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Hi folks,

Here are ten new songs, most written while I was on tour in Europe over the spring. If you like them and feel compelled to do something to support my musical efforts here are 3 things you can do:

1) Share these songs with your friends. (Especially your friends who host radio shows and organize festivals.)

2) Volunteer to organize a show next time I’m in your area. (I tour regularly on four continents, so there’s at least a decent chance I’ll be there soon…)

3) Drop a few coins in my Virtual Guitar Case – click the “donate” button at http://www.davidrovics.com (contributions small, large and medium all welcome).

You can find my Ten New Songs as high-quality free downloads at http://www.soundclick.com/davidrovics (along with 238 other songs). You can also click on the link following each song title below and listen to the song that way.

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

David

Cordova

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382542

On Earth Day last I was on a plane headed to Europe, reading Riki Ott’s fantastic book, One Last Drop, about the Exxon Valdez disaster, just as the oil began to gush off the Louisiana coast. Everybody should read that book. Anyway, this song is about a particular incident in 1993 when fishermen blockaded the harbor.

If I Were Captain of the Pirates

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382541

My latest in a series of pirate-themed songs. I was thinking about what I’d like to do to the oil industry’s executive officers and larger stockholders, but the song was getting altogether too violent and so I turned it into a pirate song, making it much more palatable and even child-friendly!

Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382539

Hearing the stories of out-of-work fishing communities in Louisiana, thinking about the history of the Cajun people, and how the refugees from Canada are now becoming refugees again. This time the reason is not the British Empire, it’s a transnational corporation with a very British and very imperial history.

Song for the Mavi Marmara

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382537

I had friends on several of those boats, including the Mavi Marmara. Just when the most cynical of leftists thinks Israel can’t possibly do something even more outrageous than the last outrage, they go and do it. They massacred unarmed activists trying to bring basic necessities in to help alleviate the suffering of a besieged, hungry population. Read Kevin Neish’s firsthand account of the raid on the ship.

The Last Lincoln Vet

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382535

It’s strange getting older. When I was young the old people around me were the 1930′s generation, veterans of the massive Depression-era struggles of the day. Bob Steck lived a few miles down the road from my mother in Connecticut and was, among other things, a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and spent 16 months in one of Franco’s concentration camps. He died a couple years ago at the age of 95, and this song is for him and others like him. Many of them of course were killed in battle in Spain long ago. Most of those who survived the war spent the rest of their lives serving humanity in one way or another. The few survivors are now in their nineties.

I’m Taking Someone With Me When I Go

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382540

I wrote this song after the last high school massacre. I don’t remember where it was, but it followed the typical pattern – ostracized teenage boy finally snaps and shoots pretty, popular girls who tend to ignore kids like him. There will be more, unfortunately, and this song is for them, too.

Sugihara

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382536

There are persistent myths about Japan being a basically homogeneous society made up of obedient drones. It’s not, and never has been – in fact a serious reading of Japanese history is full of dissent of all kinds, going back many centuries. During the Nazi holocaust in Europe there was a Japanese Schindler, and his name was Sempo Sugihara. I heard about him through my friend Ben Manski, who is alive today because of this man and his wife Yukiko. Ben and his grandfather, Samuil, are what some call Sugihara Survivors.

Riot Dog

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382538

On a recent trip to Athens, Greece I personally verified the legend: the dogs of Athens are on the side of the anarchists. This song is about a particularly legendary dog who I may have met, not sure, but in any case his name is Loukanikos and he has been photographed at every riot in Athens over the past two years, always right up in the faces of the police, impervious to tear gas, smoke grenades, and whatever else the cops throw at him.

Up the Provos (Song for Francis Hughes)

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382533

After playing a gig at Roddy McCorley’s on the Falls Road in West Belfast, spending the entire night after the gig singing rebel songs with members and relatives of a band called the Irish Brigade, and then reading an excellent book I bought at the Sinn Fein book store about the 1981 hunger strike in the prisons there (Ten Men Dead, great book) I had to write a song about one of the hunger strikers and this is what happened.

Union Makes Us Strong

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9382534

I was just fiddling around on the guitar one day and this is what came out. I was thinking of stories Bob and Jo Steck used to tell about the 1930′s in their respective homes – Bob in Iowa and Jo in New York City. I suppose this song represents the most fundamental message I and others like me are trying to communicate – in union we can achieve anything.

Bentleys Bar, Canterbury University, August 20th. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.

