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April, 2005
I had a great show a while back in Olympia, Washington and met Pat Maley there. I was recording a few new songs at his studio to put on the web, and at some point he suggested that I put out my next CD on his label, Yoyo Records. Thinking that to be a great idea, I went about figuring out what I wanted to do about that, and this is the end result.
Four cities were involved in this decisively non-Luddite production. I recorded vocal and guitar tracks in Houston, and Kristine Pettersen (Thistle) did harmony vocals later in the same place, Sugar Hill Studios with John Griffin engineering. I sent the sound files up to Boston and in Tenitus Studios my friend Sean Staples laid down bass, mandolin, bouzouki, electric guitar, dobro and nylon string guitar tracks and Dave Westner engineered and also played bass, electric guitar and percussion on various tracks.
Professor D and I recorded "Falluja" with Spinister engineering at the studios of the Dope Poet Society in Toronto and we sent those tracks on to Pat in Olympia, and folks in Boston and Houston sent in their tracks, and then Pat mixed and mastered the whole thing to put out on his label.
Since I had it in mind to do a CD with a somewhat new musical treatment than previous recordings (maybe somewhere in between Return and Songs for Mahmud), I thought it would be cool to do new versions of a few songs from previous releases as well as 12 previously unrecorded (mostly new) songs.
It seemed too bulky to include all the lyrics in the liner notes, but you can read lyrics, download lots of free audio, video, and sheet music, buy CD's and songbooks, look at my calendar and links to other artists, sign up on my email list, etc., by going to www.davidrovics.com.
There are far too many people to thank, and I've never been very good at remembering the myriad of people out there I feel thankful for. (I sure do feel thankful for them, though, and I hope they all know who they are.) But I'll pick just one. The older I get, the more I think my songwriting seems to resemble Jim Page's stuff.
Maybe I'm the only one who hears that, I don't know. In any case, though I hardly ever see him out there on the west coast or wherever he is at the time, since I discovered Jim's music 15 years ago I have never been the same, and his brilliant musical lens is still the main one through which I view the craft of songwriting, and a fair number of other subjects as well.
Hope to see you on the road and in the streets!
--David
- after we torture our prisoners Then they can have democracy.
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- falluja For the Iraqi resistance and all the innocent victims that spawned it.
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- the draft is coming Let the festivities begin.
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- berlin A picture I saw in Germany one day. It spoke volumes about human suffering.
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- song for hugo chavez Lots of people have problems with Chavez. He's too free market for the communists. He's too authoritarian for the anarchists. He's too military for the pacifists. Whatever. He's also arguably the most radical elected leader of a national government on the planet today.
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- guantanamo bay Our government is torturing them there, too.
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- spanish journalist strike Here's to Jose Couso and all the other journalists targeted and killed by the US occupation forces in Iraq.
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- they're building a wall For the apartheid wall in Occupied Palestine. Originally recorded in the spring of 2004 for Songs for Mahmud.
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- the scar upon your face I wrote this a couple years ago but never recorded.
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- saint patrick battalion Originally appeared on Living In These Times. It's a true story about an international brigade that pre-dated the Spanish Civil War, the San Patricios.
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- unknown soldier For a beautiful Salvadoran woman I saw in a photo on the cover of the New York Times. I was sitting in a café in Seattle in November, 1989, while she was trying to overthrow the US-backed fascists in El Salvador. Standing majestically on a rooftop in San Salvador, dressed in fatigues and an AK. Too bad those SAM's got intercepted en route from Nicaragua.
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- like i think about you For an old friend who I may never see again.
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- mi amor A song about solidarity, which I originally recorded in 2002 on Hang A Flag In The Window.
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- more gardens song For the More Gardens folks in New York City and all the other guerrilla gardeners in the world. Originally recorded on Songs for Mahmud.
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- my daughter Originally recorded in 2001 steam lo-fi 24kbpsbefore 9/11), about one of my Iraqi daughters.
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- i wanna go home A very succinct summary of the problem and the solution for Palestine, as expressed by many refugees. Originally recorded on Songs for Mahmud.
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- whoever wins in november There may have been a distinction between those two war criminals. Perhaps even a distinction that we might call significant, but certainly not one that will, in itself, allow our species to survive.
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- after the revolution The way things could be, and hopefully will be soon, as soon as we get it together. We have a world to lose or a world to gain. Originally recorded on Return.
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- every minute of the day A love song.
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