title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Rundstedt believed even at this stage that an effective defensive line could only be established on the Rhine, but this would have meant giving up large areas of German territory, and Hitler would not countenance it. He insisted that a stand be made on the West Wall (known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line), a defensive system built along Germany's western frontiers in 1938–40, but partly dismantled in 1943–44 to provide materials for the Atlantic Wall. Model told OKW that this would require 25 divisions of fresh troops, but these were no longer to be had. Instead the line was held by patched-up divisions escaping from the debacle in France, and "Volksgrenadier" divisions made up from transferred Navy and Air Force personnel, older men and teenagers: these units were fit for static defence, but not much else.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Nevertheless, the Germans now had certain advantages. In military terms, it is easier to defend a fixed line than it is to take one by storm. They were now fighting in defence of their own frontiers, and this stiffened resolve. They no longer had to deal with partisans sabotaging their supply lines, and they were close to their own sources of supply in Germany. The Allies on the other hand had severe logistical problems, with their supply lines running all the way back to the Normandy beaches. The great port of Antwerp was in their hands, but the Germans still controlled the mouth of the Scheldt, so the Allies could not use it as a supply port. In September the American tank armies in Lorraine literally ran out of fuel, and during October the Allied offensive gradually lost momentum and came to a halt on a line well west of the German border in most sectors, although the frontier city of Aachen fell on 21 October. With the failure of the British attempt to force a crossing of the Rhine at Arnhem (Operation Market Garden) in late September, the chance of invading Germany before the winter set in was lost, and Rundstedt was given time to consolidate his position.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Hitler, however, had no intention of staying on the defensive in the west over the winter. As early as mid-September he was planning a counter-offensive. By October, with the front stabilising, he had decided on an attack in the Ardennes, designed to split the British and American fronts at a weakly held point, cross the Meuse and recapture Antwerp. On 27 October Rundstedt and Model met with General Alfred Jodl, chief of operations at OKW, and told him flatly that they considered this impossible with the available forces. Instead they suggested a more modest operation to destroy the Allied concentrations around Liège and Aachen. Jodl took their views back to Hitler, but on 3 November he told them that the Führer's mind was made up, and that he wanted the attack to begin before the end of November. The spearhead was to be the 6th Panzer Army, commanded by Sepp Dietrich and largely made up of Waffen-SS units such as the , and , and the 5th Panzer Army, commanded by General Hasso von Manteuffel.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Model persuaded Jodl that the deadline was unrealistic, and on 2 December he and Westphal went to Berlin to argue their case with Hitler. Rundstedt refused to go, because, he said, he hated listening to Hitler's monologues. This marked his effective abdication as a military leader: he was now only a figurehead, and apparently content to be so. After the war he disowned all responsibility for the offensive: "If old von Moltke thought that I had planned that offensive he would have turned over in his grave." Hitler arrived on the western front on 10 December to supervise the offensive, which was now set for 16 December. He gave orders directly to the army commanders, bypassing both Rundstedt and Model. Manteuffel said: "The plan for the Ardennes offensive was drawn up completely by OKW and sent to us as a cut-and-dried Führer order."


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Taking advantage of surprise and poor weather (which helped neutralise the Allies' command of the air), the offensive made initial progress, breaking through the weak American formations in this quiet sector of the front. But the Allies were quick to react, and the Germans were soon falling behind their ambitious timetables. To the north, Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army was blocked by stubborn defence at St. Vith and Elsenborn Ridge and advanced little more than 20 km. Manteuffel, in the centre, did better, reaching Celles, a few kilometres short of the Meuse, on 25 December. This was a penetration of about 80 km, less than halfway to Antwerp, and on such a narrow front as to create an indefensible salient. The resistance of the American garrison at Bastogne greatly delayed the advance, making a forcing of the Meuse impossible. When the cloud cover lifted on 24 December, the Allied air forces attacked with devastating effect. Rundstedt urged OKW to halt the offensive, lest the "bulge" created by the German advance become a "second Stalingrad", but Hitler was determined to press on. A few days later U.S. forces attacked from the north and south of the bulge, forcing the Germans first to halt and then to retreat.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Waffen-SS units under Rundstedt's overall command committed war crimes during the campaign in the West, including the Malmedy massacre, which was perpetrated by troops under the command of Joachim Peiper. His unit of the SS division was under the command of Wilhelm Mohnke. Peiper's battle group () was charged with seizing the bridges over the Meuse ahead of the advance of the 6th Panzer Army. On 17 December, near Malmedy, a group of Peiper's men, opened fire on a large group of unarmed U.S. prisoners of war, killing 84. Responsibility for this crime ran from Peiper to Mohnke to Dietrich to Model to Rundstedt, although none of them had been present and none had ordered such action. When Rundstedt heard about it, he ordered an investigation, but in the chaos of the failing offensive nothing came of this.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Although such occurrences were commonplace on the Eastern Front from both sides, they were a rarity in the West, and the outraged Americans were determined to prosecute all those with responsibility for this massacre. Here Rundstedt's problem was his reputation. The Ardennes offensive was known to the Allies as "the Rundstedt offensive", and the Allied press routinely described him as being in charge of it. The British commander in Europe, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, said on 7 January 1945: "I used to think that Rommel was good, but my opinion is that Rundstedt would have hit him for six. Rundstedt is the best German general I have come up against." Since Rundstedt, as far as the Allies knew, was in charge of the offensive, it followed for them that he was responsible for what his subordinates did during it.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: On 8 January, Hitler authorised Manteuffel to withdraw from the tip of the bulge, and on 15 January he gave up the whole enterprise and returned to Berlin. By the end of January the Germans were back where they had started. But the offensive had burned up the last of Rundstedt's reserves of manpower, equipment and fuel, and as a result neither the West Wall nor the Rhine could be properly defended. On 18 February, as the Allies entered Germany, Rundstedt issued an appeal to the German Army to resist the invader, urging the troops to "gather round the Führer to guard our people and our state from a destiny of horror." Hitler rewarded his loyalty with the Swords to his Knight's Cross. Despite fierce resistance in places, the Germans were forced back from the West Wall during February, and a series of Allied offensives, rolling from north to south, drove across the Rhineland towards the great river. On 2 March the Americans reached the Rhine near Düsseldorf. Rundstedt had been aware as early as September of the importance of the many bridges over the Rhine, and of the necessity of denying them to the enemy. He made careful plans for the bridges to be blown up if the enemy reached the Rhine. On 7 March, however, these plans failed when the Americans captured the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen intact, and rapidly established a bridgehead on the eastern bank. This could hardly be blamed on Rundstedt, but he was the commander and Hitler needed a scapegoat.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: On 9 March Hitler phoned Rundstedt and told him he was to be replaced by Albert Kesselring, to be transferred from Italy. That was the end of Gerd von Rundstedt's military career after 52 years.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: On 11 March Rundstedt had a final audience with Hitler, who thanked him for his loyalty. He then returned to his home in Kassel, but bombing and the Allied advance into western Germany made him decide to move his family, first to Solz, a village south of Kassel, then to Weimar, then to Bayreuth, and finally back to the sanatorium at Bad Tölz where he had stayed several times before. Rundstedt's heart condition had worsened and he also suffered from arthritis. There was no attempt at further escape: Rundstedt, accompanied by Bila and Hans Gerd and a few staff, stayed at Bad Tölz until it was occupied by American forces on 1 May, the day after Hitler's suicide in Berlin. That evening he was made a prisoner of war by troops from the 36th Infantry Division.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Rundstedt complained publicly several times during and after the war: "Without Hitler's consent, I can't even move my own sentry from my front door around to the back!" Privately with other generals he referred to Hitler as that Bohemian corporal. Wilhelm Keitel once asked Hitler "Do you realise that Rundstedt called you a Bohemian corporal?" and Hitler replied "Yes, but he's the best field marshal I have."


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: von Rundstedt was initially held at the Allied facility for detaining high-ranking German officials, known as ASHCAN, in a hotel at Mondorf-les-Bains in Luxembourg. Out of consideration for his rank and state of health, Hans Gerd was allowed to accompany him. At the end of May they were moved to an American detention centre at Wiesbaden. Here Rundstedt was extensively questioned by U.S. Army interrogators about his career and actions during the war. During this period decisions were being made about which German leaders were to be put on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. Rundstedt was the most senior German officer in Allied custody. He was accused of responsibility for war crimes in Poland (the shooting of surrendered soldiers in 1939), the Soviet Union (the actions of the in 1941), Britain (the Commando Order of 1942) and France (the Oradour massacre of 1944). Eventually the International Military Tribunal (IMT) decided that no German field commanders would be tried at Nuremberg. Instead "the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces" was collectively indicted. The only Army officers individually indicted were the OKW chiefs Keitel and Jodl, but they had never been field commanders.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: In July Rundstedt was handed over to British custody. He was held first at Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire, then at Grizedale Hall in northern Lancashire, then at Island Farm near Bridgend in Glamorgan, South Wales. The British climate badly affected his arthritis, making him increasingly lame. His heart condition became worse and he was periodically depressed. One interviewer wrote: "A limp, exhausted body racked by constant pain due to weakened arteries is now the remnant of the relentless figure that once waved a Marshal's baton." During this period he was extensively interviewed by the military writer Basil Liddell Hart, who later used these and other interviews as the basis for his books "The Other Side of the Hill" and its U.S. equivalent "The German Generals Talk", published in 1948. Liddell Hart and Rundstedt developed a close rapport, and the relationship was to prove very valuable to Rundstedt over the next few years. Liddell Hart wrote of him: "Rundstedt makes an increasingly favourable impression on me ... He is dignified without being arrogant, and essentially aristocratic in outlook."


