Media

Update: Dubie releases ‘country’ version of property rights protest song

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former Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie will be a guest on Chronicle Conversations Wednesday, October 21 at 12:30 PM on WVMT AM 620, FM 101.3, and WVMTradio.com

Last week, former Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie released his first version of ‘Freedom and Unity,’ a property rights protest song written by him and his wife and put to music by AI with an Irish band theme. Today, he released a second version (below), with a more acoustic ‘country music’ feel. Which do you prefer?

By Guy Page

Former Vermont Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie has released a new, second version of his encore protest song, in which he takes aim at Vermont’s Democratic legislative majority and nonprofit organizations he portrays as the state’s would-be new kings.

The first version of his latest song, Vermont Freedom and Unity, was released about 10 days ago. Dubie wrote the lyrics, then used artificial intelligence to produce a recording with an Irish folk music flavor. This morning he released the same lyrics in a country western version.

The song invokes Vermont Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, comparing their resistance to British rule with what Dubie sees as today’s struggle against state taxes, spending and land-use restrictions.

“Old Ethan Allen stood on frozen ground / Said no king tells a Green Mountain Boy what to do,” the song begins.

Another verse targets lawmakers and land-use policies:

“Now Montpelier’s kings wear suits and come for you / They draw corridors across your back forty / Then tax the land they say you cannot use.”

The lyrics also criticize lawmakers’ efforts to make Vermont more affordable, accusing them of seeking new sources of tax revenue while working families struggle to remain in the state.

The song follows Dubie’s April release, Act 181 Coming, Vermont Working Lands Squeeze, which criticized Vermont’s land-use law and rising costs facing dairy farmers, maple producers, loggers and other rural residents.

That song included the line, “Property taxes jumped forty-one percent in five years flat / While we’re bustin’ our backs just to keep the lights on, that’s a fact.”

Dubie said at the time that he and his wife Penny had been writing AI-assisted songs for their children’s birthdays for years before deciding to put the technology to work for Vermont’s growing property rights movement.

A Republican, Dubie served as Vermont’s 80th lieutenant governor from 2003 to 2011 and narrowly lost the 2010 governor’s race. He is a retired commercial airline pilot who retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve as a colonel.

He remains active in public life as vice-chair of the Fairfield Selectboard and works in his family’s maple sugaring operation.

Feature photo of Brian and Penny Dubie from Sono.com.

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Categories: Media, politics

12 replies »

  1. Well dome Brian and Penny. Thank you, and especially for us rural landowners.

  2. I wonder if Mr. Dubie is aware that the price of maple syrup keeps going up each year. Additionally, his business has no doubt increased production over the years. I don’t think that one of Vermont’s “Maple Sugar Kings” has any problem paying his taxes.

    • It is not surpising that syrup prices go up in a time of inflation and with property taxes rising so quickly for a land based business. You seem to fault the producers for making a living from an ag business, and paying their taxes like all land owners try to do. I do not think your criticism is well placed.

    • I had to look up nescience. Karl. I love it. I sugared for about 35 years. We worked 7 days a week for about a month to put out around 8,000 taps in February and then boil sap in March. The rest of the year we dropped trees, bucked them up, split them and moved the wood to the woodshed. 80 cords of wood. I am not bragging about doing the hard work, I loved working outside. In my opinion, Johns comment is very crass.

  3. Be careful with the Maple Sugar Kings, as I have a cousin in Southern Vermont that has a large Maple operation. That land as been in his family for many years and he is eighty five and does must of the work himself. Comment from Richard Day.

  4. Brian, you nailed it, they don’t seem to care about what families need and want, just about their own vision for Vermont. But, aren’t they supposed to represent us?