As mentioned in my last post, our theme study class this coming term is Songs of Activism: The Music and the Movements of Harry Belafonte and Cesar Chavez. In addition to six weeks of music instruction, I’d like to invite you to watch two documentaries and to join your fellow students online to discuss these documentaries.

I’m so grateful to public humanities scholar Lois Leveen, PhD for leading these discussions! Many of you may know her as our Zoom jam “chatsisstant”, a co-leader of the annual ʻUkulele Bike Jam, and/or as a fellow ʻukulele student in classes. Here’s a little more about her background and what expertise she brings to these discussions:

An award-winning poet and novelist; one of Lois’ poems is inscribed on a hospital wall, and she is the author two novels: Juliet’s Nurse and The Secrets of Mary Bowser. She is now researching the first scholarly biography of the real figure behind the “Mary Bowser” myth.  In researching this project, she has been a Virginia Humanities fellow at the Library of Virginia, a Mellon Fellow at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, and the inaugural Cokie Roberts Fellow in Women’s History at the National Archives. 

Lois can also often be seen riding her bicycle around Portland with her signature cat ears on her bike helmet.

I hope you will join us both at BOTH online discussions. Each will focus on a different documentary related to our class theme study:

• Sunday, September 15, 4:00pm ~ Harry Belafonte: Sing Your Song
• Sunday, October 6, 4:00pm ~ A Song for Cesar

Please be sure you have watched the documentary ahead of the discussion, and plan on at least one hour of discussion. Iʻll send the Zoom link to all registered participants for this class. Learn more and register here. Hope to see you in class!

As the seasons turn – one way or another, depending on your hemisphere – I hope you are enjoying your playing these days! We had a great series of (mostly) outdoor jams here in Portland over the past couple months. Now, as I help my son get ready for Kindergarten (!!), I am also preparing for a new term of classes, beginning the week of September 9 and running through the end of October.

Featured Theme Study ~ Songs of Activism: The Music and the Movements of Harry Belafonte and Cesar Chavez

Each term, I enjoy offering what I call a “theme study” class, in which we dive deeply not just into learning how to play music, but greater themes of how music impacts our wider culture and is intertwined with history. This term, we’ll be remembering the legacy of musician-activist Harry Belafonte and exploring the songs sung and written as part of the United Farmworkers Movement led by Cesar Chavez.

Songs, while often thought of as a form of entertainment, have the capacity to be so much more. They inspire us.  They rally us.  They help us work that muscle of empathy that reminds of our connections to each other.  Ultimately, they reflect what is most important to us. 

In this class, we will learn songs that were central to the Civil Rights Movement, the United Farm Workers Movement, and other recent justice movements.   We will be looking specifically at the activism of musician Harry Belafonte, and at the musicians who supported the activism of Cesar Chavez. 

The class will include six sessions of musical instruction and two online discussions.  The discussions will be led by public humanities scholar Lois Leveen, PhD, and they will focus on two documentaries: Harry Belafonte: Sing Your Song and A Song for Cesar , giving us historical background for the music we are studying.

There are several ways to participate in this class:

• In person here in Portland: Wednesday evenings in SE Portland and Thursday evenings in Beaverton/SW Portland.
• Live on Zoom: Thursdays, 10:00-11:00am PT (check your time zone here)
• Online as a self-paced course: Participants receive a weekly email with a syllabus, song charts, and practice videos

Learn more and register here.

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Click on the direct links below, or peruse these offerings in my website shop. As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts on these classes, please reach out to me anytime.

Hope to see you in class!

On this Memorial Day, I count myself extremely lucky that I have *not* lost a loved one to combat. But today, I hold and remember all who have died in war, and those who mourn them.

My grandfather – “Papa” – was a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War, serving most of his career in the Air Force. Sadly, he knew plenty who died in both of these wars. Each Memorial Day, he reminded us to remember these folks not for how they died, but for how they lived. And so I do.

Of course, I also remember him. When I was a young adult, coming of age during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I struggled to square the reverence for the U.S. military I had because of him with what I saw happening around the world in the name of America. It didn’t square at all.

When Papa died in 2006, my only regret was that I never knew how to talk to him about his work. I never got to ask him how he squared his experience with what he saw happening in our country and abroad after 9/11.

Many years later, I tried – in song – to imagine how that conversation might go. The result is the song That Good That I Can Do, featured on my forth-coming album, The One Who Remembers. Last night, as the sun set on a perfect blue sky, I snuck up to the roof to play this song, remembering him and in the belief that we can carry the “good” of those who have passed forward with us in our own lives.

