Union at WIU accepts compromise tentative agreement

 After 10 months of negotiations, the union representing faculty and academic support professionals at Western Illinois University accepted a tentative agreement with the university.

The previous contract between WIU and the University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100 (UPI), an affiliate of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, expired in June.

When bargaining started, the union asked for a three-year contract with pay raises of 8%, 6% and 6%, but the administration countered with a proposed six-year agreement with a 1/2% raise followed by a 1% increase and pay re-openers thereafter.

“WIU UPI and Western Illinois University found real compromise between the university's initial offer of 1.5% across six years with re-openers and the UPI's initial position of 20% increases across three years,” said sociology professor Patrick McGinty, president of WIU’s chapter of UPI, commenting to the Labor Paper. “As part of the financial agreement, significant gains were made for our lowest earning members as well as to overload pay.

“A substantial number of workload protections are also part of the agreement,” he continued.

The union, representing 435 workers at Western, also accepted a provision to collaborate in developing a summer bridge program to help prepare students for college and improve student retention.

“The real winners with this contract will be the students of WIU who will benefit from negotiated improvements in online learning and a greater emphasis on faculty engagement in student mentoring and research supervision,” McGinty added. “One of the hallmarks of this agreement is a joint commitment to developing a sustainable summer bridge program for first time college students.”

Western has faced difficulties balancing an enrollment with students coming from low-income households and challenged by adequate preparation at a time of dwindling state resources.

State spending on higher education in Illinois was cut nearly in half – some $1.8 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars – between 2000 and 2023, according to a report from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability advocacy group. The cuts came despite recent increases in the real dollar amount invested in the state’s universities.

“This significant cutback in state funding has really created some fiscal stress, particularly for those public universities that serve more traditionally underrepresented student populations, like low-income kids, rural kids, minority kids,” said CTBA Executive Director Ralph Martire.

“Governors State or Chicago State or Western Illinois take a significantly greater portion of low-income students in their general enrollment population,” Martire said. “They can’t just pass tuition costs on to these kids.”

Of Illinois’ 12 public universities, only the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois Chicago have seen student bodies increase in the past decade, according to federal data.

Such financial factors were behind strikes at Chicago State University (for 10 days), Eastern Illinois University (for 6 days), and Governors State University (for 5 days) this spring.

“When three of our chapters were forced to strike earlier this year for a fair agreement and a better learning environment for their students, we were worried our members at WIU would suffer the same fate,” said John Miller, UPI’s state president. “But the progress made at Eastern, Chicago State, and Governors State set a new standard. I’m so proud of the work our members are doing at WIU for their students and their profession.”

Specific pay increases, contract length and other details won’t be disclosed until members review the proposal and hold a ratification vote, which hasn’t been scheduled at press time.

An overlooked attempt to take over America

There have been a few times since the Civil War when the rise of Right-wing extremism threatened the country.

And workers. And unions.

The first, of course, followed the Compromise of 1877. That shameful, backroom deal between Southern Democrats and ambitious Republicans still claiming a link to Lincoln’s anti-slavery actions – which had led to the 13^th amendment (outlawing slavery), the 14^th amendment (defining U.S. citizens as anyone born or naturalized here), and the 15^th amendment (prohibiting states from denying voting rights based on skin color) – resolved a disputed presidential election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford Hayes. The parties approved Hayes as the 19^th President and agreed to remove federal troops from ex-Confederate states.

Giving those states the right to deal with Black Americans without interference by the North, the deal ended Reconstruction and ushered in the first open reign of terror by the Ku Klux Klan.

The third, arguably, is happening now, with groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys fomenting fear and hate of minorities, government, education, personal liberties, etc.

Between, an often-forgotten period arose in the 1920s, also with the Klan, which took terror to a different level, and it’s chronicled in chilling detail in Timothy Egan’s “A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning author – whose books include “The Worst Hard Time” (about the Dust Bowl) and “Pilgrimage to Eternity” (a memoir about Catholicism) – focuses on con man, abuser of women, family deserter and deviant D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson also could be charismatic, so two years after coming to Indiana he became the state KKK’s Grand Dragon and the source of a strategy to topple the government and upend society.

