October 20, 2004
(lyrics to "On Our Sleeve" are below)

I wanted to say a few things about the new song that I’ve made available for download on this site.

It started innocently enough. I was playing my guitar one day and realized I had never written a waltz (a song in ¾ time). I found a chord progression and started playing around with it. Musically the song kept growing, until I had the complete structure and melody line. At this point I had no lyrics. I had this musical structure, which I liked a lot, but I had no idea what this music was saying. I made a few stabs at a lyric, but didn’t like any of it, so I sort of put it aside, hoping the gods of song lyrics would visit and show me what this music had to say. I’ve written a lot of songs this way. The music comes easily, and when I’m stuck on the words I wait and they sort of come to me. My friend Al Grierson used to call it “answering the phone.” Al was good at answering that phone. Often he would have some fairly long conversations after answering.

A few weeks ago the gods of song lyrics contacted me. The words for this song just started flowing out of me. Honestly, I wrote the whole thing with minimal editing in about 30 minutes. I was startled (as I always am when this happens) and a little concerned with what these words were saying. I have always been somewhat reluctant to sing overtly political songs. I have never thought my political opinions (and I have many strong ones) should intrude into my art. I don’t write songs to tell anyone what to think or believe. I write songs about what I think and believe.

So there I was with this new song. I liked it pretty well. I had succeeded in writing in ¾ time. I liked the music and melody line, and I did like the lyrics, even if I was uneasy about singing them. I was afraid they were too heavy handed. I played it for Jackie, and she agreed it was a strong statement. She liked it and encouraged me to play it.

I decided I would play it at the Southwest Regional Folk Alliance that weekend. I figured the audience there (many of them friends of mine) would help me make up my mind about this song. I performed it four times over the course of the weekend and got very strong responses to it. Everyone I talked to about it reassured me that the lyric didn’t preach to them (something I was afraid of), but rather caught their attention in that they considered the subject matter in a new way. Many people told me it touched both their hearts and their minds.

A song grows after it is written. It grows a little every time it is sung, and in some way this growth involves the energy of both the singer and the audience. This song grew a lot that weekend, and I began to realize I wanted to give as many people as I could a chance to hear it. As an artist, my highest aspiration is to write something that moves my audience by creating beauty with the interaction of music and thought. I am coming to believe I have achieved a measure of that with this song.

This week I recorded it with the help of Chris Gage and Jeff Tveraas (two brilliant musicians and producers) and I have decided to make it available for free here on the site. I am burning copies on cd to send to any radio show that is willing to play it.

“On Our Sleeve” speaks (to me, at least) about the dangers of moral certainty. My friend Chuck Pyle reminds his audience at every show to “seek out people who are in search of the truth and run like hell from anyone who believes they’ve found it.” This makes some sense to me so I try to live by these words. What makes me so uneasy about the current resident of the Whitehouse is his apparent reluctance to seek truth. He behaves as though he has found it. And he is willing to kill for it.

Now I don’t support any war. War is never a problem solver, and usually it is a problem creator. But our current excursion into war appears to me to be dangerously misguided and criminally destructive. My government violently over threw another government and killed and maimed thousands of people in the process. My government tried to justify this to me with lies (yes, faulty intelligence is just the spin name for lies) that were designed to make me afraid. Like all war propaganda, I was told the enemy of my government was evil. Saddam and Osama and their minions have been de-humanized and demonized. My government dangled the rubber carrot of “security” in front of me asked me to condone mass murder.

I’ve seen my government do this before, always morally certain that this behavior is justified. From my childhood in the 1960’s through the 1980’s murder was justified as defeating communism. Now it’s to defeat terrorism. I guess moral certainty is required to condone what we’re doing in Iraq.

But it’s all a cliché. Wars are not fought against ‘isms.’ Our soldiers are not shooting bombs and bullets at nouns. They’re shooting them at people. These people (including the “terrorists”) are human beings just like us. They work. They eat. They love their family and friends. They celebrate life and mourn death. I would wager that most of the people our bombs and bullets have killed were not engaging or supporting any acts of terror against anyone. They were just regular folks like us, going about their lives, working, eating, bathing, copulating, singing, laughing. And now they are dead. And my government is morally certain that their murders were justified.

