WASHINGTON — Last Thursday, Bradenton native Duane Betts (son of Allman Brothers Band founder Dickey Betts) and his band Palmetto Motel graced the Millennium Stage at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
The band received significant online feedback for its poignant performance of Buffalo Springfield's counterculture classic, For What It's Worth, which seemed to be a pointed reference to the ongoing military presence in the nation's capital and other chaos unfolding under the Trump administration. Some commenters cheered the performance, others voiced disagreement with the messaging, while others still criticized their decision to accept the invitation, protest songs notwithstanding.
The Kennedy Center has found itself at ground zero of the culture war, after President Trump took charge of the venue and suggested he would be changing the name to the Trump Kennedy Center. Upon taking office for a second term, Trump fired Deborah Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center, and its board members. After installing hand-picked replacements, the new board named Trump himself the center's chairman, causing several artists to cancel scheduled performances in protest.
In the second half of Thursday's set, Betts' bassist and longtime collaborator Pedro Arevalo (who also played in Dickey Betts' solo band) introduced the song, which would be performed as a duet between him and Betts. Critics noted that Arevalo seemed to emphasize not only the words "Kennedy Center," as Betts had earlier, but also "his home down on the Gulf of Mexico," which Trump declared the "Gulf of America" after taking office for a second term.
Buffalo Springfield was an early rock band that featured Tampa native and Plant High alumnus Stephen Stills, as well as Neil Young, before their formation of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Stills wrote For What It's Worth in response to the so-called Sunset Strip curfew riots of 1966 (also known as the "hippie riots") during which police and young protestors clashed over nightly curfews imposed by the Los Angeles City Council to curtail the growing "nuisance" of anti-war protests.
In a social media post to Palmetto Motel guitarist Johnny Stachela's Facebook account, keyboardist Max Butler added further context.
"Last night, we played the Kennedy Center. We sang protest songs to rapt acclaim and listened to the stories of the boots on the ground, the staffers disgusted and dismayed at gutted budgets and gaudy gold-painted boorishness. There was a collegial defiance buzzing. A collective resolve to preserve the promotion of the free and unfettered arts, unbent to the whims of sociopathic autocrats and their whimpering sycophants."
Click here to watch the band's complete set at the Kennedy Center. Their performance of For What It's Worth, starts here. Duane Betts & Palmetto Motel will play the Baycare Sound in Clearwater on Oct. 12 with The Tedeschi Trucks Band. Click here to purchase tickets.
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