He tapped into lingering resentment at the Confederacy’s defeat and enfranchised ex-slaves, but also economic inequality by offering a movement. By uniting the angry against minority voters, Jews, immigrants, organized labor and Catholics – plus bribing church leaders and public officials – he sought to ensure white Protestant male dominance, in the culture and in business.

His message and influence extended far beyond the Deep South, into the Midwest but also throughout the continent, and Egan’s tale is as gripping and thrilling as a horror yarn or a true-crime title – which it is.

His campaigns were unlike the Reconstruction-era Klan, which, as Egan writes, “burned houses and churches, stole crops and food, dragged men from their farms and whipped them until they fell, ripped teachers from schoolhouses and branded their foreheads, raped women in front of their children, and shot their husbands at point-blank range.”

Stephenson’s KKK was modernized.

“The Klan here are not the nightriders of the late 19th century, but a retooled special-interest group and unusually potent political power,” commented historian and filmmaker Ken Burns. “The influence they wielded over states and policy should put a chill in every American.”

In the ’20s, the Klan became bolder, and Stephenson used his growing power and “states’ rights” as blunt instruments against millions of people. He attracted (or paid off) businessmen and judges, lawyers and clergy, plus public officials, and the Klan became acceptable, if not respectable.

Some Klan successes resulted in Stephenson’s increased arrogance, an unbridled ambition to become a dictator, and a sense he could be a predator to women without consequence.

That led to his fall, and the United States escaping that menace, at least momentarily.

“The woman who stopped him” in the book’s subtitle was an early 20^th century “Me Too” heroine: Madge Oberholtzer.

After Stephenson ruthlessly assaulted Oberholtzer, her deathbed account of the incident was crucial to his prosecution and conviction for her abduction, rape and murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The fallout resulted not only in related prosecutions of politicians for complicity in Klan activities, but the KKK itself dwindling from some 5 million members in the 1920s to about 30,000 in the early 1930s, fading into the shadows and shame, if not nothingness.

Although the scandal helped bring the Klan to its knees, it didn’t serve to bring the South to its senses, so domestic terror revived in the Civil Rights era. Nevertheless, despite shocking acts of violence, by the early 1970s the FBI estimated that there were fewer than 2,000 active Klansmen in the nation.

Finally, the riveting book is a troubling read made more so by its relevance now. It’s easy to see parallels between Stephenson and Donald Trump, and the exploitation of fear and hate during the last seven years to the early ’20s. The feeling that history repeats itself is less frightening than the realization that democracy can be so vulnerable.

Class must be a factor for fairness, opportunity

 My late father was insightful. Two of the long-time lineman’s comments stand out. One was in response to the conceit of “writer’s block”: “It’s odd,” he said. “I never had ‘lineman’s block’.” He also shared a perspective on jobs: “Some people shower before work; others shower after work.”

This Labor Day – weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions (overturning 45 years of precedent and bipartisan support) – it’s time to consider class as a way to open up opportunity to everyone.

Considering class (economic class, that is, not the exclusive, chic, high-class air, like Will Farrell’s Ron Burgundy meant in “Anchorman,” when he signed off, “Stay classy, San Diego”) is a key to justice and democracy, for striving toward equality and civic participation.

The high court’s decision overlooked the routine favoritism shown to the privileged, the too-common way of welcoming sons and daughters of the affluent or well-connected.

For instance, the New York Times reports that at the University of Virginia and other familiar universities, less than 15% of recent undergraduate students come from households with incomes low enough to quality for Pell Grants, the largest federal financial-aid program. In fact, its analysis shows, more undergrads come from the top 1% of family income than the whole bottom 60%.

Further, in a study published July 24 (“Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of

Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges”), National Bureau of Economic Research scholars showed that wealthy students are twice as likely to gain admission compared to working- or middle-class applicants with similar test scores.

Even some 85% of Black and biracial students who’ve graduated from Ivy League schools come from middle- or upper-class families, according to Bertrand Cooper in The Atlantic magazine.

