BigDawg Music Mafia's CPAC Serenade

BigDawger Anne Marie Harpen performs at CPAC, the annual kingmaking conference for right-wing Republicans.

Wednesday marked the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual marquee summit of the far right where thousands of Tea Party activists get together to plot Hillary Clinton's destruction and anoint a new group of Fox News contributors. The conference is still warming up, but already Chris Christie has wormed himself back into the good graces of the Republican base, Mitch McConnell has waved an ancient rifle around on stage, and Paul Ryan has informed us that poor kids don't actually want a "free lunch."

But CPAC is a lot more than just guys in bad ties talking about God, guns, and socialism. It is a celebration of conservative culture—a chance for College Republicans and think-tank interns to drink free booze and swap ObamaCare horror stories away from the judgmental eyes of their liberal peers. And for the first time this year, all that revelry is set to live music, courtesy of something called the BigDawg Music Mafia.

Founded in 2010, BigDawg Music Mafia bills itself as a sort of creative talent agency for conservative and libertarian artists who have been boxed out of the mainstream media. It's part of a burgeoning cottage industry of right-wing production companies, radio stations, and publishing houses that has emerged to shelter Republican voters from liberal cultural hegemony. "Culture is upstream of politics—you can't change how people vote until you change their hearts and minds," said BigDawg cofounder Lisa Mei, loosely quoting the late conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, who was famously obsessed with the liberal media. "We're trying to break stereotypes of conservatives as just doing country music and Christian rock—we've got rappers; we've got heavy metal groups."

To give you a sense of this new Tea Party music scene, here is a sampling of the BigDawgers jamming out at the Gaylord Convention Center this week. To those uninitiated in the conservative movement, these artists will tell you everything you need to know about the various Republican sects and fringes that gather for the yearly CPAC jamboree.

Michaelantonio 

This guy's website describes him as "an Adonis with Tiger Blood" and includes a one-hour montage of his clips—interspersed with menacing pictures of Barney Frank and other liberals—so naturally my curiosity was piqued. And I wasn't disappointed. It turns out Michaelantonio—a lifelong conservative and onetime gondolier at the Venetian hotel—is actually sort of famous among the Tea Party crowd, thanks to his music video "It's Time for You to Go," part of which was shot at a Las Vegas Tax Day rally in 2010.

The song, he said, was originally written about his divorce. But it turns out he feels the same way about Obama as he did about his ex-wife. So he changed around a couple of words, and voilà: "It's Time for You to Go: The Tea Party Anthem."

Anne Marie Harpen

Everything about Anne Marie Harpen demands respect. She played that CPAC Exhibit Hall like it's a packed house at the Bitter End, warming up the crowd with Motown covers before launching into political ballads about Jesus, debt, and despair. She's like the Joan Baez of the Tea Party, except that she probably makes much better cookies. All of her songs are pretty haunting, but "Walk the Streets in Anger" was definitely the crowd favorite.

She is also wearing the whitest sneakers I have ever seen—seriously, the only way you can achieve that kind of cleanliness must be with a nightly toothbrush scrubbing.

Lisa Mei 

A retired Air Force Senior Master Sergeant, Mei is the leader of the BigDawg Music Mafia (BigDawg, her cofounder, is out of the picture now, Mei says). So far, Mei has spent most of CPAC manning the BigDawg Music Radio booth, but she did hop on stage to perform some of her own songs Thursday. Although Mei promises that there is more to conservative music than Jesus and guitars, her songs are just that, including a dog-whistle abortion ditty called "What Would You Do?"

Buck Allen

It's easy to spot Buck Allen, mostly because he looks and sounds exactly like a guy whose name is Buck Allen. I find him decked out in full cowboy uniform, flirting with College Republican girls and passing out CDS of his latest EP, Buck Allen: The Life & Times. Buck spent five years in Iraq as an emergency medical technician, and most of his songs are about that, with titles like "Stand Up for Freedom," "Made in Iraq," and the intriguing "I Need Too Go to Rehab [sic]".

Politically, Buck told me that he is "100 percent about self-sustainability," which makes sense because he is also a farmer. "In life you need to produce something," he said. "If you're just a consumer, that's not sustainable. Sooner or later it's not going to work out."

Anna and John

A married duo from Northern California, Anna and John Mix are Evangelical worship leaders, and their music is mostly about God, love, and eternal salvation. They are also disconcertingly nice, with an assured calmness of people who regularly raise the roof to Jesus. And while the Mixes are obviously the "traditional values" type of conservative, John claimed that their music is not political, but rather an"uplifting" alternative to most of the iniquity and sin that's out there now. "It's about loving your neighbor, letting everybody be free to be who they are," he said. I asked if that included gay people. "Yes, even gay people deserve freedom," he told me. "Do I agree with that lifestyle? No. But I think they have a right to have their lifestyle."