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: When Rundstedt learned that he was not to be trialed personally at Nuremberg, he wrote to the Tribunal asking permission to appear as a defence witness for the Army high command. In May 1946 he was summoned to appear. When he left Island Farm, all the 185 senior officers being held there lined up to salute him. On 19 June he appeared before a preliminary hearing of the IMT Commission. Since he was a witness, not a defendant, the questioning was not intended to prove Rundstedt's guilt: it was designed to bolster the prosecution's case that the high command had functioned as an organisation and that it was collectively responsible for the German invasions of various countries between 1939 and 1941 and also for the war crimes committed during those invasions. Rundstedt was adamant that the high command played no part in the decisions to invade Poland, Norway, France or the Soviet Union. He insisted that the Army had obeyed the laws of war and was not responsible for the actions of the . He also denied that the Army had deliberately starved three million Soviet prisoners of war to death in 1941–42.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: On 12 August Rundstedt took the stand before the IMT itself. His counsel, Dr Hans Laternser, took him over the same ground which had been covered before the commission. He insisted that military law was "always binding for us older leaders", and that officers who broke these laws were court-martialled. He stated: "As senior soldier of the German Army, I will say this: we accused leaders were trained in the old soldierly traditions of decency and chivalry. We lived and acted according to them, and we endeavoured to hand them down to the younger officers." Cross-examined by the British prosecutor Peter Calvocoressi, he stuck to his position that the high command did not function as an organisation. Senior commanders discussed only operational matters, he said: political and strategic questions were decided by Hitler and the OKW. Rundstedt made a good impression as a witness. Calvocoressi later commented: "He was not going to let on how much he and his colleagues had known or done. He did this well – or anyway successfully."


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: The success of Rundstedt's efforts was shown in October 1946, when the IMT handed down its verdicts. Keitel and Jodl were to be hanged, but the Army high command as a whole was acquitted. The verdict read: "According to the indictment, this group consists of about 130 officers who held certain positions in the military hierarchy between 1938 and 1945 ... The Tribunal does not find that they were an organisation ... They were only an aggregation of those who happened to hold high rank in a certain period ... These men have, however, been a disgrace to the profession of arms, and they have made a mockery of obedience to orders. They were a ruthless military caste, and were guilty of crimes and should be brought to trial as individuals." Thus the possibility was left open that Rundstedt could still face individual prosecution for his actions.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Rundstedt returned to Island Farm to await developments. Otto John, a German lawyer who had been active in the German resistance, arrived in October to interview the prisoners and make recommendations on possible future war crimes prosecutions. John and Rundstedt got on well, and in November John arranged for Hans Gerd von Rundstedt, who was suffering from the early stages of throat cancer, to be released and sent home. In April 1947 the Allied War Crimes Investigation Group operating in Germany recommended that Rundstedt should not face prosecution. The U.S. government, however, did not accept this recommendation and insisted that Rundstedt, Manstein, Brauchitsch and General Rudolf Strauss (an Army commander on the Russian front in 1941) should stand trial. All four were in British custody. In August Telford Taylor, the U.S. Chief Counsel for War Crimes, formally advised the British Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, of his intentions. The grounds for the prosecution would be the Commissar Order of 1941, the Commando Order of 1942, the murder of Soviet prisoners-of-war, the conscription and deportation of civilians in occupied countries as forced labour, and the responsibility of the named officers for the invasions of Poland, France, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and other countries.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: The British, however, were extremely reluctant to act. British public opinion had rapidly shifted (as it did after World War I) away from anti-German sentiment towards a desire for reconciliation. There was a strong feeling that putting elderly and sick men on trial three years after the war was unjust. There was also the fact that many of the events referred to by the Americans had taken place in the Soviet Union and Poland, which were now, with the onset of the Cold War, political adversaries and no longer co-operating with western war crimes investigations. The British Military Governor in Germany, Air Marshal Sir Sholto Douglas, was strongly opposed. He wrote: "We are apparently prepared to send these men, including one who is 73, to trial by the Americans. I frankly do not like this. I feel that if the Americans wish to be critical in our inaction in trying war criminals, I should prefer that they should continue to criticise rather than that we should commit an injustice in order to avoid their criticism."


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Rundstedt and the other officers knew nothing of the proposed prosecutions. In June his son Hans Gerd had been admitted to hospital and it soon became apparent that his cancer was inoperable. In December Rundstedt was granted compassionate leave by the British government to visit the hospital in Hannover where Hans Gerd was being treated. On Christmas Day he saw his wife for the first time since May 1945, and his grandchildren for the first time since 1941. Hans Gerd died on 12 January 1948: "a blow from which he never really recovered." On Rundstedt's return he was given a medical examination. The doctors reported "a markedly senile general physique", chronic arterio-sclerosis, osteo-arthritis in most of his joints, and failing memory. The examiners advised that to put him on trial would "adversely affect his health." A similar recommendation was made about Brauchitsch, although Manstein was judged fit to stand trial. As a result, the Secretary of State for War, Manny Shinwell, recommended to Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin that the prosecutions should not proceed. Bevin was put in a quandary, fearing the reactions of countries such as France and Belgium if Rundstedt were to be released. In March the Soviet government formally demanded Rundstedt's extradition to the Soviet Union.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Meanwhile, the Americans had requested that Rundstedt and Manstein be brought to Nuremberg to appear as a witness in the High Command Trial, in which a number of prominent generals, including Leeb, Blaskowitz (who committed suicide during the trial), Hugo Sperrle, Georg von Küchler and Hermann Hoth were on trial for war crimes. In May, therefore, Rundstedt was transferred from Island Farm to a military hospital in Norfolk. On 22 July Rundstedt left the hospital and the next day he and Manstein were flown to Nuremberg. But the presiding judge in the case ruled that he would not allow Rundstedt or Manstein to testify unless they were first informed whether they were themselves in danger of prosecution. Thus Rundstedt and Manstein discovered for the first time that the Americans had requested their indictment. As a result, they refused to testify. They were then transferred to a military hospital near Munster. Here conditions were so bad that Brauchitsch went on a hunger strike.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: In August the matter become public when Liddell Hart launched a press campaign to have the four officers released. He was supported by figures such as Michael Foot, Victor Gollancz and Lord De L'Isle, VC. On 27 August the government responded by formally announcing that the four would be tried by a British military court in Hamburg. Items in Rundstedt's indictment included: "the maltreatment and killing of civilians and prisoners of war ... killing hostages, illegal employment of prisoners of war, deportation of forced labour to Germany ... mass execution of Jews ... and other war crimes, yet to be specified." On 24 September the four were moved to a military hospital in Hamburg, where they were allowed to be visited by their families. It was here that Brauchitsch died suddenly of heart failure on 18 October. This led to a renewed outcry in Britain for the trial to be abandoned. Nevertheless, Bevin was determined to press ahead, and on 1 January 1949 Rundstedt, Manstein and Strauss were formally charged. Hugo Laternser was engaged as Rundstedt's counsel, and Liddell Hart and others in Britain collected material for the defence. The Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, announced that he would bring in a motion in the House of Lords critical of the government. This was a serious threat since the Lords had the power to compel the government to produce documents.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: By April the public debate in Britain was becoming so damaging that the government decided that the best option was to back down as gracefully as it could. The government's resolve was stiffened by the refusal of the Soviet government to provide any evidence for the trial. Further medical reports were commissioned, with varying results. A team of British Army doctors eventually reported that Rundstedt and Strauss were unfit to stand trial, and the government used this as a pretext to abandon the trial. On 28 April Cabinet considered the medical reports, and asked the Lord Chancellor, Lord Jowitt, to prepare a report for its next meeting. On 5 May Cabinet accepted his recommendation that Rundstedt and Strauss be released, but that Manstein's trial should go ahead. Rundstedt was formally advised of his release on 19 May, but since he had nowhere to go he stayed in the hospital until 26 May, when he finally left British custody and went to the home of his brother Udo at Ratzeburg in Schleswig-Holstein.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Rundstedt was now a free man after four years in custody, but it brought him little joy. He was 73, frail and in poor health. He had no home, no money and no income. The family home in Kassel had been requisitioned by the Americans, and the Rundstedt estate in Saxony-Anhalt was in the Soviet Zone and had been confiscated. His wife was living in Solz, but this was in the American Zone, where he could not travel because the Americans (who were displeased by the British decision to release him) still regarded him as a Class 1 war criminal under the denazification laws then in force. Likewise, his money, in a bank account in Kassel, was frozen because of his classification, which also denied him a military pension. The British had assured him that he would not be arrested or extradited if he stayed in the British Zone, but the Americans had made no such guarantee. "It is an awful situation for me and my poor wife," he wrote to Liddell Hart. "I would like to end this life as soon as possible."


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Meanwhile, Rundstedt was in a hospital in Hanover with nowhere to live, and the new SPD administration in Lower Saxony had no interest in helping ex-Field Marshals of the Third Reich at a time when there was an acute housing shortage across Germany. He and Bila were temporarily housed in an elderly persons home near Celle. In 1951 Rundstedt was granted a military pension by the West German government.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: In the last years of his life Rundstedt became a subject of increasing interest and was interviewed by various writers and historians. His former chief of staff, Günther Blumentritt, visited him frequently, and began work on an apologetic biography, which was published in 1952. In 1951 he was portrayed sympathetically by Leo G. Carroll in a film about Rommel, "". Blumentritt and Liddell Hart raised money to provide nursing care for the Rundstedts. Bila died on 4 October 1952; Rundstedt died of heart failure on 24 February 1953 in Hanover. (He had already been at retirement age when the Second World War began.) He was buried in the Cemetery of Stöckener.


