John O'Connor

Folk artist John O'Connor has issued three recordings as a solo artist, one on Chroma and two on Flying Fish. A third Flying Fish album was recorded with the group Shay's Rebellion, a quartet with a political bent which he founded. In all, he has devoted a quarter of a century to folk music, often singing songs that contain ties to the labor movement. Strongly related to the labor movement is his We Ain't Gonna Give It Back CD, which was released through Collector Records. With John McCutcheon, Charlie King, and several other artists and activists, O'Connor was one of the founding members of Local 1000 of the American Federation of Musicians, or AFM. He served as the first president of the Internet-based local, followed by McCutcheon. In addition, he has worked as an organizer for a nurses' association in New York. O'Connor's poetry has been published in Peregrine, Atlanta Review, and Columbia Review.