But there’s no real social diversity – of ensuring a group that looks a lot like the country – without including the working class, and policies that exclude such people limit their chances to achieve a middle-class standard of living, regardless of race or religion, gender or geography.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education – responding to a complaint from the nonprofit Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) – launched a probe into Harvard’s practice of giving admission preference to applicants with family ties to donors or previous graduates (so-called “legacy” applicants).

“Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?” asked LCR executive director Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal. “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit and should have no bearing on the college admissions process.”

Plus, paying attention to the working class is popular with Americans, according to research by the Center for Working-Class Politics, whose recent survey showed that the public – Democrat, Republican or independent – responds positively to efforts to address the economic interests of working people, including job guarantees and training, increasing the minimum wage, and increasing taxes on the rich.

Besides, young people from the upper class have built-in advantages, going to better high schools, getting help from educated parents or paid tutors, being familiar with methods to build resumes with impressive extracurricular activities, and taking standardized tests more than once.

But people from the working class have promise, too.

Americans economically marginalized by their families’ income – again from any race – will benefit from admission policies that “treat class as meaningful,” Cooper wrote.

Indeed, as NAACP President Derrick Johnson remarked, higher education should “work for every American, not just the privileged few.”

Big 3 bargaining is a big deal for the UAW – and labor

 Next up: the United Auto Workers.

Following Starbucks (where 3,000 workers had a work stoppage at 150 locations), Los Angeles hotels (where 6,000 workers went on strike), Hollywood (with 11,500 writers hitting the bricks, before 160,000 TV and movie actors joined in their own walkout), and finally, the Teamsters (who reached a tentative agreement with UPS after months of preparation to strike), the UAW is enthusiastic as the Sept. 14 expiration of its automakers contract approaches.

“It feels like it’s strike summer,” UCLA Labor Center director Kent Wong told The Guardian. “There’s tremendous energy within the labor movement, and there’s tremendous energy on the strike lines.

“We are coming out of more than three years of pandemic where people felt that economic inequality has grown,” Wong continued. “Many workers were called essential workers, but they often felt they weren’t respected or appreciated, yet at the same time they have seen all this outrageous corporate greed.”

Before bargaining officially began July 13 at Stellantis (formerly Chrysler), July 14 at Ford, and July 18 at General Motors, UAW President Shawn Fain days before dropped the customary, ceremonial handshake with automaker executives to start negotiations. Instead, the 54-year-old electrician – who started at a Chrysler plant in Kokomo, Ind., before working in the union for decades – and other international leaders started a new tradition: member handshakes. At three Michigan assembly plants, leaders shook hands, talked to workers, and collected “United for a Strong Contract” pledge cards.

If autoworkers are encouraged by the energy, solidarity and the Teamsters settlement, they also must be reassured by 71% public approval – the highest level since 1965.

However, the rank and file must also have noticed GM’s July announcement that the corporation had exceeded expectations in the 2^nd quarter, increasing profits 39% to $3.2 billion on revenues of $44.75 billion – its highest revenues since its 2009 bankruptcy. Last year, all three corporations reported hefty profits: operating incomes of $9.2 billion (Ford), $13 billion (GM), and $15.2 billion (Stellantis).

Last month, GM investors were told that the company intends to cut expenses by $3 billion in the next few years – three times its earlier plan.

“These companies have been extraordinarily profitable, and our members have created incredible value for these companies during some really hard and dangerous years," said UAW President Shawn Fain. “They can afford our demands, and we expect them to pony up.

“GM executives have closed 31 plants over the last 20 years and are now enriching themselves through joint-venture battery plants that get billions from the federal government in taxpayer subsidies but pay poverty wages,” he continued. “It’s long past time for GM to pony up, end tiers, pay their employees competitive wages that keep up with the cost of living, and provide everyone the ability to retire with dignity.”

The Big 3 got billions in taxpayer subsidies since the auto bailout during the 2008 recession – plus union givebacks to help the company.

“We took concessions in hard times,” Fain said. “Business has been booming for the last decade, and these companies have made record profits. And this is our time to get our fair share of the pie.'”

Many factories have far more temporary workers than ever, people paid $16.67/hour without retirement benefits or scheduled raises, and with just two to five paid days off a year.

“They’ve made a quarter of a trillion dollars in North American profits over the last ten years,” Fain said, “and they can afford to make things right for our members.”