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Rundstedt's defence at the trial was that as a soldier he had a duty to obey the orders of the legitimate government, whoever that was, and whatever the orders were. He would have fully agreed with Manstein's remark to Rudolf von Gersdorff: "" ("Prussian field marshals do not mutiny!")


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Since the charges brought against Manstein were almost identical to those brought against Rundstedt, it is worth quoting the remarks made by the prosecutor at Manstein's trial, Sir Arthur Comyns Carr: "Contemporary German militarism flourished briefly with its recent ally, National Socialism, as well as or better than it had in the generals of the past. Many of these have made a mockery of the soldier's oath of obedience to military orders. When it suits their purpose they say they had to obey; when confronted with Hitler's brutal crimes which are shown to have been within their general knowledge, they say they disobeyed. The truth is they actively participated in all these crimes, or sat silent and acquiescent, witnessing the commission of crimes on a scale larger and more shocking than the world has ever had the misfortune to know."


title: Gerd von Rundstedt

text: Rundstedt was left in no doubt by Hitler and Himmler what German occupation would mean for the people of Poland and the Soviet Union, yet he applied his military talents to the conquest of both countries. He approved of the Reichenau Order or Severity Order and must have known what it portended for the Jews of Ukraine, yet "sat silent and acquiescent" while the did their work. He claimed that the Army would have liked to feed the three million Soviet POWs, yet he apparently took no interest in their fate once they were taken to the rear. He asserted that he had an absolute duty as an officer to obey orders, yet claimed to have disobeyed both the Commissar Order in Russia and the Commando Order in France. These inconsistencies were exposed both at Nuremberg, in the trials of the leaders (who also claimed they had a duty to obey distasteful orders) and in the 1947 trials of senior officers, and in Manstein's trial in 1949. They would certainly also have been exposed if Rundstedt had come to trial. On this basis his biographer concludes: "If Rundstedt had stood trial, it is clear from the Manstein case that he would have been found guilty of some of the charges levelled against him."


title: Cavetown

text: Robin Daniel Skinner (born 15 December 1998), known professionally as Cavetown (sometimes stylized in all lowercase), is an English singer-songwriter, record producer, and YouTuber. His style blends elements of indie rock, indie pop and bedroom pop with mellow, gentle ukulele ballads.


title: Cavetown

text: As of June 2022, he had amassed over 8.1 million monthly streamers on Spotify. His YouTube channel, which he began in November 2012, sits at 2.09 million subscribers and 398 million video views as of June 2022. Skinner released his fourth studio album, "Sleepyhead", in March 2020 and his fifth, "Worm Food", in November 2022.


title: Cavetown

text: Skinner was born in Oxford, England, on 15 December 1998. His interest in music was inspired by his father, David Skinner, a musicologist and choir director, who taught him how to play the acoustic guitar at the age of eight. His mother is a professional Baroque flautist and music teacher. He was raised in Cambridge and attended Parkside Community College from 2010 to 2015 and Hills Road Sixth Form College until 2017.


title: Cavetown

text: Skinner began his YouTube channel in November 2012 and uploaded his first video, an original song named "Haunted Lullaby", in October 2013. The first song Skinner wrote and recorded was "Rain" in 2013. Soon after, Skinner began releasing music to Bandcamp with his first album, "Everything Is Made of Clouds", at the age of 14. He released "Gd Vibes", "Nervous Friends // Pt. 1", "Balance" (as "brother") and "Everything is Made of Stars" on Bandcamp over the following two years. Critics expressed that he felt "the acceptance of ignorance" on "Gd Vibes". Skinner released his debut single "This is Home" in August 2015, before releasing his debut self-titled album in November 2015. Critics described the album "Cavetown" as "an eclectic mix of acoustic and electronic". Skinner continued to publish covers of songs onto his YouTube channel from artists such as Pinegrove, Twenty One Pilots and Joji.


title: Cavetown

text: In 2016, Skinner released his second studio album, "16/04/16." The album includes a mix of "warm, melodic bedroom pop" and "lo-fi indie rock". The album was dedicated to his childhood friend, Jack Graham, who died of leukaemia on the album's titular date. 60% of the album's proceeds were donated to Cancer Research UK.


title: Cavetown

text: In April 2017, whilst still at Sixth Form College, Skinner reached the final of the Cambridge Band Competition, winning both Best Acoustic Act and the Kimberley Rew Award for Songwriting, and went on to play at Strawberry Fair in June 2017. In 2018, he released his third album, "Lemon Boy". , the album's title track has amassed 54 million streams on Spotify and 28 million views on YouTube.


title: Cavetown

text: In 2019, Skinner released five split singles which were later compiled into "Animal Kingdom", a mixtape of ten tracks including covers and original singles with guest appearances from Sidney Gish, Simi, Chloe Moriondo and Spookyghostboy. He produced the single "Prom Dress" by Mxmtoon, which has gained over 152 million streams on Spotify and has been used in over 100,000 videos on the video-sharing platform TikTok. The single was featured on Mxmtoon's debut album "The Masquerade," which was also fully produced by Skinner. Skinner performed on the Acoustic Stage at Victorious Festival in August 2019. He signed under Sire Records in 2019 where he released the single "Telescope" ahead of his upcoming album, later announced as "Sleepyhead". Skinner embarked on a series of sold-out worldwide headlining tours in October 2019. He played on tour at 31 venues in the US and 15 venues in the UK over the space of four months. He was joined by Hunny and Mxmtoon for a few shows in the UK tour, as well as Field Medic and Chloe Moriondo for a few shows in the US tour. In October 2019, Skinner announced his headlining tour along Australia's east coast, which took place in January 2020, where he was accompanied by Spookyghostboy.


title: Cavetown

text: In 2020, Skinner released his major label debut album "Sleepyhead", and appeared on the Recording Academy's Sessions series in support of MusiCares. He cancelled the tour in support of "Sleepyhead" due to the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020. In July 2020, Skinner collaborated with Tessa Violet on the single "Smoke Signals" and announced the launch of his unisex clothing line Cave Collective.


title: Cavetown

text: In 2022, Skinner released several singles, three of which were part of the album "Worm Food", released 4 November.