 

On Our Sleeve

Thunder rolls over the mountains
Lightning comes down from the sky
The rain pouring down
Soaking the ground in July
A young man stares out of his window
And wonders aloud at the storm
Amazed by the fury
The righteous require to reform

And he holds up his hand
He can’t understand
That he only sees part of the play
And he thinks he knows well
Heaven and hell
So certain in all he believes
He’s wearing his god on his sleeve

A truck makes its way through the city
Unnoticed as anything new
Pulls up to the curb
Sits silently under the moon
The driver steps down to the sidewalk
And walks a few blocks through the night
Feels the heat and the flash
And stars flicker out in the sky

And he holds up his hand
He can’t understand
All the ripples from his single stone
He’s so sure he can tell
Heaven from hell
Now he’s killing for what he believes
And he’s wearing his god on his sleeve

In the morning we gather the pieces
Of lives like they’re scattered debris
Vowing revenge
As if it could mend
And it happens all over again

Thunder rolls over the mountains
Light flashes up to the sky
The bombs raining down
The evil refuses to die
A young girl looks out on the valley
At the battered remains of her home
And struggles to find
The fragments of all she once owned

And she holds out her hand
She can’t understand
How anyone found her to blame
But the stories she’ll tell
Of her man-made hell
Won’t fit with the ones we believe
When we’re wearing our god on our sleeve

 

December 4, 2003

I’ve just finished giving this site a new look and decided to write something here to bring anyone who’s interested up to date on the last couple of years. The last note I posted here was in the heart breaking days of the autumn of 2001. Life has unfolded since then; lots of changes, much to reflect on. Jackie and I came home to Austin last year. I continue to travel the country playing to any who want to listen, and listening a lot to any who wish to speak. Most everyone I come in contact with are uneasy with how our world has changed, and equally uneasy about how our current government is behaving.

To say the least, I was dismayed by our government’s response to the events of late 2001. The attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq were not unexpected, though they saddened me nonetheless. It seemed that we had this opportunity to shine the light of our goodness and instead we provided more darkness. We met violence with violence and then acted surprised at the result.

I was reminded recently that September 11 was an infamous anniversary long before 2001. On September 11, 1973 a CIA sponsored coup ousted the democratically elected president of Chile (Salvadore Allende) and installed a military dictator (Augusto Pinochet). Allende was assassinated, and over 5000 people were tortured and executed by Pinochet. It’s not an anniversary that many Americans are aware of, although this event and others that come to mind put the attacks on New York and Washington into an historical perspective.

I am certainly not condoning the attacks, or even saying that America had it coming (although a case could be made for that). I am saying that if the violent cycle we find ourselves in around the world is to stop, someone has to take the first step. I would love to see America devote our considerable resources to ending, rather than perpetuating violence against other humans.

A good friend of mine – Lisa Rogers of the famed duo the Therapy Sisters – is currently running for President. On her campaign web site she poses some questions that I find at the very least thought provoking. Even if you don’t feel America is quite ready for a lesbian folk singer in the White House, I encourage you to visit her site. Perhaps you could raise some of these issues with the candidate of your choice. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Lisa:

· The US not only has, but has used weapons of mass destruction. Like Iraq and Israel, we continue to ignore UN resolutions. Why shouldn't we have UN inspectors in our presidential palaces?

· What about the Middle East?
It’s obvious the Palestinians don’t have enough to do. I guarantee if you give them a country and some money to rebuild houses, roads, schools and hospitals, they’ll be way too busy to blow up somebody else’s country.

· What about the Saddam Hussein?
This is really about settling an old score between Saddam and Dubya's dad. And oil, of course. So, how about a pie throwing contest? But Dubya and Rummy say it's about disarmament. So, since the US is the only country to ever use nukes on civilians, we should the first to agree to multilateral worldwide disarmament and offer to have UN inspectors here. No nukes anywhere; no threat. Easy.

· Why are we spending billions on (oxymoronic) "better bombs" instead of better buildings for countries we've bombed and abandoned?

· If every elected official in Washington has known for years that Detroit can build vehicles with better gas mileage, why aren't there disincentives for SUVs? And why on earth do those useless politicians keep getting elected?

 

There’s lots more. Visit the site. Ask your favorite candidate some of these questions and listen carefully for their answers. I’ll probably vote for Lisa, but I’m hoping for a cabinet position (second shelf next to the Tupperware) in her government.

Be well, my friends

 

September 18, 2001

I've been struggling all week to write something to everyone here, but my feelings have been just too raw and unfocused to articulate. Now on the 7th day since the world was turned upside down, I can only tell y'all that I wake every morning with an ache that wasn't there before last Tuesday. It's as if all of those who gave up there places in this world on Tuesday did so with a collective cry of "NO!!" That cry is still reverberating, and will for some time to come.