Besides pay, several issues remain at the forefront of negotiations, the UAW says, such as “Alternative Work Schedules,” the mandatory shifts dealing with speedups that have workers clocking in for six 10-hour days a week or five or six 12-hour days a week.

The union wants to:

* eliminate the hated two-tier wage system where people working side by side get much different wages and benefits, depending on their start dates;

* reinstate COLA (Cost of Living Adjustments);

* address widespread injuries on the job and their long-term effects – especially facing company chatter about cuts to retiree health-care benefits and pensions;

* protect job security amidst the industry drift to electric vehicles; and

* improve pensions.

 

Like the Teamsters, the UAW seems emboldened by a more militant leadership, with former “insurgents” at the top setting a determined, if not combative, tone.

UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, elected off working the line at Stellantis’s Warren truck plant, said that the union is ready, referring to the financial impact of the UAW's 40-day strike at GM in 2019 – $3 billion – and to the UAW's $825 million strike fund.

“We will go the distance to win what we deserve,” she said, “even if it means staying out.”

Fain wants to convey the UAW’s resolve.

“September 14 is a deadline, not a suggestion,” Fain said. “The UAW once set the standard for the working class in this country. Those days are not over.

 “What we do in this moment will be remembered for generations,” he told members in Michigan. “This is our defining moment, as a union, as working people.”

Before Teamsters' UPS settlement and ratification, some background on the contentious negotiations

 Most important national news stories aren’t just something happening elsewhere, but locally.

Everywhere.

One of the summer’s most important stories is that a Teamsters strike at UPS could be just six weeks away. It would be not only the first UPS strike since 185,000 workers walked out in 1997, but the biggest work stoppage of the 21st century, involving more than 340,000 workers.

In West Central Illinois, Teamsters leader Gregory Wheet, President of Teamsters Local 627 in Peoria, is watching developments closely.

“All Teamster agreements have a clause that protects members for honoring picket lines,” Wheet tells the Labor Paper. “I am not involved in negotiations, but what I’m hearing is the bargaining unit is sick and tired of the workload that they have to endure and, yes, they will picket if they have to.”

The Teamsters’ contract talks with UPS, the nation’s largest unionized private-sector employer, could be a defining moment in the struggle for family-sustaining jobs. Despite its enormous profits, UPS is managing its workers to extremes, demanding six-day work weeks from some full-timers while part-timers can be paid just $15.50 an hour for 3.5-hour shifts.

“We won’t really know until mid-July where things are at, but I think there’s obviously a different model that UPS wants to impose on its workforce,” said Joe Allen, a former Teamster in Chicago and Massachusetts for almost 10 years and author of “The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS.”

“People call it ‘Uberization,’ or the digitizing of the UPS workforce,” he continued. “They want a much more casual workforce.”

UPS, once known as United Parcel Service, dates to 1907 when teenager James Casey started a bicycle messenger service in Seattle, expanding to packages in 1919. Later, Casey invited the Teamsters to represent its labor force.

Today, headquartered in Atlanta, UPS delivers about 24 million items a day, according to the Pitney Bowes logistics company. That’s some 6% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, UPS says – millions more packages than a few years ago.

That’s boosted UPS’ yearly profits to about three times what they were before COVID – $8.6 billion in shareholder dividends and stock buybacks on $100 billion in revenues last year alone, and economists forecast $8.4 billion more this year.

Teamsters at UPS have serious issues:

■ time, particularly the pressure to make x-amount of stops a day,

■ company surveillance,

■ safety and working conditions in trucks that are sweltering or freezing, depending on the season,

■ forced overtime and split shifts,

■ improving pay for part-timers,

■ independent contractors such as using Personal Vehicle Drivers (PDV), and, especially,

■ the two-tier wage system that separates workers’ pay, benefits and hours, from clause 22.4 in the current contract, which expires July 31.

 

“The two-tier wage scale is a big issue for UPS as well as other workers across the country,” Wheet says.

Other carriers such as FedEx and DHL aren’t likely to accept more than about 10% of the daily volume from existing customers, according to Mark Solomon from the industry magazine FreightWaves, so there could be chaos in commerce.