title: Cavetown

text: Skinner has stated that he is on both the aromantic and asexual spectrums. He came out as transgender in September 2020. His pronouns are he/they. Skinner lives in Cambridge as of 2019.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1896, 1900, and the 1908 elections. He served in the House of Representatives from 1891 to 1895 and as the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, Bryan was often called "The Great Commoner", and because of his rhetorical power and early notoriety, "The Boy Orator".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Born and raised in Illinois, Bryan moved to Nebraska in the 1880s. He won election to the House of Representatives in the 1890 elections, served two terms, and made an unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1894. At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Bryan delivered his "Cross of Gold" speech which attacked the gold standard and the eastern moneyed interests and crusaded for inflationary policies built around the expanded coinage of silver coins. In a repudiation of incumbent President Grover Cleveland and his conservative Bourbon Democrats, the Democratic convention nominated Bryan for president, making Bryan the youngest major party presidential nominee in U.S. history. Subsequently, Bryan was also nominated for president by the left-wing Populist Party, and many Populists would eventually follow Bryan into the Democratic Party. In the intensely-fought 1896 presidential election, the Republican nominee, William McKinley, emerged triumphant. At age 36, Bryan remains the youngest person in United States history to receive an electoral vote for president. Bryan gained fame as an orator, as he invented the national stumping tour when he reached an audience of 5 million people in 27 states in 1896.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan retained control of the Democratic Party and again won the presidential nomination in 1900. After the Spanish–American War, Bryan became a fierce opponent of American imperialism, and much of his campaign centered on that issue. In the election, McKinley again defeated Bryan and won several Western states that Bryan had won in 1896. Bryan's influence in the party weakened after the 1900 election, and the Democrats nominated the conservative Alton B. Parker in the 1904 presidential election. Bryan regained his stature in the party after Parker's resounding defeat by Theodore Roosevelt and voters from both parties increasingly embraced some of the progressive reforms that had long been championed by Bryan. Bryan won his party's nomination in the 1908 presidential election, but he was defeated by Roosevelt's chosen successor, William Howard Taft. Along with Henry Clay, Bryan is one of the two individuals who never won a presidential election despite receiving electoral votes in three separate presidential elections held after the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: After the Democrats won the presidency in the 1912 election, Woodrow Wilson rewarded Bryan's support with the important cabinet position of Secretary of State. Bryan helped Wilson pass several progressive reforms through Congress. In 1915, he considered that Wilson was too harsh on Germany and finally resigned after Wilson had sent Germany a note of protest with a veiled threat of war in response to the sinking of the by a German U-boat. After leaving office, Bryan retained some of his influence within the Democratic Party, but he increasingly devoted himself to Prohibition, religious matters, and anti-evolution activism. He opposed Darwinism on religious and humanitarian grounds, most famously in the 1925 Scopes Trial, dying soon after. Bryan has elicited mixed reactions from various commentators, but is acknowledged by historians as one of the most influential figures of the Progressive Era.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois, on March 19, 1860, to Silas Lillard Bryan and Mariah Elizabeth (Jennings) Bryan. Silas Bryan had been born in 1822 and had established a legal practice in Salem in 1851. He married Mariah, a former student of his at McKendree College, in 1852. Of Scots-Irish and English ancestry, Silas Bryan was an avid Jacksonian Democrat. He won election as a state circuit judge and in 1866 moved his family to a farm north of Salem. He lived in a ten-room house that was the envy of Marion County. Silas served in various local positions and sought election to Congress in 1872, but was narrowly defeated by the Republican candidate. An admirer of Andrew Jackson and Stephen A. Douglas, Silas passed on his Democratic affiliation to his son, William, who would remain a life-long Democrat. William's cousin, William Sherman Jennings, was also a prominent Democrat.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: William was the fourth child of Silas and Mariah, but all three of his older siblings died during infancy. He also had five younger siblings, four of whom lived to adulthood. William was home-schooled by his mother until the age of ten. Demonstrating a precocious talent for oratory, he gave public speeches as early as the age of four. Silas was a Baptist and Mariah was a Methodist, but William's parents allowed him to choose his own church. At age fourteen, he had a conversion experience at a revival. He said that it was the most important day of his life. At 15, he was sent to attend Whipple Academy, a private school in Jacksonville, Illinois.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: After graduating from Whipple Academy, Bryan entered Illinois College, which was also located in Jacksonville. During his time at Illinois College, Bryan served as chaplain of the Sigma Pi literary society. He also continued to hone his public speaking skills, taking part in numerous debates and oratorical contests. Bryan graduated from Illinois College in 1881 at the top of his class. In 1879, while still in college, Bryan met Mary Elizabeth Baird, the daughter of an owner of a nearby general store, and began courting her. Bryan and Mary Elizabeth married on October 1, 1884. Mary Elizabeth would emerge as an important part of Bryan's career by managing his correspondence and helping him prepare speeches and articles.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan then studied law in Chicago at Union Law College (now Northwestern University School of Law). While attending law school, Bryan worked for the attorney Lyman Trumbull, a former senator and friend of Silas Bryan who would serve as an important political ally to the younger Bryan until his death in 1896. Bryan graduated from law school in 1883 with a Bachelor of Laws and returned to Jacksonville to take a position with a local law firm. Frustrated by the lack of political and economic opportunities in Jacksonville, Bryan and his wife moved west to Lincoln in 1887, the capital of the fast-growing state of Nebraska.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan established a successful legal practice in Lincoln with partner Adolphus Talbot, a Republican whom Bryan had known in law school. Bryan also entered local politics by campaigning for Democrats like Julius Sterling Morton and Grover Cleveland. After earning notoriety for his effective speeches in 1888, Bryan ran for Congress in the 1890 election. Bryan called for a reduction in tariff rates, the coinage of silver at a ratio equal to that of gold and action to stem the power of trusts. In part because of a series of strong debate performances, Bryan defeated incumbent Republican William James Connell, who had campaigned on the orthodox Republican platform, centered around the protective tariff. Bryan's victory made him only the second Democrat who ever represented Nebraska in Congress. Nationwide, Democrats picked up 76 seats in the House and so obtained a majority in that chamber. The Populist Party, a third party that drew support from agrarian voters in the West, also won several seats in Congress.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: With the help of Representative William McKendree Springer, Bryan secured a coveted spot on the House Ways and Means Committee. He quickly earned a reputation as a talented orator and set out to gain a strong understanding of the key economic issues of the day. During the Gilded Age, the Democratic Party had begun to separate into two groups. The conservative northern "Bourbon Democrats", along with some allies in the South, sought to limit the size and power of the federal government. Another group of Democrats, drawing its membership largely from the agrarian movements of the South and West, favored greater federal intervention to help farmers, regulate railroads, and limit the power of large corporations. Bryan became affiliated with the latter group and advocated for the free coinage of silver ("free silver") and the establishment of a progressive federal income tax. That endeared him to many reformers, but Bryan's call for free silver cost him the support of Morton and some other conservative Nebraska Democrats. Free silver advocates were opposed by banks and bondholders who feared the effects of inflation.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan sought re-election in 1892 with the support of many Populists and backed the Populist presidential candidate James B. Weaver over the Democratic presidential candidate, Grover Cleveland. Bryan won re-election by just 140 votes, and Cleveland defeated Weaver and incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison in the 1892 presidential election. Cleveland appointed a cabinet consisting largely of conservative Democrats like Morton, who became Cleveland's secretary of agriculture. Shortly after Cleveland had taken office, a series of bank closures brought on the Panic of 1893, a major economic crisis. In response, Cleveland called a special session of Congress to call for the repeal of the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required the federal government to purchase several million ounces of silver every month. Bryan mounted a campaign to save the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, but a coalition of Republicans and Democrats successfully repealed it. Bryan, however, was successful in passing an amendment that provided for the establishment of the first peacetime federal income tax.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: As the economy declined after 1893, the reforms favored by Bryan and the Populists became more popular among many voters. Rather than running for re-election in 1894, Bryan sought election to the United States Senate. He also became the editor-in-chief of the "Omaha World-Herald" although most editorial duties were performed by Richard Lee Metcalfe and Gilbert Hitchcock. Nationwide, the Republican Party won a huge victory in the elections of 1894 by gaining over 120 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In Nebraska, despite Bryan's popularity, the Republicans elected a majority of the state legislators, and Bryan lost the Senate election to Republican John Mellen Thurston. Bryan, nonetheless, was pleased with the result of the 1894 election, as the Cleveland wing of the Democratic Party had been discredited, and Bryan's preferred gubernatorial candidate, Silas A. Holcomb, had been elected by a coalition of Democrats and Populists.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: After the 1894 elections, Bryan embarked on a nationwide speaking tour designed to boost free silver, move his party away from the conservative policies of the Cleveland administration, lure Populists and free silver Republicans into the Democratic Party, and raise Bryan's public profile before the next election. Speaking fees allowed Bryan to give up his legal practice and devote himself full-time to oratory.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: By 1896, free silver forces were ascendant within the party. Though many Democratic leaders were not as enthusiastic about free silver as Bryan was, most recognized the need to distance the party from the unpopular policies of the Cleveland administration. By the start of the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Representative Richard P. Bland, a long-time champion of free silver, was widely perceived to be the frontrunner for the party's presidential nomination. Bryan hoped to offer himself as a presidential candidate, but his youth and relative inexperience gave him a lower profile than veteran Democrats like Bland, Governor Horace Boies of Iowa, and Vice President Adlai Stevenson. The free silver forces quickly established dominance over the convention, and Bryan helped draft a party platform that repudiated Cleveland, attacked the conservative rulings of the Supreme Court, and called the gold standard "not only un-American but anti-American".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Conservative Democrats demanded a debate on the party platform, and on the third day of the convention, each side put forth speakers to debate free silver and the gold standard. Bryan and Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina were chosen as the speakers who would advocate for free silver, but Tillman's speech was poorly received by delegates from outside the South because of its sectionalism and references to the Civil War. Charged with delivering the convention's last speech on the topic of monetary policy, Bryan seized his opportunity to emerge as the nation's leading Democrat. In his "Cross of Gold" speech, Bryan argued that the debate over monetary policy was part of a broader struggle for democracy, political independence and the welfare of the "common man". Bryan's speech was met with rapturous applause and a celebration on the floor of the convention that lasted for over half an hour.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: The following day, the Democratic Party held its presidential ballot. With the continuing support of Governor John Altgeld of Illinois, Bland led the first ballot of the convention, but he fell far short of the necessary two-thirds vote. Bryan finished in a distant second on the convention's first ballot, but his Cross of Gold speech had left a strong impression on many delegates. Despite the distrust of party leaders like Altgeld, who was wary of supporting an untested candidate, Bryan's strength grew over the next four ballots. He gained the lead on the fourth ballot and won his party's presidential nomination on the fifth ballot. At the age of 36, Bryan became and still remains the youngest presidential nominee of a major party in American history. The convention nominated Arthur Sewall, a wealthy Maine shipbuilder who also favored free silver and the income tax, as Bryan's running mate.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Conservative Democrats, known as the "Gold Democrats", nominated a separate ticket. Cleveland himself did not publicly attack Bryan but privately favored the Republican candidate, William McKinley, over Bryan. Many urban newspapers in the Northeast and Midwest that had supported previous Democratic tickets also opposed Bryan's candidacy. Bryan, however, won the support of the Populist Party, which nominated a ticket consisting of Bryan and Thomas E. Watson of Georgia. Though Populist leaders feared that the nomination of the Democratic candidate would damage the party in the long term, they shared many of Bryan's political views and had developed a productive working relationship with Bryan.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: The Republican campaign painted McKinley as the "advance agent of prosperity" and social harmony and warned of the supposed dangers of electing Bryan. McKinley and his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, knew that McKinley could not match Bryan's oratorical skills. Rather than giving speeches on the campaign trail, the Republican nominee conducted a front porch campaign. Hanna, meanwhile, raised an unprecedented amount of money, dispatched campaign surrogates and organized the distribution of millions of pieces of campaign literature.