Jack Bowers -A Do-gooder Opportunist in the Joint : A Jazz Improvisation in 4 Parts

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:00

From the center for the Study of Art and Community. This is Change the story, change the world. My name is Bill Cleveland.

Jack Bowers: 00:00:10

One of the first classes I held at North Facility, there was a man who came in and picked up the guitar during one of the breaks. And I looked over and saw him playing.

And after a while I went over to listen and I found he was playing guitar really well, playing bar chords up and down the neck, which is a fairly complex activity.

I asked him where he learned how to play the guitar and he had built a cardboard guitar neck in his cell, drawn the strings and the frets onto it and bought a couple books of guitar chords and practiced that way. And in telling the story once I said he was my Zen guitarist.

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:48

guitarist of soledad back in: 1986

Jack and I go way back to the early 80s when, I don't know, pretty much everybody involved in the nascent arts and corrections program could fit into one moderately sized classroom.

But by the time Art and the Prison Crisis, the Academy nominated documentary film that included Jack's story, was released, this was no longer the case. By 86, we had grown from one institution to six and counting.

And six years later, Jack had established the Soledad Arts program as a sprawling multidisciplinary jewel in the 28 institution arts and corrections crown that had over 600 full and part time teaching and guest artists traipsing in and out of the state's prisons. A few years later, it was nearly a thousand.

This episode is a conversation with Jack about his life as a self described opportunistic musician and that extraordinary history.

What we learned and what still seems relevant, it's also an opportunity to shine a light on a moment in history that most of us involved still figure had no business actually happening.

This was a two decade run of hard work and luck during which we built the largest residential arts program in US history, and of all places, the largest prison system in the world. Back when California was a solid red state. Who knew that was possible? Certainly not us. But it was part one, the opportunist, away we go.

So you're actually at the place you're always at, I think when you're online with that wonderful old cabinet behind you with, oh yeah, antiques, the china cabinet. Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful. It's like a story behind your head.

Okay, so I just want you to know that one of my attempts here is to create an archive of creative brilliance and you'd Been at the top of my list for a long time.

Jack Bowers: 00:03:12

Oh, super. Yeah. Thanks so much, Bill.

Bill Cleveland: 00:03:14

You're welcome. So let's begin by letting people know where you are in the world.

Jack Bowers: 00:03:20

So I'm sitting here at my dining room table in Santa Cruz, California. It's the ancestral land of the Amamoutson Tribal Band, often known as the Ohlone people. Yep.

Bill Cleveland: 00:03:31

And the Ohlone share a very large territory of which Oakland and Alameda, California, where I am right now, are both a part. Yeah, yeah. So sometimes gather with friends and family. There are people there at the table who we don't see very often.

And they say, so tell me, Jack, what do you do? What's your work in the world? How do you describe it?

Jack Bowers: 00:04:04

Okay, so you asked for a one word answer, Bill. And so I kicked that around a little bit. And the answer I came up with is that I'm an opportunist.

And what I mean by that is that as an independent working musician at this point, and if you're an independent working musician, you usually need to answer the call, and somebody calls you up, they want you to work. I've got a gig here.

nd I did starting back in the: 1980

Somebody said, hey, do you want to teach a songwriting workshop at Soledad Prison? And I said, sure, because what's what musicians say? Yeah. Is there money in it? Yeah.

I mean, there's a crass level, but there's also a curious level about it. And I think having that attitude has really helped me. Having that immediate reaction say, sure, why not?

It's been really a privilege to go those places, and it's taken me places I never would have gone to on my own. And it's introduced me to this incredible network of people.

Bill Cleveland: 00:05:26

So what has your curiosity taught you? Where has it taken you? At the end of the day, curiosity is in fact an attempt to answer a question or explore a mystery.

What have you found out on that journey?

Jack Bowers: 00:05:46

Well, what I found out is there is so much space to play in this world, if you're lucky, and if you open yourselves up to people in a certain kind of way. And of course, that that brings me immediately around to the arts. And let's See, little. Just observation here.

I had a little bronchial issue the other day, so I went to the urgent care clinic, and there was a little sign up on the desk where I checked in, and it said, if you made somebody smile today, that's a good thing. And I said, damn, I'm a musician. I get to make people smile all the time. And you know what a privilege that is.

And like yesterday, I was playing at a rehabilitation center, and there we were, we were playing songs, and the people were having a wonderful time. We were making people who were in compromised situations smile and feel good.

And of course, the big one about that bill is working in the correctional system that we got to do.

