David, I heard you sing and play last month in Boston and was moved by all your songs, but especially "Saint Patrick Battalion", as I had an Irish grandmother who came from Cork as a teenager and I had never heard of John Riley and the battalion. I am busy learning to play it on the ukulele and am trying to gather the courage to play it at my ukulele group's open mic at the end of our practices. I am already known as being politically left by the other members of the group who are practicing to play "God Bless America" and "Armed Forces Medley" at the opening of our local kids' summer camp program on Armed Forces Day, the third Saturday in May. (Sigh.) How to even begin to deal with this blindness? Anyway, I'm signing on for a $5 monthly donation, and wish I could do more, because you have inspired me to try to be a braver person.
David is a tremendous historian, and the song for that battalion (better remembered in Mexico as the San Patricios) is an excellent example of using music as a means of education, which is among his goals. That the songs range over so many topics, and are so beautifully rendered—music and lyrics—make him a genius, in my opinion: a talent nonpareil or suis generis. I have many favorites, but know others for whom the St P’s Battalion is their #1 favorite song. I have heard DR many times, Gail, usually in Boston, and I appreciate his commenting on the problems of an independent artist. It is worth becoming a CSA member; and though I understand that in an age where everything is digitized, I suppose CDs are old-fashioned, but I love listening to his albums (I think I have them all) for the old-fashioned art of “liner notes”—and to hear an interconnected series of songs.
David, I heard you sing and play last month in Boston and was moved by all your songs, but especially "Saint Patrick Battalion", as I had an Irish grandmother who came from Cork as a teenager and I had never heard of John Riley and the battalion. I am busy learning to play it on the ukulele and am trying to gather the courage to play it at my ukulele group's open mic at the end of our practices. I am already known as being politically left by the other members of the group who are practicing to play "God Bless America" and "Armed Forces Medley" at the opening of our local kids' summer camp program on Armed Forces Day, the third Saturday in May. (Sigh.) How to even begin to deal with this blindness? Anyway, I'm signing on for a $5 monthly donation, and wish I could do more, because you have inspired me to try to be a braver person.
David is a tremendous historian, and the song for that battalion (better remembered in Mexico as the San Patricios) is an excellent example of using music as a means of education, which is among his goals. That the songs range over so many topics, and are so beautifully rendered—music and lyrics—make him a genius, in my opinion: a talent nonpareil or suis generis. I have many favorites, but know others for whom the St P’s Battalion is their #1 favorite song. I have heard DR many times, Gail, usually in Boston, and I appreciate his commenting on the problems of an independent artist. It is worth becoming a CSA member; and though I understand that in an age where everything is digitized, I suppose CDs are old-fashioned, but I love listening to his albums (I think I have them all) for the old-fashioned art of “liner notes”—and to hear an interconnected series of songs.