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Facing a huge campaign finance disadvantage, the Democratic campaign relied largely on Bryan's oratorical skills. Breaking with the precedent set by most major party nominees, Bryan gave some 600 speeches, primarily in the hotly-contested Midwest. Bryan invented the national stumping tour, reaching an audience of 5 million in 27 states. He was building a coalition of the white South, poor northern farmers and industrial workers and silver miners against banks and railroads and the "money power". Free silver appealed to farmers, who would be paid more for their products, but not to industrial workers, who would not get higher wages but would pay higher prices. The industrial cities voted for McKinley, who won nearly the entire East and industrial Midwest and did well along the border and the West Coast. Bryan swept the South and Mountain states and the wheat growing regions of the Midwest. Revivalistic Protestants cheered at Bryan's semi-religious rhetoric. Ethnic voters supported McKinley, who promised they would not be excluded from the new prosperity, as did more prosperous farmers and the fast-growing middle class.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: McKinley won the election by a fairly comfortable margin by taking 51 percent of the popular vote and 271 electoral votes. Democrats remained loyal to their champion after his defeat; many letters urged him to run again in the 1900 presidential election. William's younger brother, Charles W. Bryan, created a card file of supporters to whom the Bryans would send regular mailings to for the next thirty years. The Populist Party fractured after the election; many Populists, including James Weaver, followed Bryan into the Democratic Party, and others followed Eugene V. Debs into the Socialist Party.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Because of better economic conditions for farmers and the effects of the Klondike Gold Rush in raising prices, free silver lost its potency as an electoral issue in the years after 1896. In 1900, President McKinley signed the Gold Standard Act, which put the United States on the gold standard. Bryan remained popular in the Democratic Party and his supporters took control of party organizations throughout the country, but he initially resisted shifting his political focus from free silver. Foreign policy emerged as an important issue due to the ongoing Cuban War of Independence against Spain, as Bryan and many Americans supported Cuban independence. After the explosion of the USS "Maine" in Havana Harbor, the United States declared war on Spain in April 1898, which began the Spanish–American War. Though wary of militarism, Bryan had long favored Cuban independence and so supported the war. He argued that "universal peace cannot come until justice is enthroned throughout the world. Until the right has triumphed in every land and love reigns in every heart, government must, as a last resort, appeal to force".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: At Governor Silas A. Holcomb's request, Bryan recruited a 2000-man regiment for the Nebraska National Guard and the soldiers of the regiment elected Bryan as their leader. Under Colonel Bryan's command, the regiment was transported to Camp Cuba Libre in Florida, but the fighting between Spain and the United States ended before the regiment had been deployed to Cuba. Bryan's regiment remained in Florida for months after the end of the war, which prevented Bryan from taking an active role in the 1898 midterm elections. Bryan resigned his commission and left Florida in December 1898 after the United States and Spain had signed the Treaty of Paris.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan had supported the war to gain Cuba's independence, but he was outraged that the Treaty of Paris granted the United States control over the Philippines. Many Republicans believed that the United States had an obligation to "civilize" the Philippines, but Bryan strongly opposed what he saw as American imperialism. Despite his opposition to the annexation of the Philippines, Bryan urged his supporters to ratify the Treaty of Paris. He wanted to quickly bring an official end to the war and then to grant independence to the Philippines as soon as possible. With Bryan's support, the treaty was ratified in a close vote, bringing an official end to the Spanish–American War. In early 1899, the Philippine–American War broke out as the established Philippine government, under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, sought to stop the American invasion of the archipelago.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: The 1900 Democratic National Convention met in Kansas City, Missouri, where some Democratic leaders opposed to Bryan had hoped to nominate Admiral George Dewey for president. Nevertheless, Bryan faced no significant opposition by the time of the convention and he won his party's nomination unanimously. Bryan did not attend the convention but exercised control of the convention's proceedings via telegraph. Bryan faced a decision regarding which issue his campaign would focus on. Many of his most fervent supporters wanted Bryan to continue his crusade for free silver, and Democrats from the Northeast advised Bryan to center his campaign on the growing power of trusts. Bryan, however, decided that his campaign would focus on anti-imperialism, partly to unite the factions of the party and win over some Republicans. The party platform contained planks supporting free silver and opposing the power of trusts, but imperialism was labeled as the "paramount issue" of the campaign. The party nominated former Vice President Adlai Stevenson to serve as Bryan's running mate.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Bryan argued that the election represented "a contest between democracy and plutocracy". He also strongly criticized the U.S. annexation of the Philippines and compared it to the British rule of the Thirteen Colonies. Bryan argued that the United States should refrain from imperialism and should seek to become the "supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes". By 1900, the American Anti-Imperialist League, which included individuals like Benjamin Harrison, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Schurz and Mark Twain, had emerged as the primary domestic organization opposed to the continued American control of the Philippines. Many of the leaders of the League had opposed Bryan in 1896 and continued to distrust Bryan and his followers. Despite the distrust, Bryan's strong stance against imperialism convinced most of the league's leadership to throw their support behind the Democratic nominee.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Once again, the McKinley campaign established a massive financial advantage, and the Democratic campaign relied largely on Bryan's oratory. In a typical day Bryan gave four hour-long speeches and shorter talks that added up to six hours of speaking. At an average rate of 175 words a minute, he turned out 63,000 words a day, enough to fill 52 columns of a newspaper. The Republican Party's superior organization and finances boosted McKinley's candidacy and, as in the previous campaign, most major newspapers favored McKinley. Bryan also had to contend with the Republican vice presidential nominee, Theodore Roosevelt, who had emerged a national celebrity in the Spanish–American War and proved to be a strong public speaker. Bryan's anti-imperialism failed to register with many voters and as the campaign neared its end, Bryan increasingly shifted to attacks on corporate power. He once again sought the voter of urban laborers by telling them to vote against the business interests that had "condemn[ed] the boys of this country to perpetual clerkship".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: By election day, few believed that Bryan would win, and McKinley ultimately prevailed once again over Bryan. Compared to the results of the 1896 election, McKinley increased his popular vote margin and picked up several Western states, including Bryan's home state of Nebraska. The Republican platform of victory in war and a strong economy proved to be more important to voters than Bryan's questioning the morality of annexing the Philippines. The election also confirmed the continuing organizational advantage of the Republican Party outside of the South.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: After the election, Bryan returned to journalism and oratory and frequently appeared on the Chautauqua circuits to give well-attended lectures across the country. In January 1901, Bryan published the first issue of his weekly newspaper, "The Commoner", which echoed his favorite political and religious themes. Bryan served as the editor and publisher of the newspaper; Charles Bryan, Mary Bryan and Richard Metcalfe also performed editorial duties when Bryan was traveling. "The Commoner" became one of the most widely-read newspapers of its era and boasted 145,000 subscribers approximately five years after its founding. Though the paper's subscriber base heavily overlapped with Bryan's political base in the Midwest, content from the papers was frequently reprinted by major newspapers in the Northeast. In 1902, Bryan, his wife and his three children moved into Fairview, a mansion located in Lincoln; Bryan referred to the house as the "Monticello of the West", and frequently invited politicians and diplomats to visit.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan's defeat in 1900 cost him his status as the clear leader of the Democratic Party and conservatives such as David B. Hill and Arthur Pue Gorman moved to re-establish their control over the party and return it to the policies of the Cleveland era. Meanwhile, Roosevelt succeeded McKinley as president after the latter's assassination in September 1901. Roosevelt prosecuted antitrust cases and implemented other progressive policies, but Bryan argued that Roosevelt did not fully embrace progressive causes. Bryan called for a package of reforms, including a federal income tax, pure food and drug laws, a ban on corporate financing of campaigns, a constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of senators, local ownership of utilities, and the state adoption of the initiative and the referendum, and provisions for old age. He also criticized Roosevelt's foreign policy and attacked Roosevelt's decision to invite Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Prior to the 1904 Democratic National Convention, Alton B. Parker, a New York judge and conservative ally of David Hill, was seen as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Conservatives feared that Bryan would join with the publisher William Randolph Hearst to block Parker's nomination. Seeking to appease Bryan and other progressives, Hill agreed to a party platform that omitted mention of the gold standard and criticized trusts. In the event, Bryan did not support Parker or Hearst, but rather Francis Cockrell, a Missouri senator whose career had almost wholly unremarkable. Bryan's motivation was not any belief that Cockrell could defeat Roosevelt in the election, but rather that he would lose decisively, thus paving the way for Bryan to be re-nominated in 1908. However, the possibility of Hearst getting the nomination alarmed the party's moderates enough that they moved to support Parker, who was narrowly nominated on the first ballot at the convention, with Cockrell finishing a distant third place. Bryan would nonetheless get his desired outcome when Roosevelt won by the biggest popular vote margin since James Monroe was re-elected without opposition in 1820. Afterwards, Bryan published a post-election edition of "The Commoner" that advised its readers: "Do not Compromise with Plutocracy".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan traveled to Europe in 1903, meeting with figures such as Leo Tolstoy, who shared some of Bryan's religious and political views. In 1905, Bryan and his family embarked on a trip around the globe and visited eighteen countries in Asia and Europe. Bryan funded the trip with public speaking fees and a travelogue that was published on a weekly basis. Bryan was greeted by a large crowd upon his return to the United States in 1906 and was widely seen as the likely 1908 Democratic presidential nominee. Partly due to the efforts of muckraking journalists, voters had become increasingly open to progressive ideas since 1904. President Roosevelt himself had moved to the left, favoring federal regulation of railroad rates and meatpacking plants. However, Bryan continued to favor more far-reaching reforms, including federal regulation of banks and securities, protections for union organizers and federal spending on highway construction and education. Bryan also briefly expressed support for the state and federal ownership of railroads in a manner similar to Germany but backed down from that policy in the face of an intra-party backlash.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Roosevelt, who enjoyed wide popularity among most voters even while he alienated some corporate leaders, anointed Secretary of War William Howard Taft as his successor. Meanwhile, Bryan re-established his control over the Democratic Party and won the endorsement of numerous local and state organizations. Conservative Democrats again sought to prevent Bryan's nomination, but were unable to unite around an alternative candidate. Bryan was nominated for president on the first ballot of the 1908 Democratic National Convention. He was joined by John W. Kern, a senator from the swing state of Indiana.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan campaigned on a party platform that reflected his long-held beliefs, but the Republican platform also advocated for progressive policies, which left relatively few major differences between the two major parties. One issue that the two parties differed on concerned deposit insurance, as Bryan favored requiring national banks to provide deposit insurance. Bryan largely unified the leaders of his own party and his pro-labor policies won him the first presidential endorsement ever issued by the American Federation of Labor. As in previous campaigns, Bryan embarked on a public speaking tour to boost his candidacy but was later joined on the trail by Taft.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Defying Bryan's confidence in his own victory, Taft decisively won the 1908 presidential election. Bryan won just a handful of states outside of the Solid South, as he failed to galvanize the support of urban laborers. Bryan remains the only individual since the Civil War to lose three separate U.S. presidential elections as a major party nominee. Since the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, Bryan and Henry Clay are the lone individuals who received electoral votes in three separate presidential elections but lost all three elections. The 493 cumulative electoral votes cast for Bryan across three separate elections are the most received by a presidential candidate who was never elected.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan remained an influential figure in Democratic politics, and after Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the 1910 midterm elections, he appeared in the House of Representatives to argue for tariff reduction. In 1909, Bryan came out publicly for the first time in favor of Prohibition. A lifelong teetotaler, Bryan had refrained from embracing Prohibition earlier because of the issue's unpopularity among many Democrats. According to biographer Paolo Colletta, Bryan "sincerely believed that prohibition would contribute to the physical health and moral improvement of the individual, stimulate civic progress and end the notorious abuses connected with the liquor traffic".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: In 1910, he also came out in favor of women's suffrage. Bryan crusaded as well for legislation to support the introduction of the initiative and referendum as a means of giving voters a direct voice while he made a whistle-stop campaign tour of Arkansas in 1910. Although some observers, including President Taft, speculated that Bryan would make a fourth run for the presidency, Bryan repeatedly denied that he had any such intention.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: An escalating split in the Republican Party gave Democrats their best chance in decades to win the presidency. Bryan did not seek the Democratic presidential nomination; his continuing influence gave him a major voice in choosing the nominee. Bryan was intent on preventing the conservatives in the party from nominating their candidate, as they had done in 1904. For a mix of practical and ideological reasons, Bryan ruled out supporting the candidacies of Oscar Underwood, Judson Harmon, and Joseph W. Folk, which left two major candidates competing for his backing: New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson and Speaker of the House Champ Clark. As Speaker, Clark could lay claim to progressive accomplishments, including the passage of constitutional amendments providing for the direct election of senators and the establishment of a federal income tax. However, Clark had alienated Bryan for his failure to lower the tariff and Bryan viewed the Speaker as overly friendly to conservative business interests. Wilson had criticized Bryan but had compiled a strong progressive record as governor. As the 1912 Democratic National Convention approached, Bryan continued to deny that he would seek the presidency, but many journalists and politicians suspected that Bryan hoped a deadlocked convention would turn to him.