From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

People have been living there as long as anybody knows Inventing math and science and how to sail where the wind blows Poetry, philosophy, religions had their start Lots of different people made up the beating heart Of the land of Falasteen, from Safad to Beersheba From Jerusalem to Jaffa, from Acre to Rafah

Where they dream of the day when Palestine is free
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

In the wake of the disasters that had shaken all the world
A new state was declared, a new flag unfurled
And the Nakba engineered, with the map redrawn
Three-quarters of a million refugees, their homes taken, gone
Occupied, invaded, by those who called it theirs
Where the people are forever in the crosshairs

Where they dream of the day when Palestine is free
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

Since 1948 the diaspora has grown
Within and without the occupation zone
Towns reduced to rubble while the settlements expand
Taking up more and more of what's left of the land
And wherever people rise up and see fit to resist
Though the colonizers say they're just terrorists

They dream of the day when Palestine is free
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

The logic of the west twists the world on its head
While this genocidal slaughter leaves untold children dead
They ban protests in Berlin, say we don't want to hear
About the babies in the rubble or those paralyzed with fear
As the German and American missiles kill and maim
While children wonder why we can't all just be treated the same

As they dream of the day when Palestine is free
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

As far away as anything that could possibly be right
That to want a normal life makes you an antisemite
To live in a home that bulldozers won't destroy
Where you can travel to the place where you're employed
Without waiting at a checkpoint where you're likely to be shot
Shortening the shortened life that is the one you've got

As they dream of the day when Palestine is free
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

You can hear the outrage rising from Algiers to Jakarta
At the genocidal bombing laying waste to Gaza
While in DC and Berlin the politicians shout
Celebrate the slaughter as they claim beyond a doubt
These marchers in the streets are filled with hate
They must be since they're marching against a genocidal state

And they dream of the day when Palestine is free
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

Bandcamp Support Responds!

Twelve days later and I got a short response from Bandcamp Support to my query about why, with no notification, my name, albums, and tracks from any of those albums stopped showing up in search on the platform sometime in mid-August.

It looks like your account was flagged for review for a possible Terms of Service violation. I've cleared that flag now, so you should show up in searches again.

For what it's worth, a number of tags you were using caused the flag--specifically "hitler" and "anti-semitism".

As of now I'm still not showing up in search on Bandcamp, but it sounds like this is going to change, and things will go back to normal on the platform, at least for me. 

Questions remain for me, which I won't bother trying to find out, but I'd be curious to know.  Was I flagged because someone(s) were trying to get me kicked off of Bandcamp by complaining about some of what they hoped might be considered my more controversial songs about subjects like Hitler and antisemitism?  After the songs and tags in question had already been on Bandcamp for years, why were they suddenly flagged two weeks ago?

Whether this temporary shadowban was the result of the efforts of one of my cancellation campaigners or something more random, it looks like there's a happy resolution to the matter.

Shane Burley, Spencer Sunshine, and Alexander Reid Ross turn down debate with David Rovics

On Wednesday, July 12th, at 8 am, I'll be on Paul Roland's show on KBOO community radio here in Portland, Oregon. Paul wanted specifically to discuss the constantly regurgitated and patently ridiculous allegations made about me regularly on social media and elsewhere by "antifascists" Shane Burley, Alexander Reid Ross, and Spencer Sunshine, who are all apologists for apartheid Israel and stooges for US imperialism who have helped make the Portland left as completely dysfunctional as it has become.

Paul invited all three of them in friendly emails to debate me on Wednesday. Each of them declined the invitation very rudely. Do you know why? I do. They're all afraid of debating me. Because their lies only function in an anaerobic environment. Add some oxygen, and they fall apart. Because their propaganda is all standing on top of a structure of invented nonsense. Expose the structure of pseudo-intellectual babble and there's no scaffolding to stand on.

 
They're fraudulent intellectuals who have managed to recruit a few lost teenagers to their bizarre, pro-apartheid, pro-empire "antifascism." They've even managed to fool whoever signs authors these days at AK Press. But they don't fool me.