We got to bring something really pretty amazing into Soledad Prison and all those other peculiar and perverse institutions in the state of California through the Arts and Corrections program. And the thing that we brought in was it was like an egg that the guys in there sat on and hat.

And it turned into something way beyond what any of us could have imagined. Yeah, and that's what curiosity will do for you. It will bring you into places where you can affect change.

Bill Cleveland: 00:07:19

Jazz, in particular, I think, is a. A strategy for asking and answering questions.

But not every jazz musician would answer the call that you answered, which was an opportunity to go have a gig and teach a few songs at what at the time was defined as one of the gladiator schools in the California Department of Corrections. And you and I were both in the same boat in that. Before we went to those places, we had no idea what was behind those walls.

Could you tell me what, number one, what attracted you? And number two, given that you stayed around for a couple of decades, what kept you coming back?

Jack Bowers: 00:08:12

Yeah, good question. So I go back to the fact that I was an opportunist and it was money, and I needed some money.

I got together with a group of friends who were teachers there, teachers and correctional officers and stuff like that. We get together once a month and have. Have lunch down in Watsonville. And we were talking the other day, and we were.

l, at that point years ago in: 1980

I mean, I think they're all the good things we can say about it. But, you know, in the end, people need a good job, good work. And it turns out that working for the state in the civil service system is.

It doesn't pay a lot, but it's stable and it's it's the particular job that I had, of course, was rewarding in very different ways, but I was able to take care of my family in a fairly decent way. And now, of course, I get to be retired and collect the pension. So on the crafts level, that's very important.

We all know that we need to put the turkey on the table on Thanksgiving and all of those things, send our kids to school.

Bill Cleveland: 00:09:21

So, Jack, I'll just interject here that the Arts and Corrections program was, as you know, a very audacious experiment that started out, like most prison arts efforts, as an outside initiative. But we worked hard to make it a permanent part of a system that wasn't so sure it wanted us.

We did that because we knew that to make a real difference inside, high level arts programming had to be a regular, ongoing, consistent part of prison life. A regimen, not a piecemeal drop in. And it was a struggle pushing against that current, but we succeeded.

And one aspect of that success was the fact that when Opportunist Jack was looking for a gig, we had established civil service artist positions up and down the state. But that's not to say it was easy. As Jack can attest, there were some real struggles going on in those institutions.

Jack Bowers: 00:10:22

So that's very important. But I had some bad times there where I was going against the current and the current was trying to push me down the river.

So I was hanging onto the roots and everything. And I did manage to survive some difficult times.

And I think one of the things that allowed me to survive was that I got so much support from the people who were locked up there. We tend to forget about that, that Arts and Corrections needed permission to come into the prison.

And we could never have survived without getting permission from the shot callers. Whatever.

One of my students, Steve, Steve Smith, tells a story, he was a songwriter, he was white, and he wrote songs with a guy named Shady, was a Mexican guy, and they liked to get together out on the yard to work on their songs. So Steve had to go to the white shot collar on the yard and.

And Shady had to go to the Mexican shot collar on the yard and get permission for them to sit out there in the kind of the in between area, in between where the Mexican guys sat and where the white guys sat and they could go and do their songs. I mean, they always got permission, but they had to ask for that.

Bill Cleveland: 00:11:37

Yeah.

And so what you're describing, which for most people is a very foreign environment about which they know very, very little, which over time you became intimately familiar And I'm going to impose my own worldview here.

And my experience is that I may have learned more about how the world goes around on the outside, on the inside, that it was an intense, compacted, obviously structured environment that manifested so many things that we struggle with out here, but in indelible, striking, powerful ways that made it so that you could not avoid them. They were everyday things. You couldn't just ignore them.

So is that a true characterization of your experience in the joint for the time you spent here?

Jack Bowers: 00:12:45

You gave me a perfect preface to something I got for you here.

Bill Cleveland: 00:12:48

Okay.

Jack Bowers: 00:12:49

Which is I'm gonna do an acapella version of a song I wrote.

Bill Cleveland: 00:12:52

Okay.

Jack Bowers: 00:12:53

Which was your songwriter too. And they're the songs that just pop right out and then they're the other songs that have to percolate sometimes for years.

Bill Cleveland: 00:13:02

Yeah.

Jack Bowers: 00:13:02

And this is one of those. So it's called Soledad Morning. I'm just gonna sing it for you here.

Bill Cleveland: 00:13:08

Yeah.

