August, 2004...I know life has been whizzing by: my last entry here was nearly a year ago...gasp!...where to begin? At the moment I'm sitting in Boston's Logan Airport waiting for the next bus back to Cape Cod. This time I'm returning home from the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College near Asheville, NC...music camp! I was part of the faculty for something called "Contemporary Folk (oxymoron??) Week" joining an amazing group of teachers and students, the former including Penny Nichols, Bob Franke, Tanya Savory, Craig Carothers, Siobhan Quinn, Mae Robertson, Eric Garrison, Crow Johnson, Mary McLaughlin, Annie Gallup, David LaMotte, and Rachel Cross...finer people you couldn't spend a week on earth with, not to mention the incredible student body, matriculaters (sp?) ranging in age from teens to upper 60's, I'm guessing. They've been doing this every summer for years down there but this was my first time, and my cup is overflowing with inspiration (if underflowing from sleep deprivation). Never got to bed before 3 AM once during the week, just so much great music and fascinating from-the-heart folks that made it too tempting to spend a lotta time in Snoozeland. I've experienced lots of music over my life starting way back at my dad's nightclub in Chicago, but what I witnessed this week from my fellow teachers and students was as great and honest as anything I've ever heard. Just imagine a little asteroid somewhere where all the inhabitants made a conscious choice to take a trip together, new and old friends with a common interest in self-expression and a love of something that makes their hearts sing. I'm babbling, but brimming. If the leaders of the world spent a week together embracing music in this way, the world would be a better place. Try a camp sometime. I can recommend a few.

     Beyond that, I've had some long awaited completions - my new double CD "Think Twice" came out in January, and we did the first CD release concert in New Jersey for Scott Sheldon and Sanctuary Concerts. It was right around zero degrees outside that night, and still 100 + hearty folk fans braved the frigidity to help me celebrate in the birth state of my mother (New Jersey Penmanship Champion, 1947, honest). Then came the Philadelphia Folksong Society's monthly event that I shared with Lui Collins, another fine night and good crowd in spite of an Eagles NFL playoff game at the same time. Picture many volunteers backstage huddled around a tiny black and white TV, and random cheers or groans throughout the concert. Folk meets football. I love it.

     Continuing on through a string of events that includes the usual unusual array of coffeehouses, churches, conferences (teachers, parent organizations, volunteerism, chromosome research, health promotion and wellness, family businesses), workshops, house concerts, schools, Phil Ochs tributes, radio interviews and live broadcasts complete with studio audiences (Boston and Chicago to name two), camps, business breakfasts, fundraisers, staff trainings, and team building...a songwriter's life! Actually, the Seattle Symphony has invited me to come next April and give a two hour presentation at their community education center, and the "interlectureactive" will be called..."A Songwriter's Life"...a little talk and q/a with someone (yours truly) who made somethin' where nuthin' was before, going on 18 years full-time now. Yikes.

     Another completion: in April of 2003 I traveled to Northeim, Germany, invited to record a baker's dozen of my songs for the European Stockfisch label (www.stockfisch-records.de), and it was a great experience. Producer Gunter Pauler and second guitarist Chris Jones were my Dream Team, and we recorded for 4 days - finishing guitar duets and all my lead vocals in record, uh, CD time. "Pearl Diver" is now out (on CD AND LP), was "Audiophile CD of the Month" in the May issue of 3 German music magazines, and you can contact me if you're interested in hearing what we did over there with some of my older ballads including Rising in Love, That Kind of Grace (new verses), Lullaby, Before I Die, John & Josie, Some Kind of Hero, and "Vincent" by Don McLean ... a contemplative collection and a different feel from the work I've done here at home over the last several years, beautifully recorded.

     When I got back to the States from that trip, filmmaker Michael Moore was just winning an Oscar AND simultaneously getting some criticism for speaking out against war as he received his award for Best Documentary ("Bowling for Columbine")...then actors Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were UN-invited to speak at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY (they were both in baseball movie "Bull Durham" which was to be celebrated at this event) by the president of that facility, nervous that the two would also make it their opportunity to speak out against war (due to the ensuing public outcry and public relations disaster, the baseball executive apologized). Robbins said he had no intention of using that forum to talk about his views on world conflict, but when invited to the National Press Club in Washington DC soon thereafter to speak about the whole episode, he opened by saying (I paraphrase) "I've got to be careful I don't use THIS opportunity to say something about baseball!"

     On July 21st, 2004, sources such as USA TODAY, CNN, AP, and TIME reported the words of presidential scholar Doug Brinkley of the Eisenhower Center and author of 'Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War.', regarding the pacifist tendencies of celebrities. He says: "This is not new behavior. During Vietnam, Hollywood vehemently denounced Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Artists like to see themselves as anti-war," he says. "Being a pacifist comes with the territory." How about the words of Eisenhower himself?

     "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." ... former president Dwight Eisenhower

     It's a critical time in our history, with a lot of information out there. Please go where your heart and mind guide you and vote in November, and encourage others to do the same.

     -David