Kristofferson sings a new song: Politics

Kris Kristofferson has played many a film role as a slouchy, easy-come, easy-go itinerant. But that's not the Kristofferson of today. He has been radicalized by three trips to Central America and by up-close views of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. His travels have pushed his film sensibility - and his songwriting - into new realms of political protest.
Kristofferson, now 52, will headline his first local show in 8 years when he plays Nightstage tomorrow. Expect to hear some of his nearly 20-year-old hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee," "For the Good Times" and "Help Me Make It Through the Night." Expect also to hear new songs that may never be released by his record label.
"I've just made a new album and am trying to convince my record company PolyGram to release it, but the songs are considered too political," he said this week from a tour stop in Virginia Beach.
The album apparently goes even further than his last record, "Repossessed," which included such non-Top 40 fare as "Shipwrecked in the '80s," "They Killed 'Em" (about Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi) and "What About Me?"
"I've got a lot of new songs I want to put out. But things change and life moves on. I just feel lucky to still be out here," he said.
"We've been hacking our way through the honky-tonks, but we've made a lot of friends and we're finally getting good at it after all these years. It's great to see people get moved by the new material."
Kristofferson's leftist politics were shaped by a trip to Nicaragua two years ago. "I sang at the anniversary of the revolution down there," he recalled. "There were pictures that ran of me in some papers up here. I came back to play state fairs in the Midwest and there were some protests by veterans' organizations. Some of my records were also sent back.
"So I went in ahead of the concerts and talked to different groups of veterans. They agreed I had a right to say what I wanted to say, but my record company felt I was killing myself. Then I went to Europe and it was just the opposite reaction. I was treated like a hero and all my shows were sold out. It's a strange world, isn't it?"
Later this year, Kristofferson will return to Nicaragua to star in a Spanish production of a film, not yet titled, about Augustino Sandino. Sandino, the Nicaraguan guerrilla from whom the Sandinista revolution took its name, fought the US Marines in the '30s before being killed by the prevailing dictatorship. "I'll play a sympathetic journalist who followed the revolution," Kristofferson said.
Two other Kristofferson films are due this spring: "Millennium," a sci-fi love story with Cheryl Ladd; and "Welcome Home," about a soldier missing in action (Kristofferson's role) who returns home to Vermont after 17 years in Cambodia. It also stars Jobeth Williams and was directed by Franklin Schaffner, who did "Patton."
"For the last 10 years, my films have been supporting my music," said Kristofferson, who has also starred in such movies as "A Star Is Born," "Cisco Pike" and "Convoy."
"It's hard to break even on the road when no record company really supports you," he added. "But I've been working with the same band over the years and intend to keep on with it. I'll never be a smooth singer and I'll never be Ray Charles. . . . But it's a matter of being clear and sober, which I've been now for quite a few years. All you can do is work with passion and integrity and be true to the songs. And most of what we do is straight from the heart."

-Steve Morse, The Boston Globe, 1989