 
They don't fool Fifth Estate, who stopped publishing their drivel a long time ago, as the three all moved further into their pioneering new philosophy of what we might call anarcho-imperialism. And they won't debate me.

 
Why? Because their heads are empty of anything that might be useful in having a real conversation about the accusations they like to make, in a situation where they have to engage in actual dialog, rather than just lecturing on their YouTube channels about my supposed antisemitism and fascist collaborationism.

And also perhaps because they have much bigger platforms than me, and don't want to give me any free promo. What platforms, you may wonder? The mainstream Israeli press. You can't make this stuff up. Well, they make lots of stuff up. I don't. But you won't get to contrast our views in a debate, because they're all terrified of my superior intellect, superior understanding of world affairs, and superior grasp of world history.

Dreaming of a Guest Room in Astoria

I know nice people with guest rooms all over the world.  Why not Astoria?

One of the best things about being a traveling musician is meeting cool people everywhere I go. Another of the best things is that even though playing music in small venues may not be the ideal way to support a family, I almost never have to spend money on hotels, because I have friends with guest rooms everywhere. These friends are often on the older side, had kids that grew up and left home some time ago, which means they're generally the biggest subset of society that I know who has guest rooms.

I meet these folks in all kinds of different ways. Sometimes they're folks I met a long time ago, when I first did a gig in their town. Other times it might be someone I met because they heard a song of mine on Spotify, noticed that I had a gig coming up in their area, and thought they'd just drop me a line to make sure I was all set with a nice place to stay while I was there. 

Sometimes I forget who I know, which is sad, for a bunch of reasons. My old friend Anne Feeney kept track of who she knew with guest rooms, and even kept notes about how comfortable their guest beds were, and whether or not they had wifi. If either of us were ever playing in a town where we didn't know someone with a guest room, we'd sometimes consult each other, and meet nice new people in the process.

After doing this traveling and performing thing for nigh on thirty years now, I always know I can find a nice free place to stay, usually by writing one email or message to someone I already know. This tends to work especially well and quickly in any major city.

Less populated areas are trickier, of course. There are fewer people, and thus fewer fans of this particular obscure leftwing musician, and among those fans, fewer of them who might have a guest room, or hear that I'm coming to town and could use one.

One of those less populated areas happens to be the one place where I have been wishing for the past 16 years of living in Portland that I had a fan or friend with a guest room, and that is Astoria, Oregon.

The social media algorithms seem to do a very bad job of letting people know this, but I live in Portland, and every time the weather gets like this, that is, over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, I once again fantasize about visiting my favorite town on the Oregon coast. I don't have a budget for Airbnb or hotel rooms, but I'm still vainly hoping that I'll eventually discover that one of those 16,000 monthly listeners on Spotify lives in Astoria and has a guest room that they'd be happy for me and my family to stay in now and then.

Winter 2023: Hawai'i and the West

Tomorrow I'll be picking up the brilliant Lorna McKinnon at the Portland airport, then on Monday she and I fly to Kona, Hawai'i and meet up with an amazing cast of musical colleagues whose names will at this point also be familiar to the more hardcore fans of my music, at least, including Billy Oskay, Chet Gardner, and Kamala Emanuel. The bunch of us will be spending the last half of January making a record together, as well as doing a concert or two, and avoiding the larger pieces of fruit that may be falling from the sky.

Upon returning from Hawai'i I'll have a bit of time to hang out with the family before doing a fairly intensive one-week tour by car that will take me from Portland to southern California and back again during the second week of February.

If you're in Hawai'i, Eugene, or somewhere in California, I hope to see you over the next few weeks! If you're in Australia, Denmark, England, Scotland, or Ireland, I hope to see you in the next few months coming up after this west coast tour...

Touring in 2023

And now for some shameless self-promotion.

For those looking for incisive political commentary, you can skip this one.  This post is all about what the disturbed commentariat on Reddit like to call "self-promotion."  For those of you who aren't on Reddit (which is most of you), whichever forum on the platform you may be posting on, whether it's one directly related to the type of music you play or not, if you post anything letting people know about a new recording you just made that they can listen to for free on the web, or letting folks know about upcoming tour plans you may have wherever they live, there will inevitably be someone accusing you of engaging in something called "self-promotion," which we are to understand as very negative. 