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: After the start of the convention, Bryan engineered the passage of a resolution stating that the party was "opposed to the nomination of any candidate who is a representative of, or under any obligation to, J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas F. Ryan, August Belmont, or any other member of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class". Clark and Wilson won the support of most delegates on the first several presidential ballots of the Democratic convention, but each fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority. After Tammany Hall came out in favor of Clark and the New York delegation threw its support behind the Speaker, Bryan announced that he would support Wilson. In explaining his decision, Bryan stated that he could "not be a party to the nomination of any man... who will not, when elected, be absolutely free to carry out the anti-Morgan-Ryan-Belmont resolution". Bryan's speech marked the start of a long shift away from Clark: Wilson would finally clinch the presidential nomination after over 40 ballots. Journalists attributed much of the credit for Wilson's victory to Bryan.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: In the 1912 presidential election, Wilson faced off against President Taft and former President Roosevelt, the latter of whom ran on the Progressive Party ticket. Bryan campaigned throughout the West for Wilson and also offered advice to the Democratic nominee on various issues. The split in the Republican ranks helped give Wilson the presidency; he won over 400 electoral votes but only 41.8 percent of the popular vote. In the concurrent congressional elections, Democrats expanded their majority in the House and gained control of the Senate, which gave the party unified control of Congress and the presidency for the first time since the early 1890s.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: President Wilson named Bryan as Secretary of State, the most prestigious appointive position. Bryan's extensive travels, popularity in the party, and support for Wilson in the election made him the obvious choice. Bryan took charge of a State Department that employed 150 officials in Washington and an additional 400 employees in embassies abroad. Early in Wilson's tenure, the president and the secretary of state broadly agreed on foreign policy goals, including the rejection of Taft's Dollar diplomacy. They also shared many priorities in domestic affairs and, with Bryan's help, Wilson orchestrated passage of laws that reduced tariff rates, imposed a progressive income tax, introduced new antitrust measures, and established the Federal Reserve System. Bryan proved particularly influential in ensuring that the president, rather than private bankers, was empowered to appoint the members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Secretary of State Bryan pursued a series of bilateral treaties that required both signatories to submit all disputes to an investigative tribunal. He quickly won approval from the president and the Senate to proceed with his initiative. In mid-1913, El Salvador became the first nation to sign one of Bryan's treaties, and 29 other countries, including every great power in Europe other than Germany and Austria-Hungary, also agreed to sign the treaties. Despite Bryan's stated aversion to conflict, he oversaw U.S. interventions in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: After World War I broke out in Europe, Bryan consistently advocated for American neutrality between the Entente and the Central Powers. With Bryan's support, Wilson initially sought to stay out of the conflict, urging Americans to be "impartial in thought as well as action". For much of 1914, Bryan attempted to bring a negotiated end to the war, but the leaders of both the Entente and the Central Powers were ultimately uninterested in American mediation. Bryan remained firmly committed to neutrality, but Wilson and others within the administration became increasingly sympathetic to the Entente.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: The March 1915 Thrasher incident, in which a German U-boat sank a British passenger ship with an American citizen on board, provided a major blow to the cause of American neutrality. The May 1915 sinking of RMS "Lusitania" by another German U-boat further galvanized anti-German sentiment, as 128 Americans died in the incident. Bryan argued that the British blockade of Germany was as offensive as the German U-boat Campaign. He also maintained that by traveling on British vessels, "an American citizen can, by putting his own business above his regard for this country, assume for his own advantage unnecessary risks and thus involve his country in international complications". After Wilson sent an official message of protest to Germany and refused to warn Americans publicly not to travel on British ships, Bryan delivered his letter of resignation to Wilson on June 8, 1915.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: During the 1916 presidential election, members of the Prohibition Party attempted to place Bryan into consideration for its presidential nomination, but he rejected the offer via telegram.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan supported Wilson's 1916 re-election campaign. Bryan did not attend as an official delegate, but the 1916 Democratic National Convention suspended its own rules to allow Bryan to address the convention; Bryan delivered a well-received speech that strongly defended Wilson's domestic record. Bryan served as a campaign surrogate for Wilson by delivering dozens of speeches, primarily to audiences west of the Mississippi River. Ultimately, Wilson narrowly prevailed over the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes. When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Bryan wrote to Wilson: "Believing it to be the duty of the citizen to bear his part of the burden of war and his share of the peril, I hereby tender my services to the Government. Please enroll me as a private whenever I am needed and assign me to any work that I can do." Wilson declined to appoint Bryan to a federal position, but Bryan agreed to Wilson's request to provide public support for the war effort through his speeches and articles. After the war, despite some reservations, Bryan supported Wilson's unsuccessful effort to bring the United States into the League of Nations.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: After leaving office, Bryan spent much of his time advocating for the eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right of unions to strike and increasingly women's suffrage. His main crusades focused on support for prohibition and opposition to the teaching of evolution. Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, which provided for nationwide Prohibition, in 1917. Two years later, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote nationwide. Both amendments were ratified in 1920. In 1916 Bryan expressed his belief to John Reed that the government "may properly impose a minimum wage, regulate hours of labor, pass usury laws, and enforce inspection of food, sanitation and housing conditions.” During the 1920s, Bryan called for further reforms, including agricultural subsidies, the guarantee of a living wage, full public financing of political campaigns and an end to legal gender discrimination.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Some Prohibitionists and other Bryan supporters tried to convince the three-time presidential candidate to enter the 1920 presidential election, and a "Literary Digest" poll taken in mid-1920 ranked Bryan as the fourth-most popular potential Democratic candidate. Bryan, however, declined to seek public office and wrote, "if I can help this world to banish alcohol and after that to banish war... no office, no Presidency, can offer the honors that will be mine". He attended the 1920 Democratic National Convention as a delegate from Nebraska but was disappointed by the nomination of Governor James M. Cox, who had not supported ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. Bryan declined the presidential nomination of the Prohibition Party and refused to campaign for Cox, which made the 1920 campaign the first presidential contest in over thirty years in which he did not actively campaign.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Though he became less involved in Democratic politics after 1920, Bryan attended the 1924 Democratic National Convention as a delegate from Florida. He helped defeat a resolution condemning the Ku Klux Klan because he expected that the organization would soon fold. Bryan disliked the Klan but never publicly attacked it. He also strongly opposed the candidacy of Al Smith due to Smith's hostility towards Prohibition. After over 100 ballots, the Democratic convention nominated John W. Davis, a conservative Wall Street lawyer. To balance the conservative Davis with a progressive, the convention nominated Bryan's brother, Charles W. Bryan, for vice president. Bryan was disappointed by the nomination of Davis but strongly approved of the nomination of his brother and he delivered numerous campaign speeches in support of the Democratic ticket. Davis suffered one of the worst losses in the Democratic Party's history, taking just 29 percent of the vote against Republican President Calvin Coolidge and the third-party candidate Robert M. La Follette.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: To help Mary cope with her worsening health during the harsh winters of Nebraska, the Bryans bought a farm in Mission, Texas, in 1909. Due to Mary's arthritis the Bryans in 1912 began to build a new home in Miami, Florida, known as Villa Serena. The Bryans made Villa Serena their permanent home, and Charles Bryan continued to oversee "The Commoner" from Lincoln. The Bryans were active citizens in Miami, leading a fundraising drive for the YMCA and frequently hosting the public at their home. Bryan undertook lucrative speaking engagements, often serving as a spokesman for George E. Merrick's new planned community of Coral Gables. His promotions probably contributed to the Florida real estate boom of the 1920s, which collapsed within months of Bryan's death in 1925.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan served as a member of the Board of Trustees at American University in Washington, D.C., from 1914 to his death. For some of these years, he served concurrently with Warren G. Harding and Theodore Roosevelt.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: In the 1920s, Bryan shifted his focus away from politics, becoming one of the most prominent religious figures in the country. He held a weekly Bible class in Miami and published several religiously-themed books. He was one of the first individuals to preach religious faith on the radio, which let him reach audiences across the country. Bryan welcomed the proliferation of faiths other than Protestant Christianity, but he was deeply concerned by the rejection of Biblical literalism by many Protestants. According to the historian Ronald L. Numbers, Bryan was not nearly as much a fundamentalist as many modern-day creationists of the 21st century. Instead, he is more accurately described as a "day-age creationist". Bradley J. Longfield posits Bryan was a "theologically conservative Social Gospeler".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: In the final years of his life, Bryan became the unofficial leader of a movement that sought to prevent public schools from teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Bryan had long expressed skepticism and concern regarding Darwin's theory; in his famous 1909 Chautauqua lecture, "The Prince of Peace", Bryan had warned that the theory of evolution could undermine the foundations of morality. Bryan opposed Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection for two reasons. He believed what he considered a materialistic account of the descent of man (and all life) through evolution to be directly contrary to the Biblical creation account. Also, he considered Darwinism as applied to society (social Darwinism) to be a great evil force in the world by promoting hatred and conflicts and inhibiting upward social and economic mobility of the poor and oppressed.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: As part of his crusade against Darwinism, Bryan called for state and local laws banning public schools from teaching evolution. He requested that lawmakers refrain from attaching a criminal penalty to the anti-evolution laws and also urged that educators be allowed to teach evolution as a "hypothesis", rather than as a fact. Only five southern states responded to Bryan's call to bar the teaching of evolution in public schools.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan was worried that the theory of evolution was gaining ground not only in the universities, but also within the church. The developments of 19th century liberal theology, specifically higher criticism, had allowed many clergymen to be willing to embrace the theory of evolution and claim that it was not contradictory to Christianity. Determined to put an end to this, Bryan, who had long served as a Presbyterian elder, decided to run for the position of Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, which was at the time embroiled in the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy. Bryan's main competition in the race was the Rev. Charles F. Wishart, president of the College of Wooster in Ohio, who had loudly endorsed the teaching of the theory of evolution in the college. Bryan lost to Wishart by a vote of 451–427. Bryan failed in gaining approval for a proposal to cut off funds to schools in which the theory of evolution was taught. Instead, the General Assembly announced disapproval of materialistic, as opposed to theistic, evolution.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: From July 10 to 21, 1925, Bryan participated in the highly-publicized Scopes Trial. The defendant, John T. Scopes, had violated the Butler Act, a Tennessee law barring the teaching of evolution in public schools, while serving as a substitute biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. His defense was funded by the American Civil Liberties Union and led in court by the famed lawyer Clarence Darrow. No one disputed that Scopes had violated the Butler Act, but Darrow argued that the statute violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Bryan defended the right of parents to choose what schools teach, argued that Darwinism was merely a "hypothesis", and claimed that Darrow and other intellectuals were trying to invalidate "every moral standard that the Bible gives us". The defense called Bryan as a witness and asked him about his belief in the literal word of the Bible, though the judge later expunged Bryan's testimony.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Ultimately, the judge instructed the jury to render a verdict of guilty, and Scopes was fined $100 for violating the Butler Act. The national media reported the trial in great detail, with H. L. Mencken ridiculing Bryan as a symbol of Southern ignorance and anti-intellectualism. Even many Southern newspapers criticized Bryan's performance in the trial; the "Memphis Commercial Appeal" reported that "Darrow succeeded in showing that Bryan knows little about the science of the world". Bryan had been prevented from delivering a final argument at trial, but he arranged for the publication of the speech he had intended to give. In that publication, Bryan wrote that "science is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: In the days following the Scopes Trial, Bryan delivered several speeches in Tennessee. On Sunday, July 26, 1925, Bryan died in his sleep from apoplexy after he had attended a church service in Dayton. Bryan's body was transported by rail from Dayton to Washington, D.C. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, with an epitaph that read, "Statesman, yet Friend to Truth! Of Soul Sincere, in Action Faithful, and in Honor Clear" and on the other side "He Kept the Faith".