Jack Bowers: 00:13:09

Reggie leaves his cell and steps onto the tier to take his place among the men shuffling toward the gate to go to chow. 250 men stand behind the bars and wait for the cop to turn the key to open the gate to go to chow.

Officer Mendoza stands beside the line in the Corridor and watches 250 men fall by him on the way to chow. Officer Mendoza points his finger at Reggie, says, step out of line, sir. I'm going to search you on the way to chow.

Reggie stands with his hands on the wall, his feet spread wide as gloved hands try to find what he hides on the way to chow.

Life can change without warning. It's another Soledad morning.

Sergeant Riley turns the key to the dining hall door to let 250 men join the line to get their child. The smells of men and disinfectant and breakfast and coffee, the clatter of trays and the slam of doors surround Reggie as he eats his chow.

Clear the corridor. Clear the corridor. Code 3R and R. Code 3 RR. Reggie raises his head as he eats his chow.

Life can change without warning. It's another Soledad morning.

What's going on? What's the answer? Sergeant Riley yells as he unlocks the chow hall door.

Reggie waits alone in the line along the wall to clear the gate to get through the fence to go to the yard. Reggie joins the 415Phone to call home at last. Reggie stands with a phone in his hand, ready to be the family man when the phone goes dead.

All inmates return to your housing units immediately. There will be an emergency camp. There will Be an emergency camp.

Reggie turns to return to his cell the end of a day when all he wanted to say was to wish his daughter Shantae happy birthday.

Life can change without warning. It's another Soledad morning.

Bill Cleveland: 00:15:53

Wow. That says it all, pretty much.

Jack Bowers: 00:15:58

So I sang that song for a guy, my clerk, who's, we're working on a project right now. And I sang that song for him and he was so touched by it. He just loved it.

He said, jack, I was on the phone learning about my mother dying when some guy came up to me and tried to start a fight. And just this, yes, we don't know what it's like to be incarcerated and be. And to be held in prison for a long time and have to find a life in there.

Bill Cleveland: 00:16:31

And also I think finding a life is a really good description, which is it's not on offer as an easily picked up aspect of what goes on in prison. It takes a lot of work, a lot of savvy, and a lot of luck to find a life inside.

And as we know, there are many who spend a significant part of their life in there who do not find a life. They deteriorate.

And I suppose one of the things that we offered was something that would help them survive the toxic environment in which they lived. Part two, respect.

So, Jack, could you talk a little bit about why you think making a song or throwing a pot or painting a picture can mitigate such a powerful toxic force?

Jack Bowers: 00:17:35

So my, my experience, Bill, is that it is not just an individual process. I think there's a point of view from which you can see it. Like that guy comes into the arts and corrections room.

There's a music class, he learns how to play the guitar. There's a writing class, he learns how to write a poem. But to me, it was really about the community, the community of prison.

ears at Soledad. I retired in: 2005

And since that point, when you're working in prison, you have to maintain very formal relationships with the incarcerated people. You don't share your personal life with them. You have to treat everybody incredibly fairly.

You can't seek out favorites, people, if they're going to have play a strong role in the arts and corrections program, they have to earn it by being very good at their art and having their own personal integrity. But you're within this really Rigid paramilitary system that punishes you for being too nice to their prisoners.

So I left in: 2005

It wasn't a yard with fences and guns around it. It was like listening to music in the park in San Jose. It was a relaxed atmosphere. And we brought things like that into the community. It wasn't just.

We didn't just hide up in the Arts and corrections room. We shared our stuff.

And of course, you and I both know about incredible mural at Soledad Prison that went up and down the main corridor that said, art is the way to see life for your listeners. The central corridor at Soledad Prison is a quarter of a mile long.

And my predecessor, Dick Crispo, and a crew of workers painted a mural all the way up one side of the wall and back down the other. A travelogue of America.

Bill Cleveland: 00:20:06

So, Jack, here is your friend and mine, Mr. Dick Crispo, back in the day describing what was then a truly unique creative undertaking on the Soledad mainline.

Dick Crispo: 00:20:18

I was at Soledad Prison on a California Arts Council Arts and Social institutions grant to paint the corridor. That's half a mile of painting, which made it the longest indoor painting in the world.

And I had 10 paid inmates and 10 volunteer inmates where we developed the first paint embers for art in the California prison system. We finished the mural one day short of the. When the budget ended and money ran out and we had a first banquet in there in the library.

We had outside guests came to the prison to a banquet celebrating this mural. And

Jack Bowers: 00:20:54

People walk the corridor all day long and they see that.

