This obituary is a part of a collection about individuals who have died within the coronavirus pandemic. Examine others right here.Anne Feeney, a f
This obituary is a part of a collection about individuals who have died within the coronavirus pandemic. Examine others right here.
Anne Feeney, a fierce and tireless people musician who performed greater than 4,000 exhibits over a 30-year profession, showing at peace protests, picket strains and fund-raisers for progressive causes, died on Feb. Three at a hospital in Pittsburgh. She was 69 and carried a enterprise card that learn “Performer, Producer, Hellraiser.”
Her daughter, Amy Sue Berlin, introduced her mom’s dying on Fb. She mentioned the trigger was Covid-19.
Ms. Feeney, whose first public look got here in 1969 at an indication towards the Vietnam Battle, served as a hyperlink between the protest singers of the 1960s and the youthful generations that emerged across the anti-globalization and antiwar actions of the early 2000s. Her admirers included each Pete Seeger and Tom Morello of Rage Towards the Machine, and he or she was simply as snug taking part in a union corridor as she was onstage in a punk membership.
“She was joyous and fiery in her dedication to make use of her music to raise those that are most marginalized and to maneuver towards better justice within the land,” mentioned Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, in a press release launched after Ms. Feeney’s dying.
Anne Feeney was born on July 1, 1951, in Charleroi, Pa., and grew up in Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood. Her father, Edward Feeney, was a chemist, and her mom, Annabelle (Runner) Feeney, was a homemaker.
Ms. Feeney’s first marriage, to Ron Berlin, a labor lawyer, led to divorce in 1995. Alongside together with her daughter, she is survived by her son, Daniel Berlin; her sister, Kathleen Feeney; two grandchildren; and her husband Julie Leonardsson, a Swedish artist whom she married in 2002.
She purchased her first — and, for 40 years, her solely — guitar, a Martin D-28, in 1967, and shortly turned a typical sight at protests round Pittsburgh. In 1972 she attended the annual Convention on Girls and the Legislation, the start of a lifetime of activism round girls’s points. She later organized public help for a rape disaster heart in Pittsburgh and served on the board of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Nationwide Group for Girls.
Ms. Feeney graduated from the College of Pittsburgh in 1974 and from its legislation college in 1978, after which she spent greater than a decade working as a trial lawyer, taking largely home violence circumstances.
She continued together with her music, too, taking part in guitar in a bluegrass band referred to as Cucumber Rapids. Within the late 1980s she stopped training legislation and in 1992 launched her first album, “Look to the Left.” Eleven extra adopted. Peter, Paul and Mary lined her best-known track, “Have You Ever Been to Jail for Justice?” on their 2004 album “In These Occasions.”
The granddaughter of an immigrant from Eire who organized mine staff, she additionally knew tons of of Irish ballads, ingesting tunes and insurgent songs. Each summer time she chartered a bus and traveled round Eire, taking followers to her favourite websites and performing wherever they stopped for the evening.
However her past love remained the union motion, and her favourite live performance locale was the picket line, typically driving hours out of her manner whereas on tour if she heard phrase of a labor motion.
“Anne Feeney wasn’t simply somebody who sang in regards to the motion — she was within the motion,” mentioned Evan Greer, a musician and longtime touring companion. “She used her music as a weapon.”