Folk singer-songwriter and political activist Anne Feeney dies at 69

A fierce activist who lent her voice and music to a range of grassroots causes — a self-described “hellraiser” and “troublemaker” — Anne Feeney spent decades turning the push for social justice into lyrics.

“Anne, like a laser, would identify these issues and help people understand these in a very effective way,” said Larry Berger, a longtime friend and colleague of Feeney’s and executive producer of the “Saturday Light Brigade” radio show.

Folk singer, songwriter and lawyer Anne Feeney died Wednesday at UPMC Shadyside hospital from complications of covid-19. She was 69.

“It is with a very heavy heart that we must announce the passing of our courageous, brilliant, beautiful mother,” Feeney’s daughter, Amy Sue Berlin, wrote on social media. “We were very lucky that she fought hard enough to open up her eyes and give us a couple days to be with her before she finally decided it was time to let go.”

That fighting spirit was typical, said Liz Berlin (no relation) of the band Rusted Root and co-owner of Mr. Smalls, the music venue in Millvale. She was a longtime friend to Feeney.

“She’s a fighter,” Liz Berlin said. “She’s been fighting since she was a young girl, all through her adulthood, for so many causes — and even her own battles.”

Feeney was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, and Berlin helped organize a benefit for her. Feeney’s cancer would eventually go into remission.

Feeney was born in Charleroi and raised in Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1978. While at the university, she co-founded Pittsburgh Action Against Rape, a nonprofit that continues today offering support, crisis intervention, counseling, legal advocacy and more to survivors of sexual violence.

“While we are deeply saddened by the news of (Feeney’s) passing, we are forever in debt to her commitment to survivors,” the organization wrote in a statement.

She worked for more than a decade as an attorney, telling The Pittsburgh Press in 1989 that she thought law “was a good way for me to become an instrument of social change.”

She continued: “Now I feel I can accomplish the same thing through my music, and I’m concentrating on that.”

“She was a recovered lawyer,” said friend Chuck Pascal, a Leechburg-area attorney.

Her activism, he said, ran the gamut: union activism, labor activism, feminism, anti-war activism, anti-corporate power and more.

“That’s what she did,” said Pascal, who met Feeney when he was in college at Pitt and she was performing shows across the city. “She became somebody that was known all over the country in union circles and in every other progressive circle as somebody who would be there if she was asked to come play for the cause.”

When he ran for Armstrong County commissioner in 1999, Feeney played for free at a fundraiser for his campaign.

Liz Berlin, of Rusted Root, first met Feeney at a South Side bar. Age 16 at the time, Berlin was performing at an open mic session and her parents, she said, struck up a conversation with Feeney. From there, Feeney took her under her wing, introducing her just months later to the People’s Music Network.

“She opened my world up to the world of singer-songwriters and activists,” Berlin said. “She was foundational in my development and set my life path as a musician.”

Berlin recalled singing Feeney’s song “Have You Been to Jail for Justice?” at the Social Justice Disco, Berlin’s collaboration with Phat Man Dee.

“It meant a lot to us that she would trust us to reinterpret her work like that,” she said.

You law-abiding citizens, come listen to this song

Laws were made by people, and people can be wrong

Once unions were against the law, but slavery was fine

Women were denied the vote and children worked the mine

The more you study history the less you can deny it

A rotten law stays on the books til folks like us defy it

Beyond her serious lyrics about pressing social justice issues, Feeney was sharp-witted and funny, too, said Berger of “Saturday Light Brigade.”

He relayed a story about how the pair used to do a lot of bulk mailing of newsletters and such — a sometimes arduous process, he said, that involved “a lot of sorting and bundling and rubber-banding.”

He said Feeney once told him that, sometimes, when those preparations had to be done, she’d tell her kids it was time to play a game called “bulk mail.”

Some of her lyrics, too, relayed that sense of humor, like those for the song “Why Can’t I Have Nintendo?”

Mom and Dad, I’m almost 10 and it’s time we had a talk

I’ve done my best to please you since before I learned to walk

I swallowed all your oatmeal and your worker piece is fine

But when you pick on Super Mario I’ve got to draw the line

I know you’re not like other folks

But for once, could we pretendo?

Let me be like other kids, why can’t I have Nintendo?

Friends said Feeney’s legacy will lie in her fierce fight for justice and her fierce love of her friends and family. On her Facebook page, Feeney described herself as a “freelance troublemaker and agitator.” Her official website bills her as a “folksinger, songwriter, unionmaid and hellraiser.”

Evan Greer, a singer-songwriter and activist, called Feeney “a hater of scabs and lover of life.”

Greer, who is based in Boston, toured extensively with Feeney and considered her a mentor and friend.

“Anne was constantly passing the hat to collect money for striking workers, even when she was scraping by herself,” she said. “On our many tours she always kept track of anywhere that working people were on strike and we would go and sing on the picket line or bring hot coffee to the union hall to keep their spirits up.”

Greer said Feeney might be “the most beloved person I know.”

“She had a phone book of basically all the best people in the country, and they all loved her immensely,” she said. “She was also hilarious, a fantastic storyteller and a lover of raunchy jokes.”

Feeney began her music career with the band Cucumber Rapids in 1976, though it broke up about a year later, according to newspaper archives. She produced two tapes in the late 1980s with her group Anne Feeney and Friends, and she released her first solo album, “Look to the Left,” in 1992. She’d produce seven more, the latest being “Enchanted Way” in 2010.

“She showed me what it means to speak your conscience through music,” Berlin said. “She showed me that it’s important to do that, that there’s an audience for that, that there’s a need for people to hear their causes expressed in song.”