I watched the images on TV. Through the heartbreak I was inspired by the people showing their finest behavior. The fire fighters who rushed into the danger attempting to aid and rescue those inside. Others who dropped what they were doing and came to lend their hands, and especially the people who momentarily forgot their personal agony in order to help and comfort another. In moments like these we seem to remember that we are all connected and the hurt of one is the hurt of us all.

I've gotten countless emails, from friends and some from people I haven't met. All of them were sad, but hopeful that our collective response will be motivated by love and peacefulness. I shudder when I hear the president and others in the government speak of war and revenge. Weren't those the very sentiments that motivated the attacks that have wounded us so?

"An eye for an eye was all that filled their minds.
And another eye for another eye till everyone is blind."

~"There Were Roses"...Tommy Sands~

Perhaps what we have an opportunity to do is re-examine our picture of the world and what our role in it is. Beyond the need for healing is the need to examine and remedy the root causes for how and why something like this happens. And that might be even more unpleasant and hard to face. In an email I received today is the following sentiment. It makes a good deal of sense to me, and is at least something to think about as we regain our emotional strength.

The surest way of avoiding being attacked is to not
have enemies. A way of not having enemies is to have
dialogue with everybody. Listen and find out what
people need and want in different parts of the world.
Try to help them get what they need and want.

We all share this planet. It no longer works to just
put up walls around your cities to keep the barbarians
out. Particularly if you trained and funded and armed
them last year because they were the enemy of your
enemy. And you then stopped funding them later because
your other enemy no longer was your enemy. And they're
now starving, but still trained and armed.

I believe it would be a positive thing for these sentiments to be expressed to the folks who make global decisions of war and peace on our behalf. While I figure it's unlikely that George Bush (either of them) or Dick Chaney will visit this particular site and read this, I hope they will hear the message that many people (I hope most) do not want revenge. We don't want retribution. We just want the world to change so that events like this no longer happen--anywhere in the world.

I wish everyone peace and healing. May all the actions you take each day be motivated by love and tolerance. May you do what you love and love what you do, and may every moment of your time here be moments you're proud of.

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August 24, 2001

Greetings my friends!

I have changed locations on the planet. I'm happy to report that Jackie and I are residing in a small house on the western edge of Asheville, North Carolina. It's wonderful to be back here. I've lived in this area twice in my life and I'm always pleased to come back here. I discovered these mountains quite by accident. My parents and younger siblings moved here in the late 70's while I was adventuring in Hawaii. The first time I came to visit in 1979 I fell in love with the place. I couldn't move here then because I was young and felt my "independence" was threatened by being too close to my parents. Also, there was a big world to explore and I wasn't ready to settle in one place, no matter how delightful it was.

My, how the years change us. Just 10 years later, in 1989, I decided to complete a long deferred college degree. As I looked into schools I might attend, I remembered seeing UNC-A on a trip to visit my parents. I remembered a lovely campus and a small student population. I applied and was accepted and spent three great years there as an undergraduate. Everything I remembered about the place was fairly accurate. What I learned about the school after my arrival was even better.

UNCA is the Liberal Arts branch of the UNC system. What that meant in practical terms was that every student, from business majors to musicians, had to take a bunch of humanities courses. This caused some grumbling amoung the young chemistry majors, who couldn't understand how learning about Rennaisance Artists or reading Dante's Divine Comedy was going to help them sort out the periodic table. I, on the other hand, loved it. I realized early that all these humanities courses served absolutely no practical purpose. Instead it was what I came to term "recreational learning." I heard wonderful lectures, learned a lot about my European heritage, back to pre-Christian times and was exposed to art and music that I had previously only had a passing acquaintance with. I soaked it all up, wrote my papers and took my exams. I completed my undergraduate studies with a B.A. in Psychology (another fairly impractical field of study), and to this day I advise every college bound kid I see to go to a Liberal Arts school. It may be the last time they get to work on something for nothing other than the sheer joy of the task (unless they decide to become a folk singer).

So, here I am back in an old stomping ground. I've been showing Jackie around (she's never been here before) and noticing how the place has changed and how it hasn't. Summertime is delightful in these mountains. We've taken long drives on the Blue Ridge Parkway and explored some old logging roads in the national forest. I'm looking forward to the autumn, because it can be most spectacular. Jackie has never experienced an east coast autumn, with all the incredible colors. I'm hoping the conditions are right for a good one.

I've been playing some shows in the midst of our resettling. The day after I returned I got to play with my friend Chris Rosser at the Grey Eagle here in town. Tomorrow I head downstate to Cary, NC to do a show at the Six String Cafe and Music Hall. I'm making a lot of booking calls these days so watch the schedule for upcoming shows.

