So in 2016 REO was touring as special guest with Def Leppard…it was a big tour. We had a show coming up in Greenville, NC when the governor of the state signed a silly red-meat bill regarding which gender was allowed to use which public restrooms. As if they were going to station genitalia police to decide sure who should pee where.
Bruce Springsteen also had an upcoming date in Greenville, about a week before ours, and upon hearing of this ludicrous law, cancelled his show in protest. I loved that Bruce had the stones to take that action. But it left me in a tough spot. I agreed with Springsteen's position, and at the same time was in no position to bow out of our slot with the Lepps. I suppose I could have refused to perform, but it is a bit different for bands than for solo artists.
I regularly post on the REO Speedwagon Facebook page. Mostly it is fun road stories or promoting various band projects, but sometimes my inner Irishman takes over…and I was pissed at the powers-that-were in the beautiful state of North Carolina. I wrote up what I felt was a reasonable response to this nonsensical, unenforceable, uninformed "bathroom law", and although we played the Greenville show, I felt at peace, knowing that I had made my feelings about public restrooms, well, public.
You would have thought I dissed puppies, babies, and hamburgers! The first raft of responses, to what I felt was a reasonably stated opinion piece, were just plain ugly. And it was shocking to (naive) me. Why couldn't I just play the gig, and keep my big mouth shut? I'll tell you why, because I supported Bruce's decision to cancel his date, and had I not spoken up, it would have felt like tacit support for a law which I found to be ignorant and unacceptable. That said, I had alienated what appeared to be a significant portion of our fan base.
But after the initial onslaught of hater-posts, something quite wonderful happened …Love began to appear! People on my side of the issue slowly began to speak up, until love had outnumbered hate by a country mile.
So my long-winded point here is that while I have the utmost respect for artists like Bruce Springsteen, Neal Young, and the late great David Crosby, we can each affect change in our own way. REO Speedwagon is a bar band. We come to your town bearing joy, fun, good old rock'n roll. But as my daughter Holly taught me in the wake of George Floyd…silence is complicity. Not everyone can be an activist, but in this country we can all speak our truth, and let the chips fall.
Onward and upward…Kevin Cronin
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