To purchase tickets follow the link below and use the Paypal link or ring Mike on 021 409 158

http://wpnz-pflp-solidarity.blogspot.com/p/david-rovics-don-franks.html

How did you get started in music? In activism? Did/Do you have any particular mentors?

My parents are both musicians, so I was surrounded by music and musicians from birth, mostly of the classical variety. My folks are thoughtful, progressive types so these kinds of ideas came early on as well, but it was at Rowe Camp in western Massachusetts, in the northeastern US, where I was really introduced to activism, where I was exposed to sections of the progressive movement in the form of the Clamshell Alliance and other folks trying to shut down New England’s various old, leaky nuclear reactors at that time, not too long after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident a couple years before. This was in 1979. As for mentors, many of them. Anybody who’s good at any art form probably at some point steeped themselves in the tradition, whatever tradition is relevant to the art in question. If I were to pick one person who taught me the most about songwriting it would be Jim Page of Seattle.

What are your thoughts on the importance of music in social change movements?

Music and other art forms have always been central to social movements, around the world, going all the way back I’d say. Music is also central to all sorts of other social forces – like many things, music is regularly used for good and for bad and everything in between. Humans are just musical creatures, music is an important way we communicate and relate to the world. It’s long been known by people, whether they’re trying to build community, bring people together, educate people, or if they’re trying to manipulate people into identifying with your product line or fighting your wars of aggression, that music is effective.

Could you tell us a bit about your song writing process? What are some of your sources of inspiration?

I’m most often inspired by events that happen in the world, whether I’m somehow involved with them myself or witnessing them remotely, as well as by events in recent or not so recent history that seem particularly instructive somehow or other. I’m pretty much always trying to bring people into a situation that they did not themselves experience. I like to make lots of connections between the universally familiar aspects of a story and the particular, unfamiliar aspects. Get people to identify with something familiar, which then opens them up to experience something unfamiliar from that perspective. For example, most people may not know what it’s like to have your little village bombed by the US Air Force but most people can identify with the idea of living in a village, getting up in the morning, bathing your child, cooking breakfast over a fire, etc. That’s what happened before the village got bombed.

What are some of the challenges you have faced as independent/political artist? How about some of the good things about being indie?

Well I suppose it partially depends on whether you look at your cup as being half empty or half full. The challenge of being an independent artist is that you really have to be good at running a small business in addition to being a good artist. The other challenge is that you’re locked out of commercial airplay, especially in the US, and in the US you’re also locked out of so-called “public” media as well. But it’s long been a fantasy that there’s really much of an alternative to doing it yourself. The dream of being on a major label that takes care of publicity and organizing your tours and all that, gets you on big TV programs, etc., has never been a reality for the vast majority of great artists out there in the world, and that’s probably more the case now than ever. But all challenges aside it is definitely possible to make a living as an independent and political artist – but you absolutely have to be good, you have to have fans, and you have to be able to maintain a website, answer your phone, and it sure helps if you know how to touch type.

Do you worry about “selling out”? How do you manage to stay true to your ideals and also earn a living?

I don’t worry about selling out because I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that any major record label will ever be interested in me. Other than that, my main goal here is to write good songs and get them out there to as wide an audience as possible. I’m pretty flexible in terms of how that might best work. Some peripheral element of EMI was once involved with distributing a CD of mine. I never signed with them (and they didn’t ask me to) and they really didn’t help much at all, but they did some distro for me anyway. I register all my songs with BMI (one of those royalty agencies over here that you have to register with if you want to get royalties for airplay), I get checks for airplay every few months, they play me now and then on BBC. Some hardline anarchist types might consider any number of these things selling out, but I don’t. But I’ve never been confronted with a difficult choice in that regard, at least not difficult for me – like if a big record label approached me and said they want to put out a David Rovics CD but it has to be all love songs or something like that. But that ain’t gonna happen.

As an artist, what are your thoughts on copyright and intellectual property? How about your thoughts on music “piracy”?

I have a lot of thoughts on that. I’d say they’re nuanced, and they fall into a couple possible categories. I’d say there’s the ethical angle and the practical angle. Ethically, I think we need to acknowledge that there’s really no such thing as originality, we’re all using a language we didn’t invent, musical forms we didn’t invent, chord progressions, melodies, etc., none of it really original. So to claim ownership of something you created is in a sense totally ridiculous and arrogant. On the other hand, still on the ethical front, it is ethical for musicians and creators of other such intellectual property to have a way to make a living from what they’re doing, at least if people like it. There should be some way to allow this to happen without necessarily saying these creations are owned by someone. There isn’t, in most places, but there should be.

