Tulsa Peace Fellowship

There never was a good war or a bad peace. ~Ben Franklin

David Rovics "Troubadour: A People’s History in Song," on tour in Oklahoma

David Rovics will be performing next Saturday, November 20th at 7pm, at A Third Place Community Center (6514 N. Peoria, Turley). Rovics is a tireless advocate for peace, social justice and human rights, and his political folk music is a soundtrack of our shared struggles for freedom. His latest release, "Troubadour: A People’s History in Song," contains eighteen songs about historical events from the 1780’s through Spring 2010.

Rovics is playing in Oklahoma City and Tulsa as part of his “Prairie Fire” tour across the US this fall, and he’s been touring regularly on four continents playing for audiences large and small for over a decade. His music has been featured on Democracy Now!, BBC, Al-Jazeera and other networks; his essays are published regularly on CounterPunch and elsewhere, 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!

A Third Place is a perfect location for a show like Rovics’, with shared goals of sustainability and justice, and common tactics of mutual aid and direct action. In just over three years, A Third Place has established a firm foundation and accomplished a great deal in the North Tulsa / Turley community - from community gardens to food banks, nutrition classes to health clinics, arts and crafts to holiday celebrations. It’s a place for people to come together to solve shared challenges at the grassroots level. Their common message is power lies with the people.

Who: David Rovics – Live in Concert
When: 7pm Saturday, November 20th
Where: A Third Place Community Center (6514 N. Peoria, Turley)
How much: $10 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)

More information:
The artist: DavidRovics.com
The music: through Soundclick.com

I hope to see you there!
~ Sandra Kirkpatrick

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Comment by Tony Nuspl on January 25, 2011 at 2:25pm

Good news, from the artist:

 

Date: 25 Jan 2011 7:54 am

 

Hi folks,

Well, I said the email I sent out 12 days ago would be my only effort to
raise funds for recording and publicizing my "Song for Bradley Manning" and
I lied. I'm learning from you people as I go, and lots of people have said
I should keep you updated on the campaign, so I've adjusted the game plan
accordingly.

Since the email I sent out less than two weeks ago, the video I made on my
iPhone and put up on YouTube on January 3rd (which you can find near the
top of the screen at http://www.davidrovics.com) has gotten almost 9,000
views. It's been shared on the web by a lot of people, including
Wikileaks' own Twitter feed!

At least as impressive, as far as I'm concerned, 82 people have responded
to my call for funds to make a professional recording and music video for
the song, resulting in over $4,000 in donations! I'm currently in the
midst of making plans to record the song next month at the award-winning
Big Red Studios in Corbett, Oregon next month and to make a music video
with some great folks who work for Norwegian television when I'm in Oslo in
April.

There are 8,000 people on my email list and over 90% of the donations I
received have been from people on my list. All but 3 of the donations have
been between $10 and $100 the 3 others being bigger than that! I have
heard that even with a very good email list only 10% of recipients even
open a mass email like this one. So that probably means that 10% of people
who opened the email donated, which seems great to me (that being
approximately 1% of the total number of people on my list, of course).

I said in my previous email that I would use anything in excess of $4,000
for a publicity campaign to drive traffic to the MP3 and music video once
the song has been professionally recorded. So currently that means there
is no money for a publicity campaign. Word of mouth is definitely the best
publicity, and of course I'll be singing the song every night at shows
throughout Europe, Australia and Europe over the coming months. And once
the song is professionally recorded I'm sure that will increase the word of
mouth buzz significantly.

I believe in the power of music, and so do the activists central to Bradley
Manning's support network (some of whom offered to pay for the recording if
I were not able to raise the money myself). $3,000 is about the minimum
for a basic publicity campaign, though there is no end to what can be done
with more money in terms of conventional publicity. So my updated plan is
this: any donations I receive via the "donate" button on my website by the
end of February will be used for publicity.

