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MC5's Wayne Kramer teams up with local coffee roasters and L.A. nonprofit to bring music to Michigan
https://www.metrotimes.com/city-slang/archives/2021/05/10/mc5s-wayne-kramer-teams-up-with-local-coffee-roasters-and-la-based-nonprofit-to-bring-music-programming-to-michigan-prisons
For decades, Wayne Kramer of the MC5 has kicked out the jams, but his latest mission has the 73-year-old rock icon and writer kicking down prison doors to let the music in — and he's not doing it alone.
Kramer, who is the co-founder of Los Angeles-based Jail Guitar Doors USA, has teamed up with organic Traverse City coffee roaster Higher Grounds Trading Co. to bring rehabilitative music programing to Michigan prisons.
Jail Guitar Doors, a reference to the 1979 song by the Clash of the same name — and a song that details Kramer's 1975 arrest for selling cocaine to an undercover agent, which landed him two years in prison in Lexington, Kentucky — was founded in 2007 by fellow punk performer and activist Billy Bragg as a way to honor late Clash frontman Joe Strummer's legacy.
Didn't Jesus say we need to visit those in prison? Good for them.