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan remained married to his wife, Mary, until his death in 1925. Mary served as an important adviser to her husband; she passed the bar exam and learned German to help his career. She was buried next to Bryan after her death in 1930. William and Mary had three children: Ruth (1886–1954), William Jr. (1889–1978), and Grace Dexter (1891–1945). Ruth won election to Congress from Florida in 1928 and later served as ambassador to Denmark during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. William Jr. graduated from Georgetown Law, established a legal practice in Los Angeles, later held several federal positions, and became an important figure in the Los Angeles Democratic Party. Grace also moved to Southern California and wrote a biography of her father. William Sr.'s brother, Charles, was an important supporter of his brother until William's death, as well as an influential politician in his own right. Charles served two terms as the mayor of Lincoln and three terms as the governor of Nebraska and was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in the 1924 presidential election.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan elicited mixed views during his lifetime and his legacy remains complicated. Author Scott Farris argues that "many fail to understand Bryan because he occupies a rare space in society ... too liberal for today's religious [and] too religious for today's liberals". Jeff Taylor rejects the view that Bryan was a "pioneer of the welfare state" and a "forerunner of the New Deal", but argues that Bryan was more accepting of an interventionist federal government than his Democratic predecessors had been. Biographer Michael Kazin, however, opines that


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan was the first leader of a major party to argue for permanently expanding the power of the federal government to serve the welfare of ordinary Americans from the working and middle classes ... he did more than any other man—between the fall of Grover Cleveland and the election of Woodrow Wilson—to transform his party from a bulwark of laissez-faire to the citadel of liberalism we identify with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ideological descendants.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Kazin argues that, compared to Bryan, "only Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had a greater impact on politics and political culture during the era of reform that began in the mid-1890s and lasted until the early 1920s". Writing in 1931, former Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo stated that "with the exception of the men who have occupied the White House, Bryan... had more to do with the shaping of the public policies of the last forty years than any other American citizen". Historian Robert D. Johnston notes that Bryan was "arguably [the] most influential politician from the Great Plains". In 2015, political scientist Michael G. Miller and historian Ken Owen ranked Bryan as one of the four most influential American politicians who never served as president, alongside Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Kazin also emphasizes the limits of Bryan's influence by noting that "for decades after [Bryan]'s death, influential scholars and journalists depicted him as a self-righteous simpleton who longed to preserve an age that had already passed". Writing in 2006, editor Richard Lingeman noted that "William Jennings Bryan is mainly remembered as the fanatical old fool Fredric March played in ‘’Inherit the Wind.’’ Similarly, in 2011, John McDermott wrote that "Bryan is perhaps best known as the sweaty crank of a lawyer who represented Tennessee in the Scopes trial. After his defence of creationism, he became a mocked caricature, a sweaty possessor of avoirdupois, bereft of bombast". Kazin writes that "scholars have increasingly warmed to Bryan's motives, if not his actions" in the Scopes Trial because of Bryan's rejection of eugenics, a practice that many evolutionists of the 1920s favored.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Kazin also notes the stain that Bryan's acceptance of the Jim Crow system places on his legacy, writing


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: His one great flaw was to support, with a studied lack of reflection, the abusive system of Jim Crow—a view that was shared, until the late 1930s, by nearly every white Democrat... After Bryan's death in 1925, most intellectuals and activists on the broad left rejected the amalgam that had inspired him: a strict populist morality based on a close read reading of Scripture... Liberals and radicals from the age of FDR to the present have tended to scorn that credo as naïve and bigoted, a remnant of an era of white Protestant supremacy that has, or should have, passed.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Nonetheless, prominent individuals from both parties have praised Bryan and his legacy. In 1962, former President Harry Truman said Bryan "was a great one—one of the greatest". Truman also claimed, "If it wasn't for old Bill Bryan, there wouldn't be any liberalism at all in the country now. Bryan kept liberalism alive, he kept it going." Tom L. Johnson, the progressive mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, referred to Bryan's campaign in 1896 as "the first great struggle of the masses in our country against the privileged classes". In a 1934 speech dedicating a memorial to Bryan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said:


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: I think that we would choose the word 'sincerity' as fitting him [Bryan] most of all... it was that sincerity that served him so well in his life-long fight against sham and privilege and wrong. It was that sincerity that made him a force for good in his own generation and kept alive many of the ancient faiths on which we are building today. We... can well agree that he fought the good fight; that he finished the course; and that he kept the faith.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: More recently, conservative Republicans such as Ralph Reed have hailed Bryan's legacy. Reed described Bryan as "the most consequential evangelical politician of the twentieth century". Bryan's career has also been compared to that of Donald Trump.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: The William Jennings Bryan House, in Nebraska, was named a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1963. The Bryan Home Museum is an appointment-only museum at his birthplace in Salem, Illinois. Salem is also home to Bryan Park and a large statue of Bryan. His home at Asheville, North Carolina, from 1917 to 1920, the William Jennings Bryan House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Villa Serena, Bryan's property in Miami, Florida, is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address on May 3, 1934, dedicating a statue of William Jennings Bryan created by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore. This Bryan statue by Borglum originally stood in Washington, D.C., but was displaced by highway construction and moved by an Act of Congress in 1961 to Salem, Illinois, Bryan's birthplace.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: A statue of Bryan represented the state of Nebraska in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection. In 2019, a statue of Chief Standing Bear replaced the statue of Bryan in the National Statuary Hall.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Bryan was named to the Nebraska Hall of Fame in 1971 and a bust of him resides in the Nebraska State Capitol. Bryan was honored by the United States Postal Service with a $2 Great Americans series postage stamp.


title: William Jennings Bryan

text: Numerous objects, places and people have been named after Bryan, including Bryan County, Oklahoma, Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Bryan College, located in Dayton, Tennessee. Omaha Bryan High School and Bryan Middle School in Bellevue, Nebraska, are also named for Bryan. During World War II the Liberty ship was built in Panama City, Florida, and named in his honor.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: Flight of the Conchords is a New Zealand musical comedy duo formed in Wellington in 1998. The band consists of multi-instrumentalists Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. Beginning as a popular live comedy act in the early 2000s, the duo's comedy and music became the basis of the self-titled BBC radio series (2005) and, subsequently, the HBO American television series (2007–2009). Most recently, they released the HBO comedy special "Live in London" in 2018. The special was concurrently released by Sub Pop as their fifth album.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: The duo's live performances have gained them a worldwide cult following, and they continue to tour periodically. They were named Best Alternative Comedy Act at the 2005 US Comedy Arts Festival and Best Newcomer at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and received a nomination for the Perrier Comedy Award at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. They have been twice-nominated for a Grammy Award—winning Best Comedy Album in 2009—and have received seven nominations for Emmy Awards.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: Previously, they referred to themselves as "New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo"; as of 2014, however, they refer to themselves as "the almost award-winning fourth-most-popular folk duo in New Zealand".


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: McKenzie and Clement were flatmates at Victoria University of Wellington, where they studied film and theatre before forming Flight of the Conchords in 1998. They first performed as part of a five-man group called So You're a Man, which included Taika Waititi and debuted at Wellington's BATS Theatre, garnering a small but loyal following in New Zealand and Australia.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: The band first performed on television on "Newtown Salad", a show on Wellington's short-lived local TV station "Channel 7" (later renamed "WTV"). They played two songs on the premiere episode in 1999 and then later appeared over four nights in 2000 (3–6 May); the songs, in order, were "Bowie", "Ladies of the World", "Petrov, Yelyena and Me", and "Hotties".


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: They performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2002, 2003—when they were nominated for the Perrier Award—and 2004. They also performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival where they won the Best Newcomer Award. They were later featured in a 2004 campaign for British mobile phone retailer Phones 4U and in the show "Stand Up!" on Australia's ABC TV.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: In 2005, HBO gave the group a special on their Friday night half-hour comedy series "One Night Stand". They then headlined at the opening weekend at Comix comedy club, where they recorded two tracks included on 2007's "The Distant Future".


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: During this period, they had television development deals with Channel 4 in the UK, NBC in the United States, and TVNZ in New Zealand but, ultimately, shows were not produced. In 2006, they performed at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. While in Texas, they recorded a documentary titled "Flight of the Conchords: A Texan Odyssey", which aired on New Zealand's TV3 in late 2006.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: In 2004, the band created a six-part radio series for BBC Radio 2. Largely improvised, the series was broadcast in September 2005 and based on the band's search for commercial success in London. It featured Rob Brydon as their narrator, Rhys Darby as their manager and Jimmy Carr as a devoted fan called Kipper. The radio series is clearly a progenitor of the television series: the plot is similar—the band arriving in a foreign country to make their fortune, Rhys Darby playing their manager and calling band meetings—and many of the songs were later used in the television series.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: The duo starred in a television sitcom for HBO, titled "Flight of the Conchords", which premiered in the United States in June 2007. The series simultaneously premiered in Canada on The Movie Network and Movie Central, and was also shown on The Comedy Network.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: The series revolves around a fictional version of the pair as they try to achieve success as a band in New York City and try to develop an American fan base. The regular cast includes fellow comedians Rhys Darby as Murray, Arj Barker as Dave, and Kristen Schaal as their obsessed fan Mel. This show also features many other comedians in guest starring roles. Their songs are woven into the plot of each episode. The show received an Emmy nomination for Best Comedy. The show was shot primarily in the Two Bridges neighbourhood of Manhattan.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: The first season consisted of 12 episodes. The second season started on HBO on 18 January 2009 and consisted of 10 episodes. On 10 December 2009, the duo and co-creator/director James Bobin announced via their website that the show would not return for a third season.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: The band's first studio release was the 2007 EP "The Distant Future" which included three studio recordings and three live tracks; on 10 February 2008, they were awarded the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for the record. In 2008, they signed with the label Sub Pop and released their self-titled debut full-length album. Following the second season of the show in 2009, the band released their second album, "I Told You I Was Freaky".


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: In June 2007, the band performed on the "Late Show with David Letterman" and were interviewed by Terry Gross on the NPR radio show Fresh Air. They appeared at the 2007 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. On 19 June 2007, they appeared as the musical guests on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien".


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: Their EP "The Distant Future", produced by Mickey Petralia and recorded in Los Angeles and New York by Petralia and engineer Matt Shane, was released on 7 August 2007; the live portions were taken from concerts at Comix comedy club in New York City. In January 2008, the band spoke and performed as part of Comcast's presentation at CES 2008.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: On 13 February 2008, Flight of the Conchords had their first post-Grammy concert, a freebie show, at a small Wellington video store called Aro Video. On 5 March 2008, they performed at a private show at 'The Depot' in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the 2008 Omniture web analytics conference, and the following day in Cahn Auditorium at Northwestern University. On 24 April 2008, they gave a free show at Amoeba Music in Hollywood, California. On 28 May 2008, they performed at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. They performed on the Main Stage of the Sasquatch! Music Festival on Monday, 26 May 2008 at The Gorge Amphitheatre in central Washington State. On 12 July 2008, they performed at Sub Pop's 20th Anniversary Music Festival.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: The duo made a special guest appearance as the aliens in two episodes of "The Drinky Crow Show" on Cartoon Network's late-night television programming block Adult Swim. On 31 March 2009, the duo performed in Masterton, New Zealand, to 2000 locals as a benefit for Jemaine's old college Makoura College raising around NZ$80,000 prior to setting off on a 50 date tour of the US. They also appeared on the season four finale of the "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!", briefly replacing Tim and Eric during a high-stakes game of tennis. The duo guest-starred as a pair of camp counselors in "Elementary School Musical", the season premiere of the 22nd season of "The Simpsons", which aired 26 September 2010.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: In an interview with Vulture, Bret said that plans were in the works for a reunion tour in 2012 and that he and Jemaine were discussing a Flight of the Conchords movie. On 28 November 2011, he stated that efforts were being made to bring the comedy folk duo to the big screen: "We're going to try and do a movie. We just need a story". However, HBO has stated they themselves do not have plans for such a film. In an interview published in Indiewire in August 2015, Clement said that a Flight of the Conchords movie was being written, although he indicated that it is still in the early phases.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: It was confirmed in March 2012, that a full 10-show tour of larger New Zealand venues was in place for June 2012. Tickets went on sale on 23 March, with the premium seats at each venue available only in person at the box office, to prevent scalping. All original shows sold out within 10 minutes once they were released on general sale.


title: Flight of the Conchords

text: For Red Nose Day 2012, the duo recorded a charity single composed of lyrics volunteered by Auckland and Wellington school children, titled "Feel Inside (And Stuff Like That)". The song features performances from other New Zealand celebrities, including Dave Dobbyn, Brooke Fraser, Boh Runga, Samuel Flynn Scott, Luke Buda, Savage, Young Sid, Tyree, Deach, PNC, Zowie, Ruby Frost, Kids of 88, Rikki Morris, Moana Maniapoto, Nathan King, Maitereya, Victoria Girling-Butcher, Elizabeth Marvelly, Peter Urlich and Cherie Mathieson. The song entered at number one on the New Zealand Singles Chart, becoming their first number one and was certified Platinum, selling over 15,000 copies in its first week.