Joe Uehlein Three Roads: Labor, Music, Ecology Book & Music Tour

Perhaps the only musician who’s performed at both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the AFL-CIO headquarters, labor organizer, environmental activist, and songwriter Joe Uehlein presents stories and songs from a life on the frontlines. His new memoir Three Roads: Labor, Music, Ecology has received ringing endorsements from Tom Morello, Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, Sara Nelson, and Bill McKibben.

After decades organizing from within the labor establishment, Joe Uehlein realized that  winning real climate and economic justice meant moving beyond the limits of traditional  labor and environmentalism. 

As former secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Division and director of the  AFL-CIO’s Center for Strategic Campaigns, Joe fought from the inside. But in 2005, he  stepped away from the AFL-CIO to found the Labor Network for Sustainability, forging  deep alliances between labor, climate, and environmental movements. His vision: transform the labor movement to embrace ecological responsibility—and environmentalism  to uplift working-class solidarity. 

But Joe’s work has never been confined to boardrooms or picket lines. With a guitar in hand, he’s shared stages with Pete Seeger and Tom Morello, turning songs into rallying cries and stories into tools for resistance. 

Three Roads weaves strategy, memoir, and music into a powerful call to action. Through  compelling personal narrative and frontline insight, Joe offers an urgently needed blueprint for bridging movements and pushing boundaries. This is a book for anyone  who dreams of a world where working people and the planet thrive together. Because the road to justice has to walk in more than one direction—and we need all  of them. 

“Like Woody before him, Joe Uehlein is a musician, a singer, and an organizer. All of his adult life, onstage and on the picket line, he has walked his talk and sung the songs of solidarity and preached the gospel of UNION.”
—Steve Earle, singer-songwriter

“Joe Uehlein has put together a powerful life resume as an organizer, activist, and musician. I’ve had the pleasure of working with him on labor issues, protesting with him at the barricades, and performing with him onstage. He is a true-blue union man and a relentless advocate for justice, and this important book tells his story. In these dark and dangerous times, it’s a must read both as inspiration for fighting the good fight and as a blueprint for how to stand up to monolithic power.”
—Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, The Nightwatchman

“Three Roads is both an instruction manual for building campaigns to win big fights and a deeply personal and uplifting memoir. Joe is a true champion for working people and our planet, and he makes the stories of our fight sing off the page.”
—Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants/Communication Workers of America

“For the past fifty years, Joe Uehlein has been doing Woody’s work, writing songs that tell working folks that there is power in a union. This book is a clarion call to the labor movement, asking them to join the struggle that unites the human race—the battle to save the environment from destruction by rapacious capitalism.”
—Billy Bragg, rock poet, singer-songwriter

“I’ve worked side by side with Joe Uehlein on some of the great struggles of the day, and I’ve listened to his band make music to help propel those fights. As this great memoir makes clear, he’s the epitome of what our moment demands: a cheerful warrior for a working future!”
—Bill McKibben, founder 350.org; Third Act