Moving on the practical front, leaving aside the morality of intellectual property and “piracy,” what are the actual effects on working musicians of the internet? Before answering my own question I’ll back up. Most working musicians, if they’re making any kind of a living, are making it from performing. I have no doubt that all of us performing musicians would have been better off without any technology, I mean no radio, TV, telephone, central heating, air conditioning, record players, none of that. Back before central heating and air conditioning people gathered on the front porch, the living room, the local pub, and if anybody wanted to hear music, someone had to play it. I’m pretty sure live musicians were in more demand and more appreciated back then than they ever have been since.

But if we’re going to have technology it should be interactive, and the internet is the best thing to happen to independent musicians since any of this technology was introduced into our lives. The music industry doesn’t want you to know this, whoever is reading this, but putting your music up for free download is the best thing you as an independent musician can do for your career, in my opinion. Why? Here’s how it works. If you’re a performer, you need gigs. How do you get gigs? Your fans book shows for you and your fans pay to come to those shows. How do you get fans then? By putting your music up for free download. Or, if you’re on a major label or something, by having your music played regularly on popular radio stations, but for most of us that ain’t gonna happen – certainly not over here in Clearchannel land. But the good news is that fewer and fewer people, it seems to me, are paying attention to Clearchannel and more and more people are searching the web and developing a more diverse musical palette than ever before, and they’re doing it for free. (I’m not suggesting commercial airplay has become irrelevant – it’s still very dominant.)

Do you have any proteges or younger artists that you mentor/work with? Is there anyone in particular you would like to work with?

When I describe Jim Page as a mentor, he didn’t actually do much physical mentoring – it was more a remote mentoring process, from listening to his records and going to his shows, often with a tape recorder in hand. I’ve definitely been useful to other younger songwriters in that capacity, but not so much as a mentor in an up-close kind of way as far as I know… As for people I’d like to work with, there are lots of musicians, young and old, who I’d love to form a band with if I could figure out how to make that work financially. Maybe I’ll just do it regardless eventually but I haven’t really gotten around to it. I really enjoy other kinds of collaborations but I’ve done very little of it really and don’t have any particularly urgent ideas for more of it right now…

Are there any artists or activists (or other folks) who you’d like to recommend to your fans?

Oh, lots and lots of artists and activists I’d recommend. I’ve had the good fortune to tour with some of my very favorite songwriters, such as Robb Johnson, Attila the Stockbroker and Alistair Hulett, as well as the aforementioned Jim Page. In terms of activists, there are so many, but certain people like Medea Benjamin just drive me wild, in an entirely good way. I think she’s a real role model for a lot of people, for good reason. I’d recommend people getting involved with anything she’s doing. And if folks would like some book recommendations I’d start with Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine and then read Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization.

What are some of your favourite places to perform and why? How about places you would like to perform in the future?

My favorite places to play are at or around protests, especially big protests with good sound systems where the organizers want me to do an extended set. Doesn’t happen very often, but those are my favorite gigs. I have a great time with lots of other gigs, though, too. Places I’d like to perform? I’d like to travel a lot more in Latin America, but the language barrier has kept me from doing much of that. I tend to only go to places where I can put together tours that allow me to make a living, so that limits me so far mostly to North America, northern Europe, Australia and New Zealand – but I’m not complaining!

Do you prepare differently for performances at protests or rallies than for a more standard concert? If so, what are some of the differences?

I don’t prepare for a gig ever, unless I have a particularly topical song for the moment that needs to be sung at a protest that’s coming up, in which case I might work a little harder than usual to get the song memorized in time for the occasion. Otherwise preparation is just a constant matter of playing gigs, writing songs, and learning them. That’s all preparation for the next gig, but it’s a very general sort of preparation. I don’t put on makeup or change my clothes or anything like that… I often smoke a joint, but that’s not an activity reserved only for when I’m about to perform, that’s more what I do when I wake up, to prepare for the day, whatever it may entail…

How did you find your previous NZ tours? What are you looking forward to doing on your trip this time around?

