Tweet/facebook John Gorka July 19, 2016

Click here to download the MP3 version (192 KBPS) of the "5 Letter Word" (4,6 MB)   Click here to download a high quality wav-file of the "5 Letter Word" (51,7 MB)

Here (below) on the soundcloud page you can listen to the "5 Letter Word" song.

Click here to listen to

"The 5 Letter Word"

Live at Folkstage, 98.7 WFMT
In the Levin Music Performance Studio,
August 20, 2016

Small part of the article in "La Crosse Tribune"
written by Randy Erickson (Aug 23, 2016):

Gorka heads up stellar Great River Folk Festival lineup

More politically inclined people in the audience might request Gorka’s most recent song, a somewhat-veiled dig at GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump called “Five Letter Word.” Gorka was attracted to folk music because he can write songs about almost anything, and sometimes he feels a tug to get a little political. “I don’t go out of my way for it, but I feel like I have something to say, I say it in a way that can help rather than hurt,” he said.

Sound Bites

Song Review ...........Sep 14th, 2016
John Gorka - “5 Letter Word”

With Kristopher Weiss
The ramblings of a frustrated, Luddite music critic - and
fanatical fan.

On “5 Letter Word,” John Gorka appears to call Donald Trump a fuck-face from hell - and also a dick - and does so in a dog-whistle way that would make the Republican presidential candidate proud.

I get the anger, sir/but it could really go wrong/watch the language, son/‘cause it won’t make you strong/it’s a four-letter face/from a four-letter place/it’s a four-letter word/it’s five letters long

The singer of funny tunes like “I’m from New Jersey” and “People My Age” is obviously concerned - yet empathetic - about what’s causing certain people to support the vile, orange man from New York.

Gorka sings his verses about losing power and employment opportunities accompanied by a folk-country melody that employs guitar, banjo, bass and drums and recalls Harvest-era Neil Young. It’s an angry song made more powerful by its decidedly even-keeled delivery.

Somebody’s getting rich/but it’s no one you know/seems the fix is in/win, place or show/but it’s not a game/they call it a race/it’s a case of faith badly misplaced

“5 Letter Word” is available as a free download at Johngorka.com

“I hope this … song will have a very short shelf life,” Gorka said in an interview with Morristowngreen.com.

Sound Bites does, too. But “5 Letter Word” is so pretty, he also hopes Gorka will recycle the melody and turn it into another, more characteristic and apolitical song.

Grade card: John Gorka - “5 Letter Word” - B+

Woody Guthrie was the first singer songwriter who made a song about the "5 Letter Word".

In December 1950, Woody Guthrie signed his name to the lease of a new apartment in Brooklyn. Even now, over half a century later, that uninspiring document prompts a double-take. Below all the legal jargon is the signature of the man who had composed

“This Land Is Your Land,” the most resounding appeal to an equal share for all in America. Below that is the signature of Donald Trump’s father, Fred. No pairing could appear more unlikely. Guthrie’s two-year tenancy in one of Fred Trump’s buildings and his relationship with the real estate mogul of New York’s outer boroughs produced some of Guthrie’s most bitter writings, which I discovered on a recent trip to the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa.


These writings have never before been published; they should be, for they clearly pit America’s national balladeer against the racist foundations of the Trump real estate empire. Recalling these foundations becomes all the more relevant in the wake of the racially charged proclamations of Donald Trump, who last year announced, “My legacy has its roots in my father’s legacy.” (by Will Kaufman)

Woody Guthrie lived in Fred Trump’s Beach Haven apartment complex for two years.

On his "Jack's Crow"CD (1991) John also song about the "5 Letter Word"

Lisa Brosnan (Writer in Portland, Oregon) wrote in her blog "What Is The Where": In a rich baritone voice and alt-country sensibility, “Where the Bottles Break” takes aim at planning’s greatest bugaboo—gentrification and repeat offender—Donald Trump. There is no mistaking Gorka’s stand on the subject with this lucid denouncement of the changes that inevitably come with wealth and growth.

Where The Bottles Break, selected lyrics:
“Further west it’s been gentrified They turned biker bars into flower shops” “It happens when the money comes The wild and poor get pushed aside”

“The buyers come from somewhere else And raise the rent so you can’t hide The buyers come from out of state And they raise the rent”

“Buy low sell high You get rich and you still die Money talks and people jump Ask how high low-life Donald what’s-his-name And who cares I don’t wanna know what his girlfriend doesn’t wear It’s a shame that people that work Wanna hear about this kind of jerk”

Loudon Wainwright iii also made a song about the "5 Letter Word" (May 2016)

In May, Loudon Wainwright III released “I Had a Dream,” a chilling song about a dream he had where Donald Trump did in fact become the president of the United States. Funny or Die premiered its corresponding music video starring Wainwright himself.
Here’s what Wainwright had to say about the song: Initially I didn’t want to write a song about Donald Trump but sometimes in the course of human events things get so weird that you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth, especially if the horse has a real mouth on him. In the past, I’ve taken pot shots in song at political figures of fun like Jesse Helms, Newt Gingrich, Bill & Hill, Bush, Cheney, et al., but folks – this is serious. We hold some truths to be self-evident and apparently Mr. Trump does not. As Judd Apatow succinctly put it to me after hearing “I Had A Dream,” – “The only person who benefits from Trump now is you!”