They see New Jersey, they see the Watts Towers, they see Ford Motor Company in Detroit, and it's with them just like the music was on the art. Anyway, guys, get out. And I started connecting with them.

And I've got about a dozen good friends who were incarcerated at Soledad, and we've done some amazing things together and supported each other. One of them is on the board of directors of the William James Association Prison Arts Project. Right now we.

One of them is teaching piano at San Quentin Prison. One of them is working with vets in the Sacramento area.

And right Now I'm working on a project with a guy named Harv Hawks, who is a musician and a visual artist. He got out, he became a videographer and started doing some community service things.

And we spoke at one point, and he said he'd really like to document what went on at Soledad with this community of people that he.

He lived with and people who were able to do good, be good, find programs that supported them to get out of prison and look at it from all different angles. That's one.

The thing that I'm working on right now that excites me right now is taking that amazing experience and turning it into something where we can look at it from all different points of view. And I don't think anybody has done that yet. There. There's the ear hustle there.

There are some things that take a certain point of view and look at it. But it turns out that when you're in prison, you have to get along with a lot of people.

You're required to do that, and you have to find a way to get along.

If you've got a difficult correctional officer in your wing, that's the person who opens the door for you, so you can come up to the music room and play music on Saturday morning.

So if you don't have a relationship, some respect or tolerance or whatever with that person, you're not going to get up to the music room to play music. And similarly, the officer has to have a relationship with the people in there or nothing's going to happen.

It's going to be just he's or she's going to have a horrible day. So there's this necessity that prison forces people to get along in some way or another. Well, they get along within a paramilitary system. Right.

Which is really weird. There's the captain, there's the watch commander, there's all these people, and then there's the prisoners.

And then the California prison system is arguably the most diverse population in the world. It's very roughly 30% Latino, 30% black, 30% white, and 10% other. And the workers there reflect that to some degree, too.

And so the dynamics of that place are incredibly complex. And you have to find ways to get along. And we found ways to get along where we could actually take an integrated band out on the yard.

And the people didn't freak out, which it took a while. It took 10 years to do some of this stuff. It didn't just happen overnight. Anyway. This idea of community is really what just really excites me.

And I think that's one of the profound things that you say in the title to your podcast, because art is integral to creating community and art is integral to networks. That's what we do as artists. We create networks.

Bill Cleveland: 00:24:29

So, Jack, two things jump up for me.

One of them is this project of yours, which is a 360 on the prison ecosystem, the complex, difficult, sometimes mysterious, sometimes completely confounding environment, which is a prison. Any effort to try and weave a story that is fascinating, toxic, and enlightening all at once. So that's one thing.

The other thing is you talk about the complexity of this community and how it forces people often into some of the smartest and most strategic thinking. It's a lot of pieces in a big puzzle.

And Beth Phelan, the celebrated book artist that in my conversation with her about her work at San Quentin, said, out here in the free world, we're not doing that great.

s what she had to say back in: 2020

Jack Bowers: 00:25:58

I'm in debt to their courage, and I feel a responsibility to get people to understand that it's these people who are living in this horrible situation and have for such a long time that are adapting to where we need to go faster than the rest of us, that they are like a species living at the edge of sustainability, where there's adaptation occurring, where there's mutations occurring that allow them to adapt and change. And these people bring so much imagination to lack.

And for me, that's our way that we have to go if we're going to solve our problems with the environment, if we're going to solve our problems with prisons, if we're going to solve our problems with how we do our communities.

Bill Cleveland: 00:26:57

Jack, I think you and Beth have a lot in common, and I think your project sounds incredible. Is there going to be a film at this point?

Jack Bowers: 00:27:08

We're going to do some video, like a video podcast. But there are things that I'm learning from him for all the time I spent there that I'm just becoming aware of.

And our criminal justice system, the one here in California, has been through such changes, and it is so complicated that it really takes somebody who's been through the mill to appreciate it. And the guys I know are, with a couple of exceptions, lifers. They served an indeterminate sentence most of them, 15 years to life.

They went in around the time that I went in. We came to school together. I got to go home at night. They did. That was a difference. And when they went in, they were mostly through plea bargain.

Said, you'll do 10 years. You get five years of good time automatically. If you don't screw up, you'll be out in 10 years.

And they got caught up in the political changes that happened in California.

They were coming in a semi progressive era where we were letting prisoners go to school, go to college, of all things, learn vocational trades, all that kind of stuff. And all of a sudden things changed. And Instead of serving 10 years, they were serving 15, 20, 25, 30 years. The rug was pulled out from under them.