I had wonderful times on both of my tours of New Zealand thus far. I’m especially fond of the scene in Wellington and Auckland, probably because those are the towns where I found I already somehow had dozens of fans even before I ever went there, which still impresses the heck out of me when that sort of thing happens… I’m particularly taken with the region around Motueka and Nelson, looking forward to seeing those gorgeous forests again, but just about the whole country is stunningly beautiful to one degree or another, and I’m looking forward to soaking up lots more of that. This time around I’m looking forward especially to having just a little bit more time than during the last tour, ’cause this time I don’t think I’ll have a gig every day that I’m there like I did the last time, ’cause I made sure the visit would be a bit longer this time…

Do you have any big plans for the future?  New albums? Collaborations?

I’ve been writing a lot of songs over the past couple months so that’s made me start thinking about a new album, but I don’t have any concrete plans. It’ll surely happen sometime over the next year or so. I’m planning a huge tour of the continental US which is to happen throughout the fall, just after I get home from New Zealand.

Where did the idea for the kids album come from? Any new kids songs in the works?

I do still write songs for kids now and then, though I don’t know if I’ll make another recording of children’s songs, at least not until my nascent career as a children’s performer gets off the ground a lot better than it has so far. The idea of the kids’ album was based entirely on having a kid myself. Before my daughter Leila was a year old I was writing children’s songs inspired either directly or indirectly by things she did, things she was interested in, things she said. This seems to happen to a lot of songwriters who have a kid…

Lastly, is there any advice you’d like to share for the aspiring musical rabble-rousers out there?

Yes – read my booklet about that! Sing for Your Supper, published by PM Press… But in terms of very brief bits of advice other than that I’d say there is a constant need for good songwriting about what’s happening in the world, and if you feel inspired to contribute to society in that particular way you should do it. It’s a craft, requiring time and effort, but not necessarily much else. You work at it properly and you get better at it, til eventually you’re really good at it and then people start telling you you must be really naturally talented, which is bullshit. Art is a bit mysterious though to people who haven’t worked at it so they often don’t realize it’s just a matter of putting in time and effort. You can write great songs just for the sake of doing that, or you can also at least potentially make a living at it if you want to, though specifically for New Zealanders reading this, for better or for worse, that probably means spending most of your time outside of New Zealand. New Zealand is too small for a politically-oriented singer-songwriter to make a living doing that as a full-time career. The thing is, even if you have a fair number of fans, you’re usually best off not playing the same town more than once a year. Now for more useful advice like that, read the book… (It’s cheap!)

David Rovics is touring NZ throughout August 2010

For more info about David’s upcoming NZ tour visit: http://davidrovicsnz2010.wordpress.com/nz-tour-dates-2010

David’s Official site with free downloads, lyrics, and more: http://www.davidrovics.com

Presale tickets available now for the Wellington gig on August 28: http://bit.ly/9tGFyA

Doors open at 8pm, tickets on the door for $20. Last year the Wine Cellar was packed to the rafters so make sure you arrive early to score a good spot!

Special guests will be opening, stay tuned for more!

David Rovics (USA)

with special guest Don Franks

Newtown Community Centre Theatre,

corner Rintoul and Colombo Streets

Saturday 28th August, 2010

Doors open 8:00pm, show starts 8:30pm sharp

All Ages, seated concert

Presales $15 (early bird) or $19 (plus $1 booking fee) via www.eventfinder.co.nz

Doorsales $25 (cash only)

If you’ve seen David Rovics before you won’t need to read any further.

For those who haven’t, don’t miss this opportunity!

This is a limited capacity event.

David Rovics grew up in a family of classical musicians in Wilton, Connecticut, and became a fan of populist regimes early on. By the early 90′s he was a full-time busker in the Boston subways and by the mid-90′s he was traveling the world as a professional flat-picking rabble-rouser.

These days David lives with his family in Portland, Oregon and tours regularly on four continents, playing for audiences large and small at cafes, pubs, universities, churches, union halls and protest rallies. He has shared the stage with a veritable of who’s who of the left in two dozen countries, and has had his music featured on Democracy Now!, BBC, Al-Jazeera and other networks.

His essays are published regularly on CounterPunch, and the 200+ songs he makes available for free on the web have been downloaded more than a million times.

Most importantly, he’s really good. He will make you laugh, he will make you cry, he will make the revolution irresistible.

For David’s third visit to Wellington in as many years, he will be joined by local folk stalwart Don Franks. Addressing issues relevant to people in New Zealand today, Franks builds on the tradition of political folk, adding an air of spontaneity and healthy dose of tounge-in-cheek humor. Listeners will be treated to a selection from Franks’ sizeable repetoire, including hits from his 2009 album ‘Safer Communities Together Blues’.

More info (and free MP3s) at www.davidrovics.com