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June 14, 2001

Well, I'm back in Florida after almost 3 weeks in Texas. Jackie and I drove home from Kerrville just before Tropical Storm Allison decided to give eastern Texas a good dousing. When we got home we saw the reports on TV and there appeared to be a lake where most of Houston used to be. Haven't heard from any of our friends in the area, but I hope everyone is safe and reasonably dry.

Kerrville was great! I got to see lots of friends I don't get to see anywhere else. The performances on the stages were awesome. The song circles were magical. There's something about sitting under the stars and listening to great songs that I just can't get enough of. Stayed up several nights til dawn (or near dawn) singing. Spent delightful afternoons swimming in the Medina River. I got some great photos that I hope to put up on the photo page soon. For anyone who was there (or anyone who wasn't, but wants to know more about the festival) my friend Brian has a website (Kerrville Ramblings) with reports and photos from this year and past festivals.

There is other news to report. Jackie and I are moving to Asheville, North Carolina in early August. It will be a new adventure for Jackie and sort of a homecoming for me. For those of you who don't know, I lived in Asheville a few years ago and some of my family live in the area. I've always loved the mountains there, and in the heat and humidity of South Florida I really started missing them (imagine that). So the plan is to pack everything up and head north on August 1, stay with my folks for a few days in Brevard, NC and celebrate my Mom's birthday, and then try to get settled in Asheville before I have to go out on the road again.

I have a couple of shows here in Florida before I head north. I'll be playing next Thursday (June 21) at Main Street Cafe in Homestead and on July 14 I'm going back to Sweet Beans Cafe in Fort Meyers for a show. Jackie is trying to put together some North Carolina gigs for just after our arrival there. On August 25 (my birthday!) I'll be doing my first show at Six String Cafe in Cary, NC (thanks to David LaMotte for hooking me up with those good folks). I've got other possibilities in the area, but nothing confirmed yet, so stay tuned.

I hope that everyone is having a great summer. I'll be looking for you out on the road. Til next time.....

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May 5, 2001

It's spring time!! Here in south Florida winter hasn't been that hard to take. Sunny skies, mild temperatures, cool sea breezes have been very comfortable. Even the trips I've done this winter have been to fairly temperate places. It was a little cool in Texas in March, but otherwise Jackie and I have had a warm weather winter for the most part.

But spring is still a special time for us because it means we'll soon be making our annual pilgrimage to Kerrville. In just a couple of weeks we'll be heading for the Quiet Valley Ranch for the Kerrville Folk Festival. If you've never gone to the Kerrville Folk Festival, my excitement might be difficult to understand, but trust me, if you ever go a light will dawn and your eyes will get a little misty at the mention of it.

So many folks have asked me what makes Kerrville such a special festival. I mean there are great folk fests all over the country and I agree they are all wonderful in their own ways. But Kerrville is just in a class by itself.

The first and most primary reason is that Kerrville lasts 18 days. That's right, 18 days of constant music. There are the usual great performers that play the stages every night, but that's actually a side attraction to the music that goes on everywhere else, at every hour, on the ranch from the time the first camper arrives until the last blissed-out folkie drives out the gate. Kerrville is a solid 18 days of celebrating songwriting.

Picture, if you can, song circles every twenty to 50 feet as you walk around the ranch. Groups of people singing songs at every campsite, in front of the little general store, in front of the outhouses, outside (and sometimes inside) the showers. You can hear some of the finest songwriters you've never heard of everywhere you turn. And because everyone is there for such an extended period, friendships are formed that often rival family in their warmth and intimacy.

I've often said that it's the summer camp I always wished for when I was a child. I become kind of an ageless soul while I'm there. For the rest of the year I'm this forty-something guy trying to get along in the material world, but for 18 days I'm an ageless soul that sings and listens and sings and listens. The ancient live oaks on the ranch are so saturated with all the songs they've shaded in the last 30 years that they infuse the air around them with the silent echos of joy.

I could go on and on and still not get close to describing it with any accuracy. I'm certain many of y'all are shaking your heads thinking I'm struggling to wax poetic and I'm sounding kinda corny. But those of you who make the same pilgrimage are nodding and smiling at my clumsy attempt to describe the indescribable. You're smiling, but you're also thinking about your Kerrville check list of stuff to bring and you're looking at the calendar thinking the days just can't pass fast enough before you can be there. And it's y'all that I'm thinking about right now. I've got hugs and new songs ready for when I see you. I can't wait to welcome you home.

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