And they served their term at the discretion of the Board of Prison Terms. And the Board of Prison Terms was charged with determining whether they were a threat to society if we were to let them out.

So that definition kept changing. The goalpost kept getting moved back on on these guys. And they still had to continue to be good. And I'm putting good in. In great big quotes.

But, you know, they had to demonstrate to the Board of Prison Terms that they had job skills, that if they had substance abuse issues they were dealing with, that they were using their leisure time wisely, that there were people in the staff at the prison where they served who were saying they did good things. I used to write all kinds of laudatory chronos. It's a great expression. A laudatory chrono. Laudatory chrono was a.

It was a little third of a 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper where he'd say, inmate so. And so is a member of the writing class at CTF Central and comes every week as an asset to the program. His writing has been published, et cetera.

So the Board of Prison Terms can look at that and say, oh, look, Jackie's doing a good job. He gets. Got an excellent on his report card, stuff like that. But.

But the dynamics of the prison are so complex because those guys live there day in, day out, year after year, and other prisoners pass through, other staff passes through, and they're still there. And they almost are the ones who are in charge in some strange way.

Bill Cleveland: 00:30:12

Yeah, they know the system better than anybody, that's for sure.

One of the things that jumps out at me is that when you talk about trying to stay good, it's not as though that intention is easy, because there are so many circumstances in which you can be in a compromising situation. That you have nothing to do with where you get a mark. And those marks are indelible. They don't go away. And it's a very unforgiving system.

The other thing that comes to mind, which is just a matter of math, which is in order to avoid being in a compromised situation, you need to pick and choose where you spend your time, what you do, and who you do it with.

And one of the things that Arts and Corrections created was an oasis for people to go and where, for the most part, even if you wanted to, you couldn't get in trouble there, because it was protected by everybody who was there to keep it a neutral, creative space where people could have actually just do their work. Part three, Building the Oasis so, Jack, when was it that you realized that you had become a kind of a refuge and that you were building an oasis?

Jack Bowers: 00:31:43

Oh, yeah. I worked Tuesday through Saturday at the prison, so I was in the education area. That's where my classroom was. And on Saturdays, everybody was gone.

And for the longest time, I'd go in there and do paperwork and supply the music programs with equipment, that sort of thing. And I guess after they're about 10, 12 years, a guy showed up, Scott somebody. He was a violin prodigy.

We'd been to the Eastman School of Music, one of the very best music schools in the United States. And so I got permission from the watch commander to bring Scott in there on Saturdays.

And he and I played Mozart and Beethoven, Piano, Violin Sonata, which is like, I'm just decadent on my part to sit around and make music while Rome burned. But we had the best time. And then after that, it opened the door to let a few people into the music room on Saturday.

And I worked with the staff, and they were more and more willing to have this happen.

And by about five years from there, we had like, 25 or 30 guys who would show up every Saturday, and they would all come up, and we had our jazz improvisation workshop going in there. We had guys writing poetry. We had guys down the hallway. They would be taking a couple guitars and work on writing songs.

And it was just this amazing thing. And the reason I mentioned that is that the staff allowed it to go on.

I'd get a call from a cop in G Wing, and he'd say, hey, Jack, I got a guy who just arrived here who's got a guitar. Is it okay if he comes up and gets a new string or tries out for the music program?

So there were certain people who spent a lot of time, full time in the arts and corrections program who did their 20, 30 years, Tom Skelly, Bill Peterson, those folks who, you know, who did their time and learned how to operate within the prison system so that they could get away with a lot. And you did? Yeah. Oh, I got away with a tremendous amount. But the reason I got away with that much is I had credibility.

I had credibility among the staff. They knew that I wouldn't go too far. They also know that I'd been in some shit myself. So I knew what it was like.

I used to go to the wings and see the guys in lockdown when I used to have to escort them through the search room where the, where all the prisoners got naked and had to be had their body cavities searched and all this stuff. So I was put in the dirty part of the work too. So that gave me a degree of credibility, let me put it that way.

Bill Cleveland: 00:34:31

Yeah, right, right.

But for those folks who are listening, those guys you just mentioned and a couple of dozen others and yourself were some of those civil service artists I mentioned earlier. And I have to say, you all were the absolute key to the success of the Arts and Corrections program.

As you said, the program's foundation, its heart, was the community of incarcerated artists.