Alrighty folks, it’s the home stretch… can you help me reach my goal?? I’m trying to raise $10,000 for my new record, THE ONE WHO REMEMBERS and could really use your support! After next Friday, May 31, I need to switch gears into the next phases of release – your pre-order / donation is so helpful and keeps independent music sustainable and accessible.

I’ve got about $2000 left to go. As you’ll learn in the video below, a great way to take some bit bites out of that is to sponsor a house concert or workshop!

[Please note: I make music for a living, not videos. Please forgive the signs of an amateur in this particular medium. 😉]

I have to keep reminding myself that this work is not about the hustle but about the COMMUNITY. The CONNECTION. The MEANING we find when we gather together, hold the moment together, and walk away a little different than when we came.

The heart of the work I do is *very* personal. I play for folks, I teach, I tell stories and listen to other’s stories. Face time – as in, the physical presence of one face to another – is what I actually do for a living.

Have you ever considered bring a performance or a workshop to your own home? Do you also enjoy bringing people together in meaningful engagement? Let’s talk! You can make an individual donation or pool your funds together with your community.

This record is all about the connection we feel to each other and how that connection gives us the strength and resolve to live our lives as individuals. I would love to finish funding it with the connection a home-based event like this offers. 🙏 🎶 💗 Donate here or reach out to me directly.

We all have THAT SONG.

THAT SONG that spoke to us at THAT MOMENT.

THAT SONG that got us through THAT PART OF OUR LIVES.

THAT SONG that will always bring us back to ourselves, get us through whatever we need to get through, take care of us when we’ve lost our footing, or just remind us of who we know ourselves to be.

But have you ever wondered how THAT SONG was written, produced, and released to begin with?

It took an incredible team of folks to help me make the best album I could. Here’s a short introduction to each of these folks:

What did I tell you? Every song that reached your ears – whether on the radio, through your headphones or earbud, on the stereo at the beach, etc. – there is an entire TEAM behind it, making sure that song is the absolute best version of itself. When you support my work, you are supporting their work, too, and contributing to a vital and vibrant artistic community. THANK YOU.

I’ll be honest, I struggle with the common terminology around fundraising for independent projects like this album. Business Speak has been creeping into the arts for a long time, encouraging me to “engage” with my audience by producing “content” or “products” that “capture” their interest enough to “make the sell”, etc etc.  

That said, “crowdfunding” is a pretty apt word for what I’m doing here. It means exactly what it says: raising funds from a crowd of folks! Crowdfunding – seeking funds from a large crowd of individuals (as opposed to say, a few investors) – is a popular strategy for recouping the funds an independent artist puts in up front for a creative project. It is also crucial in providing funds needed to order replications of the project to sell – in this case, a music record – as well as to publicize it.

But here’s the thing. Yes, I make music for a living, which means it is my business. But music – first and foremost – is my craft. All of this work toward the creation, production, replication, and publicity of a product is ultimately in service to and in support of the work I do as a songwriter. The irony of these crowdfunding efforts is that the funds raised actually don’t account for the time spent writing, composing, editing, trying out drafts, fine-tuning, and finally rehearsing for the studio.

Art and those who make art don’t really fit into the typical systems of earning a living in our economy. Art, in its purest form, is not transactional. It’s not a commodity. It can’t be replicated on an assembly line, and one cannot calculate a price based on the cost of goods sold. And yet, artists manage to put food on the table just like everyone else. We do what we do best – we get creative trying to share our work in ways that both honor the real time and effort we’ve put into it and keep our work accessible to our audiences.

Your pre-order / donation to projects like mine may seem like a small, individual act, but it is so helpful! Every sale of a tangible product helps your local artists get back to and continue their craft. To turn Business Speak on its head, it is in this work where the true “value” of artistry lies. Thank you so much for acknowledging the value of art in your life with your support!

“Walk through the door, go find what you’re looking for

When you’re ready to go

When you leave, don’t worry for me

For I have learned to let go …”

There’s a house our family lived in when I was a kid. It was a tumultuous time, a turning point, in which we weren’t entirely sure where we would end up once the turning stopped. But for two years, we lived in this house, we figured things out, found some stability, and when we moved out, we were on our way somewhere great. We had made it, at least through that.

From time to time, when I remember those years, I’ve wondered how that house would have told the story? It had been present to several other families through the years, what story would it have told about us? What if the stationary objects of our lives could reflect back to us the journeys we’d made, not in steps, but in time?

That was the starting point for this song … Walk Through the Door.

I’m currently crowdfunding to support this new album’s release. If you’d like, you can pre-order your copy and/or make a donation to the project here. Please browse other blog posts for more information about the album’s overall themes, other song features, and the realities of being an independent artist. Thank you so much for your interest and support!