A busy Spring is in the rear view mirror, including my most recent adventures in the Pacific Northwest (2026, anyone?) and the great north of Scotland with a whole bunch of friends. We got all the way up to the Orkney Islands thanks to Scotland Folk Tours, and there are just some times when words fail, between the sights, sounds, MUSIC, vast expanses of green, brown, and blue, the food, tea-coffee-bus and late-night conversations, the rugged and always-inviting people in this amazing country, and everything else I left out.
There were fair bits of “what’s going ON in your country?” here and there, but this comes from a people (and other travelers from other countries) who have experienced violence, cruelty, invasion, flawed leadership, tribulation, and revolution for centuries, not months, years, or even decades. We’re getting a taste in our fledgeling social experiment and it must move and inspire us to be better ourselves and for one another. There is no time in global history where the lack of kindness or compassion should ever be tolerated and go unchallenged.
On June 6-7, 2025 the Chicago area marked a memorial gathering for Allan Shaw, founder and driving force behind the Rediscover Music Catalogue and Folk Era/Wind River Records. I was privileged to be associated with Allan and crew for more than 30 years starting with my very first CD Rising in Love. Allan retired from a law career in 1985 to start the label, and he released albums by people he considered friends: The Kingston Trio, the Limeliters, Glenn Yarbrough, Bob Gibson, John Stewart, The Brothers Four, The Chad Mitchell Trio, and many others later on, including yours truly. A friend indeed. Any time spent with Allan was a time of warmth, shared passion for music, and mutual respect. You couldn’t help but walk away feeling better than you did when you visited the home office, which shared space at the Naperville Cemetery (!) with the headstone showroom.
Can’t make this stuff up.
Thanks to Allan, both the New Kingston Trio and the Folk Legacy Trio took my song
“May the Light of Love” into their respective repertoires over the years.
Godspeed, good sir.
And a couple nights later in NYC, the songwriting group that Jack Hardy started in his rent-controlled apartment on Houston Street (and that I attended during my days in NYC in the 1980’s) held it’s final meeting after a run of some 50 years. The building is slated for renovation.
Jack passed in 2011, but the group continued, guided by his manifesto.
Held every Monday for all this time, you could only bring a song that you had worked on that week to play in front of your peers – a foundational construct that encouraged writers to regularly practice their craft.
Cheers, Jack, to all the songwriters who had the opportunity to cross your path, and to creators everywhere. There are more creators than there are haters. (yes, that’s in a song).
ALL of my 15 CDs are now reissued on a wooden 8 GB flash drive ~ 241 songs, lyrics, and liner notes (for the exotic price of $40. It’s time to cut down on plastic and paper, and it saves me the need to give a CD player to anyone who buys a CD these days 🙂 This new drive has both a regular USB connect on one end AND a USB-C (for Macs) on the other for maximum compatibility. Comes attached to a handy silver lanyard for those who like necklaces! ALSO included on the drive are other out-of-print items – the 12 tracks and cover “art” from my 1988 cassette May the Light of Love and both DR Songbooks.
As we say in New England, this is a “wicked bahgain”.
Oxford University Press Worldwide has just re-upped for the use of my song Nine Gold Medals in yet another Indian textbook called Satthwa A Value Education Course 5. The licensing fee? 17,851.5 rupees. I got excited! Then I went to the currency calculator. Still, all these kids in India hearing about this story of courage and selfless-ness is worth every rupee and all of the two hundred dollars 🙂
Thank you for tuning in, always.
David