But without you full time artist facilitators going in and out every day, gaining the trust of the inside artists and staff, organizing all those classes, buying supplies and equipment, protecting your program space, negotiating with correctional officers and administrators, and running interference for dozens of resident and guest artists, without all that, AIC would never have made the profound impact that it did.

Jack Bowers: 00:35:26

Yeah, and in the end, 90% of the people were in prison, I mean, including the prisoners and the staff, they just, they want to get it over with and go home. Whether that's an eight hour shift or a 20 year sentence, that's what they want to do. They want to finish this up.

And I mean, in a funny way, I was one of the few guys who wanted to go there because I was going to have a good time.

It was a job and we were going to, we were going to, we were going to make music, we were going to build guitars, we were going to do all kinds of wacko things inside a prison that had never been done before and that, that made a difference in individuals lives and over the long term, it made a difference in the community.

Bill Cleveland: 00:36:07

Yeah, and you did all those things.

And I just want to give credit, and for anybody who actually has spent time working inside a correctional system, as they call it inside a prison system, when you describe the evolution of your Saturday space Basically into a creative jam session, a little micro Woodstock. They're shaking their heads right now. They're going, now that's made up, or that's not possible.

So what you're talking about there is a community transformational miracle, which is made up of all kinds of little chits and little favors and trust, which is a scarce commodity in that universe. And as you say, it takes a long, long time to get that kind of juice inside the institution.

So that there's all these different people who are part of the weird team making a creative community inside a quasi military incarceration machine. And it's a real accomplishment. And it's not something that they hand out medals for, but it's an amazing accomplishment.

And I think that skill set is sorely needed in what we think of as the regular world these days.

Jack Bowers: 00:37:37

No, absolutely, Bill. Long term commitments are. They're tough, but they're also the most rewarding.

And I think going back to the prison system and the life I'm leading now with my friends who were once incarcerated there and who we shared the world of the correctional training facility at Soledad, they also carry with them a certain type of PTSD that it's akin to the military, the stuff you go through there, because they saw bad things and they had to probably do things that were against their better selves or look away when maybe they should have stepped in. I actually was in Ohio and I visited one, one of the guys who was in my program, who he called me dad.

He was a very young man when he came into the prison system, and he was at loose ends using the education program. And I was having to kick him out of the music room over and over again. It was like an attractive nuisance for him.

And so finally I said, hey, Lauren, if you're going to come in here, hold on to this guitar and then you'll look legit anyway. And one thing led to another and he became a fine guitarist. And he's actually screenwriter now. He continues to practice his art.

But I saw him recently and realized that the prison system did a lot of hard things to him. And if you scratch the surface to everyone who was there, you know, it just does. And how do you hold all that stuff together?

And that's what's so fascinating about the project we're on. Harv calls it Timeout.

That's the title he's taken for it because it's about talking to people who were in the prison system, either incarcerated or as working people, and about what that experience was for Them and what they brought out of it.

Bill Cleveland: 00:39:34

You know, when the William James association, the original instigator for the program and one of our key community partners, was just beginning to build their network of artists, they published an anthology of poems from the inside that was called, yeah, Timeout. And I think there was a timeout one and a timeout two, and I still got them on my shelf.

And I have a whole line of publications on that shelf that were created over the years.

And it's interesting if you check out any book of poetry and you figure, okay, someone took the time to write and polish these poems and then got it published.

Now, it's hard enough to do that on the outside, but on the inside, beyond learning the craft and producing a manuscript and finding a willing publisher, there is a labyrinth of rules, regulations, guidelines, and approvals. You have to navigate inside before anything gets printed.

As you know so well, there were at least 10 administrators who needed to parse each and every word of every poem in between those covers, all of whom have a different idea about what is okay and what's not okay, what's subversive, what's pornographic, what's a gang symbol or whatever. And it's a miracle any of it ever made its way into the world. And I'll say this again.

And it's people like you and those other civil service artists, facilitators that acted as the ambassadors for all those negotiations that made that happen.

Jack Bowers: 00:41:00

Yeah. Every prison has a jail, right? If you're banned in a prison, you go to jail. Oh, Wing.

Just like you go to jail in Santa Cruz if you get a DUI or get in a fight at the bar or whatever. So there's a jail inside the jail, and sometimes there's a jail inside the jail. Russian doll thing.

But anyway, we had one guy who had his poem had been accepted for one of those publications. Turned out he was in the Secure Housing Unit.

That's where they're locked in their cells 23 hours a day, and the only way they come out of their cells is in shackles. So I had to go into O Wing, and I had to get him to sign a release to have his poem public.