But UPS CEO Carol Tome in an earnings call last summer downplayed the tension, saying, “Our goal with the Teamsters is win-win-win.”

Still, she ordered managers not to take time off in July or August and has indicated plans to try to keep operating with management employees and scabs.

“As far as what the corporate guys claim they will do if a strike happens,” Wheet says, “they should be thinking about the issues that their workforce is telling them and sit down and negotiate accordingly.”

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has about 1.2 million members – and about one-fourth of them work at UPS’ package division or warehouses.

In 1997’s 15-day strike, the Teamsters won 10,000 additional full-time jobs and significant wage increases. In 2018, however, a Tentative Agreement was voted down by the rank and file, but the union’s administration – led by James Hoffa for almost 25 years – imposed it, with the two-tier language.

After the controversial move, Sean O’Brien – a fourth-generation Teamster who’d led Boston’s Local 25 since 2006 – broke with the Hoffa team and easily won the Teamsters presidency as the insurgent candidate and revived the membership, especially at UPS.

“The days of concessions and walking all over our members are over,” O’Brien said. “We’re going into these negotiations with a clear message to UPS that we’re not going past August 1.

 “It’s going to get bloody. It’s going to get painful,” O’Brien warned business leaders. “So, ice up, because when you take one of us on, you take all of us on. If you are corporate America and you want to take us on, put your helmet on and buckle your chinstrap, because it’s a full-contact sport.”

In Peoria – where Wheet makes clear Local 627 doesn’t represent UPS workers – he stresses the union’s unity.

“The Teamster union [locals] have one thing in common and that is solidarity,” he says. “We support all brothers and sisters who are on strike, trying to make a better life for their family.

“Currently, all labor organizations are inspired, and workers have had enough of taking it on the chin,” Wheet continues. “If the workers at UPS have to strike, it would have big implications nationwide, when you consider everything that they deliver each day.”

The implications go beyond the disruption of one corporation, said Allen, the ex-Teamster writer.

“A strike at UPS not only has the potential of putting into motion something like 340,000 workers, and shutting down a very important corporation,” he said. “It has the possibility of elevating the struggles that we’ve already begun to see throughout the industrial sector of the economy and some of the new organizing and the possibility of injecting that spirit and organizing into the larger non-union sector of the logistics industry, most notably Amazon.

“The potential for building a new industrial labor movement is here,” Allen added.

Back in Peoria, at Local 627’s building off Allen Road, Wheet adds, “The American worker, union and non-union alike, is fed up with Corporate America, and they feel it is time act to make a better life for them and their families!”

10 Peoria-area acts not to miss this month

 After reaching out to area music insiders – musicians and promoters, radio personalities and writers – we compiled from their feedback this snapshot of a variety of local talents not to miss in August, a time that can be tempting to retreat to air conditioning. But don’t let the weather or the barrage of bands discourage you. Sample the range and abilities of our neighbors.

1. Aug. 4 – King Purp isn’t live this month, but the lively Peoria hip-hop artist is releasing his new album on this date. Peoria has birthed other rappers (Best Kept and K. Hillian, Luney Ray and No Fatigue), but King Purp stands out.

“This wordplay wizard creatively delivers fashion-forward rap combined with a traditional feel. His “King Talk” album is available on all streaming platforms. His forthcoming album “King Talk II” is due August 4.”

2. Aug. 10 – “Sounds of Hope” is a special performance of a Heartland Festival Orchestra string octet at the Peoria Riverfront Museum. Presented in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Peoria and JCC Chicago, the concert will help open the “Violins of Hope” exhibit at museum.

“These are instruments owned and used by victims of the Holocaust. The program includes Shostakovich's String Quartet Number 8, Darius Milhaud's Symphoniette, Ravel's Kaddish, and a Klezmer piece.”

3. Aug. 11 – Big Huge will be at the 3300 Event Center Aug. 11. They originally played together in 1969 and reunited just before COVID hit. The lineup is Dennis Albee (Brillo & The Firebirds), Craig Moore (Ilmo Smokehouse, Ready Steady Go, many other groups), Lee Noe (Rivendell, Aliens), Matthew Warren (Kool Ray & Polaroidz, The Ligonaires).

