By Caroline Roosevelt
Contributing Writer

On December 18, folk singer-songwriter John Flynn will be hosting a holiday benefit performance for Camp Dreamcatcher at The Kennett Flash. I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Flynn about his upcoming holiday concert, his work with the nonprofit New Beginnings and his recent travels to Norway.

Caroline Roosevelt: You are doing a benefit show for Camp Dreamcatcher next week at The Kennett Flash. Have you had a long association with the agency?

John Flynn: I’ve been performing benefits to raise money for Camp Dreamcatcher for almost 30 years now. It started out as a group of friends and fans who call themselves my fan club. We held a little Christmas gathering. We used that the first few years to raise money for Dreamcatcher and then that kind of grew into shows that we did at the Sellersville Theater or the Kennett Flash and one or two other venues along the way.

I was listening to your work this morning and I was on your Facebook, which I really enjoyed because you have great posts and I can tell that spirituality and politics are an inspiration for a lot of your work. Tell me a little bit about your new album, The Victim Tree. It didn’t mince words. I really enjoyed it. 

I’ve been writing since I was very young as a way of making sense of the world for myself. And I often don’t feel as articulate as I would like to be, so I turned to songwriting to kind of crystallize my thinking and put it in a form where I can convey the questions that I’m wrestling with. I think the songs all kind of come out of that space. I’ve just learned last night that “Victim Tree” was the number one song in folk music in November, but that said, I’m not positive whether I’ll be doing it because I tend to look at this show as a holiday 

concert. 

You’re described by some as a social justice troubadour - bringing people back to sort of that 60s era, that period in recent musical history when music was outspoken and served as a civic duty that brought us all together.

I’m a big Woody Guthrie fan. I’m a big Kris Kristofferson fan. The kind of moral integrity of their music seems to fill a space in the cultural landscape for me. I started out wanting to be a rich and famous singer-songwriter, and it turned out that the harder I tried to do that, the more barren my songs became. The more I wrote from a place of honesty about my own life and experience, the richer my works seem to become, at least for me. 

You travel up and down the east coast, mostly. Is that right?

Mostly, although I just did a protest show over in Norway.

What does a protest festival in Norway look like compared to what we know around here? 

It wasn’t what I expected because it wasn’t largely a music festival, although there were musical artists involved. It hosted these amazing workshops where conservative and liberal and progressive and far right and far left writers would share the stage together and talk about the issues facing the world in the age of Donald Trump. On one particular evening, I was supposed to open the Trump Workshop with a song, and I chose “The Victim Tree.” I learned it the day before that I was supposed to give the keynote speech for the event, but I had no idea what to tell the nations of the world or Norway to do, so I spoke from my heart for about 10 minutes.

Let’s talk a bit more about your December 18 show at The Kennett Flash. You said it’s going to be sort of a Christmas themed evening, so it’ll be a little bit more light.

I wouldn’t want anybody to avoid it because they might not agree with my take on this issue or that issue. I figure if people come to see one of my shows, they kind of suspect what they might get, although I think they’re genuinely surprised that I don’t put down people for what they believe. 

Tell me about how you got involved with this particular non-profit organization.

New Beginnings was founded by the Franciscans - an order in the Catholic Church that was founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. They used to have a street mission in Wilmington called the Franciscan Center that was run by Brother David, who met with a group of offenders at Gander Hill Prison. When he was transferred in 2005 to Silver Spring, Maryland - where he’s now the chaplain of the Walter Reed Medical Center - he asked me to take over New Beginnings. 

I turned him down twice because I didn’t feel like my education and my life experience would give me anything to offer the men that I would meet in the prison. Gradually, he convinced me that my main job would be to listen deeply and to keep showing up and by showing up, relationships would begin to form, and they would be the source of the healing journey.

I’m sure coming out of prison is also a huge challenge, while the common misconception is, ‘Oh, you’re just coming out of prison. The hardest part is over.’

So many people coming out of prison believe that, and then they’re kind of blindsided by how lonely it can be. There’s really a tie in with Camp Dreamcatcher, because what I love about the organization is that most of the kids are struggling with their own situation regarding AIDS or HIV. This is a very isolating thing in their life and it’s not something that the world gives them a whole lot of incentive to talk about.

When they come to Camp Dreamcatcher, however, they begin relationships and they join a common community, which is so healing. 

Stop by The Kennett Flash on December 18 to check out John Flynn and support Camp Dreamcatcher. Doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at the door or online at www.kennettflash.org.