Every person who was public signed a really saying they wouldn't hold their Department of Corrections liable for anything that may result from their home being published. So I went into O Wing. They signed me in. They took me up to the tier that he was on, and they brought the guy out of his cell in the shackles.

So he shuffled down the. The wing there, and he came up to me and I said, oh, you got to sign this. So they kept his shackles on.

So he was having to hold the pen and sign the release form behind his back with his hands shackled together. And it was just a metaphor for. Here was a guy who was about as locked up as you could possibly be, and yet he was free.

His bird, his poem was flying over the barbed wire of Soledad Prison.

And it was going to come out in a way that's what everybody in there got to do through these poems or the art exhibits or all of that stuff, or just by being a part of something that was bigger than themselves and had that art can just float, Float away. It can escape in lots of different ways. Can it? Yeah.

Bill Cleveland: 00:42:50

Yes. You know, I talk a lot about the imagination, and I think most people wouldn't think, okay, where's a place where the imagination is really cooking?

Right. They probably wouldn't name San Quentin or Soledad as the first on their list. But in fact, here's a place where the imagination is a survival tool.

And I think about that collection of men that you still connect to and all those classes that you presided over or that you facilitated, that we organized thousands and thousands of men and women sitting in those cinder block spaces.

And what they create is a community of imagination which often not always transcended the enormous toxic power of the places where they were living their lives.

And at least my experience is the ones who knew that worked it, they knew, I'm going to go get my dose of the creative, my vitamin C to help me to avoid imaginative scurvy. And I have to believe that you were brothers in that, in that group that you meet with.

You are creative brothers, not just people who associated because they were in prison and you worked there, that your creative brotherhood transcended that machine, that you were all caught up.

Jack Bowers: 00:44:25

Absolutely. That's why I carried these relationships on, is because they were really important to me. You don't.

I mean, you don't do 25 years of full time work without getting close to people. And some of them were other workers there, and a lot of them were prisoners.

And one of the things that I found really interesting is Harv and I are working on this. Timeout is Harv's idea, and he came to me with it and I've been supporting him, helping out with grant writing and also reaching out to people.

And one of the things that's been really neat is that there are a lot of staff people who are more than willing to talk about their experience.

So that's one of the things that excites me the most, is that I think we will be able to create a picture of what it was like in there, and in particular, what it was like for the lifers, those men and women who are incarcerated, who serve at the discretion of the board of prison terms, and who need to demonstrate that they're suitable for parole. Because these people, they're under the microscope in a way that none of us ever are. It's very godlike in a way, isn't it? It's like it's St. Peter.

Bill Cleveland: 00:45:35

It's medieval.

Jack Bowers: 00:45:36

Yeah, the board. Yeah, the board of prison turns to St. Peter. Peter say, yep, you're not getting in. Go back.

They don't send you to hell, but they send you to purgatory. Right? You're back to purgatory. And purgatory happens to be San Quentin or Folsom or whatever the hell prison that you're incarcerated.

Bill Cleveland: 00:45:56

Yeah, absolutely.

Jack, if you were sitting in front of a bunch of young artists who think they might aspire to parts of the journey that you took, what would you tell them makes a difference?

Jack Bowers: 00:46:14

The simple thing is, take the gig. I mean, things are out there all the time, you know, I mean, that's my experience, and I can count myself as being very lucky in a sense.

But I also know that things are out there all the time. That these opportunities and that sometimes we hold ourselves back from that and we miss out.

So, yeah, the opportunity, you know, be open to it and just listen to what people are saying. And if it's not quite the direction you want to go, I mean, I certainly.

No one would ever think of wanting to spend 25 years doing our program at prison. Yeah, you. When I grow up, I want to work a Soledad prison. Exactly.

Bill Cleveland: 00:46:59

So really what you're saying is that, look, if you've picked some artistic path as a part of or maybe all of your life, you are inherently in the risk taking business. So go for it. When someone shows up with a ticket to a place that you're not familiar with, go for it.

Jack Bowers: 00:47:21

Yeah. And mostly you're gonna survive. And you may discover what it is that you really wanted to be doing. Yeah.

Bill Cleveland: 00:47:28

Yes, no, absolutely. I remember we started out having to recruit pretty hard to get people to come in.

And I remember the day that some guy from UC Davis, which at the time was one of the hottest visual arts schools in America, and I'm not going to say his name, but he said he was famous and he said, I want in. And I said, you want in what? He said, there's all these artists that are down there at Vacaville, and it sounds cool.

