
Emails: Pritzker’s office not aware band booked for 2 months
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — A southern rock band whose logo features Confederate flags was booked for the DuQuoin State Fair for two months before Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s staff learned of the gig and abruptly cancelled it, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Pritzker’s Agriculture Department scratched Confederate Railroad’s Aug. 27 appearance at the southern Illinois festival just a day after the fair’s lineup was announced on June 17, the same day a popular political blogger asked the governor’s office in a text whether it was appropriate to bring the band in given its name, emails and text messages obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show.
The Agriculture Department’s lawyer notified the DuQuoin fair manager of the cancellation hours before the band’s frontman sent an email explaining that the name “was never intended … as a political or racial statement.”
Dumping the band rankled music fans and others in southern Illinois, who complained that they must kowtow to the whims of liberal Chicago Democrats such as Pritzker. A Marion motorcycle dealership has booked the band for Sept. 5. But after the Illinois dust-up, the group lost a second show at the Ulster County Fair in New York’s Hudson Valley Aug. 1.