What this means, in practical terms, is this: if I receive another $3,000
in donations by the end of February I will hire a publicist. Anything
above $3,000 will be used to pay for banner ads and other forms of online
advertising to drive traffic to the free MP3 and video. (Same goes for
anything less than $3,000, if I don't receive sufficient donations to hire
a professional publicist for this campaign.)

In my last email I neglected to mention that for those who don't do Paypal,
checks or money orders are also welcome and can be sent via snail mail to
my PO Box in Portland (which is checked regularly even when I'm on tour in
Europe, etc.):

David Rovics
PO Box 86805
Portland, OR 97286
USA

Also, check out Jeff Zavala's excellent video using my iPhone recording
here:

http://blip.tv/file/4598028

And find out other ways you can support Private Manning here:

http://www.couragetoresist.org

Hope to see you on the road and in the streets! Especially if you're in
Hong Kong, Honolulu, or Olympia, where my next several gigs are... And
after that, Europe! (Confirmed gigs so far all over Ireland, England,
Scotland, Germany, Denmark and Norway...)

Solidarity,
David

note: video link not working properly - let us know if you manage to view the new video for the song
Comment by Tony Nuspl on January 23, 2011 at 8:07pm

Want to make “Song for Bradley Manning” go viral?

 

David Rovics is requesting your donations to help record the song in a professional studio, for wider release.  Here's his letter:


Date: Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 7:37 pm


Hi folks,

Since I recorded “Song for Bradley Manning” on my iPhone less than two
weeks ago it has been viewed many thousands of times.  This is a lot more
than usual for a song that was recorded badly and has received no radio
airplay or media attention aside from the occasional blog.  I've been
getting emails from lots of people I don't know, which is a very good
sign.

I have noticed that the songs and videos of mine and other people's that
tend to go viral like that, without the help of conventional media, usually
share certain things in common.  One is they're songs that speak to people.
 The other is they're professionally recorded with a good band and they
have a professional-quality video to go with them.  Also, though
independent music is never heard on the commercial airwaves and rarely on
the “public” or on syndicated “independent” programs either, if there's any
hope of a song breaking that sound barrier, it needs to be professionally
recorded.

My business model, such as it is, is to write topical songs, make some kind
of recording of them, release them on the web for free and hope that some
of the people who hear the songs will want to organize a gig for me when
I'm in their area.  This model allows me to make a decent enough living,
though I can't afford some things like health insurance and, since my
daughter was born, I have not been able to afford to make any recordings
with a band.

If you go to www.soundclick.com/davidrovics, where I have 248 songs up for
free download, you can see that most of the songs to make it into the
“Soundclick Top 50” or “Soundclick Top 10” are from the last studio CD I
recorded that involved a band, which was in 2006.

I'm happy to live within my means and continue to make inexpensive,
generally solo-guitar-and-voice recordings that I put up on the web.  Given
the obvious interest in this song, however, I thought I'd put it out there,
come what may, that I would be even happier to make a high-quality studio
recording of the song with a great bunch of professional musicians and then
make a music video to go along with it.

I can't pay for it, though, and there aren't any record labels approaching
me about it either, and there won't be.  I know that probably half of you
reading this also don't have health insurance.  But for those of you with
any disposable income, be it $10 or $100 or more, here's my offer, take it
or leave it:

Any donations that come in via the “donate” button at www.davidrovics.com
(where you can also hear the song in question) by the end of this month
will be used next month to make a high-quality recording of the song.  This
email will be the only effort I will make at raising this money.  Here's
what I will do with it, depending on how much people donate:

$500  I'll rent an award-winning studio for the day and make a high-quality
solo recording

$2,000  I'll rent the studio for two days along with several amazing studio
musicians and make a recording of the song with a band

$4,000  I'll hire the studio, the band, and a team of professional cut-rate
videographers to make an MTV-quality video in the process

In the unlikely event of more donations than that, I'll hire a publicist to
try to get the song some conventional media attention.  To make the concept
more interesting, anybody who contributes $500 or more gets a complementary
house concert next time I'm in your country or region.

Obviously, feel free to share this email with whoever you want to.

Yours,
David

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