I think there's probably some really interesting characters down there, and I want to get in on it. Right. And you know what I'm thinking? I'm sorry, we're not in the interesting character business.

At a certain point, I remember that we went from having to recruit hard and hold people's hands to this place where people are knocking on the door saying, oh, I heard this is a cool gig. This is the place you want to be. And we really had to be careful with who was there for the real deal. But there was a guy at San Luis Obispo.

Yeah, he was a screenwriter. He had great resume. And he said, I'm serious. I want to teach screenwriting to these guys. And he was there for about six months.

And at a certain point, John, who was the facilitator down there, said, there's something weird about this guy. And I said, what do you think it is? He says, I think he's doing research for a TV show and he's going to take all this stuff.

He's going to take their screenplays, he's going to use them. And lo and behold, that's what he did. He finagled his way in there and then he captured those stories and it became an HBO TV show.

Jack Bowers: 00:49:30

Yep.

Bill Cleveland: 00:49:31

So, Jack, you described this group that you're with as something that's really been thrilling you. Anything else on the horizon that's been sparking your imagination, your sense of work?

Jack Bowers: 00:49:47

I've got three gigs this week and a session. So, you know, I'm. That's mostly where I am that.

That and being a parent, grandparent husband, growing vegetables and having things like this come to me. And I'm just really excited to be there and on the William James board.

Bill Cleveland: 00:50:06

Our final question. Do you have some creative work out there that has really inspired you that you want to recommend to the audience?

Jack Bowers: 00:50:15

So the first one goes back to actually, when I started working at Soledad, is that I ended up spending the first year and a half there with a great jazz artist by the name of Andrew Hill. And if you love jazz at all, Andrew Hill was one of the great creative geniuses of jazz of our time. And I say, listen to him.

He's got a song called Dusk that is just absolutely beautiful. And it's also opens up these harmonic possibilities that most of us can only imagine. But he has it all, all right there at his Fingertips.

Okay, next one is Bach. I've been playing the preludes and fugues. Beautiful music and so ascetic. Just beauty trimmed to just the essentials.

That's one of the great things about Bach. There's nothing there that's not needed to make the idea be realized.

Bill Cleveland: 00:51:15

And also just.

I mean, really what you have there is that because we put classical music in a box and in large institutions and often make them very inaccessible to most people, sometimes the inherent beauty is obscured.

Jack Bowers: 00:51:33

Indeed.

Bill Cleveland: 00:51:34

And what you're talking about is you're sitting down at a piano and basically recreating something that he did on his piano. And there. And it rises up, Right.

Jack Bowers: 00:51:49

No question, man.

Bill Cleveland: 00:51:50

Unique, organic form.

Jack Bowers: 00:51:52

Yeah. It's weird, isn't it, that you can.

You can play a piece of music and you get to a glimpse into the head of these great geniuses who, yeah, realize things that the rest of us could only imagine. That's the second one, the third piece. The third piece is learning to appreciate neurodivergence. I've been reading a lot about that.

One of our grandchildren is on the autism spectrum, and so we've. We've been with her since she was three months old.

And to watch her develop as an individual through that and just learning about the idea of neurodivergence gets at these things we call normal. Normal doesn't exist. And for us to hold on to that is just really wrong.

And it makes a lot of people feel bad about themselves, and it doesn't encourage us to realize our own unique qualities.

Bill Cleveland: 00:52:52

So, Jack, thanks for that and this great conversation. Really appreciate it.

Jack Bowers: 00:52:56

Absolutely, Bill. It's just a real pleasure. I really enjoy chatting with you like this. Yeah. Makes me feel good. Take care.

Bill Cleveland: 00:53:03

Yeah, Jack, I think we could all use that advice. It can sound like a platitude, but I think taking care of ourselves and our families and communities needs to be a priority these days.

So this show is our first of: 2025

We hope what we've shared over the past 12 months have made things a little less weird or more weird in a good way. Nevertheless, whichever weird way we have nudged you, we are incredibly thankful that you have joined us. We've learned a lot and hope you have, too.

Also, if you have some comments, questions, or ideas about people you think we should be talking to, drop us a line at csacrtandcommunity.com Art and community is all one word and all spelled out. Change the Story, Change the World is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community.

Our theme and soundscape spring forth from the head, heart and hands of the maestro Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe, our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of OUC235.

So until next time, stay well, do good and spread the good word. And once again, please know that this episode has been 100% human. And finally, finally, here's a Jack Bowers tune called Regroup to take us out.