“Not the typical mid-late 60's/early 70's Woodstock festival-era album rock, they play a surprising assortment of great material.”

4. Aug. 11 – Soft Spoken is set for the Contemporary Art Center’s “Live at the Five Spot” Aug. 11. Based in Bloomington, they’re Gary Muhammad (lead guitar/vocals), Mike Gardner (keys/bass/vocals), Myra Johnson (percussion), AJ Chinnery (drums), Kenny Johnson (bass guitar), and Jamika Russell (lead vocals).

“Soft Spoken covers a lot of musical territory: jazz, funk, R&B, soul and blues, all with the smooth-jazz filter set on high. If you’re a smooth operator and enjoy dancing and romancing, you’ll want to experience Soft Spoken.”

5. Aug. 12 – Emily the Band is a self-described three-piece queer girl group based in Peoria and on the bill at Pour Bros. Taproom’s “Courtyard Concert Series” in a special Aug. 12 kickoff for this year’s Blue Ridge Community Farm Fall Concert Series outside Chillicothe. The Pour Bros. concert has headliners The Crane Wives (from Michigan) and Patty PerShayla & The Mayhaps (from Nashville).

“Featuring the vocals of Emily Antonacci and Cammie Proctor, Emily the Band’s indie alt-pop anthems combine catchy melodies with clever lyrics, and have them making new fans with every performance.”

6. Aug. 17 – Grey Slush at press time hasn’t set a venue for an Aug. 17 show, but the acts are: Champaign/Urbana garage punkers Kangaroo Court, Chicago “psychedelic Latin”  rocker Gabacho, and hometownies Grey Slush.

“Peoria’s own Grey Slush has become a scene stalwart in recent years, releasing three EPs and multiple singles since 2021. They play a peppy, catchy brand of indie rock/alternative – the kind you don’t hear as much these days – that will have your head nodding and toes tapping. Check out their latest video, with familiar scenes from downtown Peoria, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq6rXIkxcBY For recordings, etc., go to https://greyslush.com/, https://linktr.ee/greyslush or https://greyslush.bandcamp.com/album/vbs.”

7. Aug. 18 – The Forecast was founded in Peoria in 2001, and they’re returning to town for their first show in six years – at Kenny’s Westside Pub Aug. 18.

“The Forecast took the emo/hardcore template of Peoria-to-Denver transplants Planes Mistaken for Stars to heart. They released multiple albums on a range of record labels and toured regularly in the 2000s. After undergoing numerous lineup shifts, their later records added a slight Americana twist to their Midwestern blue-collar rock n’ roll.”

8. Aug. 23 – The River Valley Big Band is playing from 6-8 Aug. 23 at Morton’s Idlewood Park, but their month also includes gigs Aug. 12 in Alpha Park in Bartonville and Aug. 18 at Tower Park in Peoria Heights.

“Starting its seventh season in September, the River Valley Big Band brings the traditional Big Band sound to a variety of music from the 1920's through today with a roster of about 20 musicians who are professionals, amateurs, current and former educators, and fine young players, and with a vocalist on several numbers.”

9. Aug. 25 – Matt Miller is a premier country musician who has eight appearances this month, including Aug. 25 at the Neon Bison in Peoria. The official “house band” for 97.3 FM River Country radio, Miller performs with his full band and also in acoustic sets. “Matt is about the countriest, big-hearted country guy who sings country music great. Ain’t no party like a ‘good time’ Matt Miller party.”

10. Aug. 26 – Revel in Red is in the midst of its “2023 Outdoor Concert Series,” which includes an Aug. 26 street party in downtown Pekin. Forming in 2020, the six-piece rock-anthem specialists bring decades of collective musical experience with JammSammich, the Gary Richrath Band and other familiar names and sounds. Labeling them a “cover band” for classic and modern rock understates their skills. On any given night, audiences could hear REO, Boston and Bon Jovi, plus Pink, My Chemical Romance, and Bruno Mars.

“Amazing musicians with an awesome presence, R in R sounds great and plays favorites from the 1970s to recent hits. Once you see Revel in Red, you’ll HAVE to see them again!”