in October ’68 at the Grande Ballroom, was the first of three records from the combustible quintet with the left-wing firebrand politics. Coupling Detroit muscle with the influences of free jazz and R&B, the Downriver-bred band made a brief but enduring impact before collapsing in a heap of substance abuse and busted finances.
The Five, as colloquially called among hometown fans, never did get the big breakthrough the band had strived for. Even in 2022, respect can seem elusive: On Wednesday, the MC5 again failed to make the winner’s circle when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame unveiled its latest inductees — a sixth failed nomination for the group.
But Kramer knows there’s substance to go with the spirit, and he says this year’s endeavor aims to pick up where the MC5’s 1971 swan song left off.
“(The album) ‘High Time’ held a great promise for the future of that iteration of the MC5, which actually ended up not having a future,” he says. “We were so poor. We were banned from the radio. We couldn't get bookings. It's really hard to keep a band together when there's no money coming in.”
The good news, he says: With age comes improvement, and Kramer is confident he’s able to create art in ways impossible for himself 50 years ago.
“Music is not tied to being young,” he says. “Young people carry most of the weight in music, but older people have more money to spend, they have more influence, they know more about how things work. You can become more passionate about the music, more skilled at guitar playing, songwriting, arranging, recording, performing. None of these things are tied to being young.”
What became the new MC5 project originally took life as a songwriting collaboration with Brooks, an Oakland, California, singer and musician. Kramer also linked up with veteran rock producer Bob Ezrin, with whom he’d recently spent time in the studio collaborating on Alice Cooper’s “Detroit Stories” album.
As the music took shape, Kramer had his epiphany: The album should be presented in an MC5 context.
“The more we worked on it, it started to become clear as as I absorbed the world around me, that you can't separate the artist from his times and from the world he experiences,” Kramer says. “The situation was so dire.”
Tapping the MC5’s name and currency for his latest project was bound to ruffle some feathers, and sure enough, Kramer’s plans have gotten a cold reception in some corners of the Detroit rock world. This is a band, after all, that split up in 1972 and went on to lose three principals in ensuing decades: Singer Rob Tyner died in 1991, followed by guitarist Fred Smith (1994) and bassist Michael Davis (2012). In Detroit, there’s a sense of protectiveness when it comes to the MC5 legacy.
Kramer and drummer Dennis Thompson — who will feature on at least two of the new album’s tracks — are the band’s lone surviving originals.
Kramer is aware of the pushback and said he anticipated it. But he insists that plowing ahead was important in service to the larger cause.
“My feeling is, if you don't want to be criticized, don't do anything,” he says. “If you’re going to do something, if you’re going to take action, then you’re going to be criticized. You just have to accept that that comes with the territory.”
He points to the tagline accompanying the tour and album: “WE ARE ALL MC5.” It’s a message, he says, designed to conjure a sense of unity and inclusivity in his mission. He cites the array of players involved in the new music — Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, Alice in Chains’ William Duvall, Rise Against’s TimMcIlrath, pop singer Kesha and roots-punk musician Alejandro Escovedo among them.
Beyond his MC5 efforts, Kramer continues his work with Jail Guitar Doors, the nonprofit prison outreach program he cofounded in 2009, including its new youth initiative — the CAPO Center (Community Arts, Programming and Outreach) — that recently opened in his adopted home of Los Angeles.
He has also remained busy with the film and television composing work that has become a major pursuit during the past decade, including his score for the award-winning 2018 Red Wings documentary “The Russian Five.” His current work includes the score for the upcoming documentary “Coldwater Kitchen” — directed by the Freep’s Brian Kaufman and former restaurant critic Mark Kurlyandchik — and a drama set in 1930s Germany.
Some rock musicians grow more conservative as they age; Kramer’s close friend, fellow Detroit-bred guitarist Ted Nugent, is a prime example. But the MC5 cofounder, who turned 74 last week, says his political sensibilities remain unchanged.
"It's important for me to be conscious in the day, to understand why the world is doing the things it's doing today," he says. "How did we get here? Where might we be going? It's endlessly fascinating. I traffic in the world of ideas — political ideas, spiritual ideas, musical ideas, artistic ideas, human ideas, literary ideas. Those are the things that matter to me and they're eternal."
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
MC5 (with Wayne Kramer)
With Masha Marjieh and Sugar Tradition
7 p.m. Thursday
El Club
4144 Vernor Hwy., Detroit
$104
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MC5 name, legacy get redeployed by Wayne Kramer as he launches tour