Anyway, back to the self-promotion.  Or, to give this endeavor a more sympathetic label, back to crowdsourcing these tours.

Very briefly, what am I doing, why am I doing it, and how does it work?

I'm playing mostly original music about current events and history, for live audiences on several continents.  The reason I do it is because I love how live music can impact people, how it can help build and sustain community, and bring people together.  I also love how you can, in a good year, pay the rent by traveling around and doing concerts.

As to how it works, first a few words on how it doesn't work.  It doesn't work by me contacting my booking agent or manager, and them organizing a tour.  There is no booking agent or manager.  About 97% of the time it also doesn't work for me to just contact venues where I'd like to play, and have them organize a concert.  The vast majority of venues have no capacity for promoting the gigs that happen in them -- and this is not to say anything negative about these venues, just to point out how it is.

It can seem a bit confusing from outside the indy music biz, because most people don't need to know how these things work, they just show up to the gigs they want to go to.  But in the little corner of the acoustic music scene I occupy, it's the folk clubs, sponsoring organizations, or concert promoters that need to be part of the equation, if enough people are going to find out about a gig, such that you stand to have a few dozen of them come to it.  The venues themselves don't generally do that, unless the venue is inseparable from the folk club or the sponsoring organization.  And anybody can be a concert promoter!  But someone needs to play that role, for each gig.

So the way I have always crowdsourced my tours is like this:  I try in various ways to let people out there know that I'm planning some tours, and I wait to hear back from people who might be inclined to be the local concert promoter for a gig in their town.  Then I correspond with these wonderful folks who are willing to do this, basically to organize a local gig, and I string together a bunch of tours this way.  When they're successful, it's pretty much entirely due to the efforts of a collection of individuals in different towns who have volunteered to join me in this crowdsourced touring effort.

So after that hopefully interesting and informative introduction to crowdsourced touring, I'll get into some specifics of what I'm planning for 2023, and how people can collaborate with me in this project.  Regardless of whether you might be willing and able to take on the role of local gig organizer, everyone can, by whatever means, let other folks know about a gig happening in their area, or otherwise spread the word about a gig, or a tour, by word of mouth, by email, or by posting on various platforms.

Hawaii and the west coast:  for the last half of January I'm in Kona working on a new album with a stellar international cast of musicians.  This will involve at least one public performance.  During the second week of February I've got six gigs lined up between Eugene, Oregon and southern California.  There are still a couple of dates free when I could do a gig in between San Francisco and LA, or somewhere else in northern California.  Also lots of spring or summer dates free for other potential shows in the PNW, including BC!

Australia:  from March 20th until April 12th I'm in Australia.  I'll definitely be in Brisbane, Sydney, and lots of points in between, traveling by car.  So far confirmed are a couple of dates in the Sydney area.  I'd love to hear from more folks in Australia about house concerts or other gigs, especially in southern Queensland or anywhere in NSW or ACT.

Denmark:  I'll be there for the last week of May, playing in Aarhus and at an acoustic music festival in Roskilde.  I won't be in the country for very long, but I have a couple of dates free for other potential gigs if anyone can organize anything in other towns.

England, Scotland, and Ireland:  Throughout June I'm on one of those two main islands.  Specifically, for the first week of June doing gigs in London and elsewhere in southern England.  Then up towards the north, with one gig confirmed so far in Wakefield on June 10th.  Then further north, taking a ferry to Ireland for gigs there around the weekend of the 17th.  Then back to Scotland for a gig in Glasgow on June 22nd.  Then back down south to the Glastonbury Festival for the last weekend of June, then back home to Oregon.  If you followed this geography you can see that I'll be most everywhere, and as you may imagine, I have dates free for potential gigs anywhere in England, Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, if you're flexible with the date and the day of the week.

Midwestern US:  I'm in touch with friends in the midwest about visiting there in October.  Plans are afoot for house concerts in Michigan and potentially elsewhere in the region, depending on interest.

Hope to see you on the road and in the streets!