Song Talk with Morry Campbell

Songs in the woods...and maybe bears too!

If you're up for a mini-Woodstock experience with a lot of talented indie-musicians in a pristine, beautiful setting, check out Out in the Woods, the first annual LGTB Music festival at Easton Mountain. (August 13 and 14th, Easton Mountain, near Greenwich, NY, events starting at noon on the 13th. Check the website for details). I'm going to be there, along with some of my best buds and fellow musicians: Dan Manjovi, Roger Kuhn, Terry Christopher, Norine Braun, John Small, and Susan Souza, to name a few. Should be a great event. Easton Mountain is one of the most beautiful places east of the Mississippi, and coming from a Montana boy who grew up in the Rockies, that's saying something. I hit the stage at 5:45 on Saturday.

If you want to contribute to a great cause, you can support the festival with a little cash infusion, and you get some cool prizes if you donate. More bootie the more you contribute. Check it out here. Hope to see you under the open skies in the mountains.

Duplicity: The "Defense of Marriage" crowd admits to falsehood

This is a particularly unsettling piece of video. In it, the chairman of the spiteful "Yes on 1" question that eventually passed and decimated protections for same sex couples in Maine, basically admitted that they won using lies and falsehoods to scare the voting public.

If you have to make up lies and half- or total falsehoods to get your way, maybe you should give it up. Please give it up. What a waste of tax-payer money and time! You want to have a Christian influence on your community? Do something for the poor. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Get involved in community service. Don't fight to take away other's civil rights.

 

Video: Good (Good video)?

And now, drum roll please:  rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh!  Here's my very first posting to YouTube. This is an excerpt from Terry Christopher's now annual (for the last three years) United For the Ride Concert, benefitting the NYC LGBT Center's Braking the Cycle Event, the annual fund-raising bike ride from Boston to New York City. We raised a lot of cash that night, and it was a great concert, as I hope this little bootleg video testifies. Many thanks to Terry for filming the event, and for the magical, mystical Barry Childs for operating the camera for us. And it's still possible to donate to the cause. All proceeds go to HIV and AIDS services for the NYC LGBT Center. Click here to donate to this very worthy cause.

Gig: Rye, NY Playland

The Westchester Pride Coalition is holding its first ever Gay Pride event, and I've been asked to be a part of it. There's actually a great lineup of indie musicians performing all day long.  I'm up at 5:15PM sharp. The event itself begins at 1:30 and goes until 7:00PM. Come up, ride the rollercoaster, take in the splendor that is Rye Playland Amusement Park, and enjoy some great indie music. Directions are here. 

If you want to ride the rides all day, tickets are $25. If you just want to hang, check out the vendors, take part in the health fair, and enjoy the entertainment, tickets are $5. ($3 for Westchester residents).

Oh no! The Gays are coming!

Lock up your children! Wives, tie up your husbands! Husbands, lock your wives in the basement! The Gay is coming, and it's coming to get YOU. What will we do when teh GAys have the same rights as we have?!?  JB Urges Speedy Return to Gay Marriages

Benefit Concert, Saturday, July 24, 6:45PM

We're doing it again. United for the Ride, masterminded by Mr. Terry Christopher, is up for it's 3rd annual fundraiser concert.  It's for a good cause, and you'll hear some great music.  What else could you want?

Here's the deets:

3rd Annual United for the Ride Benefit Concert
Saturday, July 24, 6:45PM
The Triad Theatre
158 West 72nd Street (at Broadway)
Free Cover, 2 drink minimum
Donations are for a good cause, and much appreciated.

World AIDS Day Concert

Hey kids,

This past weekend, my good friend Terry Christopher and I went up to contribute our talents to Newburgh, NY's World AIDS day event, organized by Markus Payne. Terry videotaped the event, and here is his (our) rendition of the song, Wade in the Water. Hope you enjoy it.

xo,

M

Call my Senator, and tell him you're not happy

As long as we're off of the songwriting topic already, I want to encourage everyone and anyone to call my State Senator and tell him how displeased you are that he is opposing fair and equal treatment for all New Yorkers.

Senator George Onorato, (D) District 012, pictured above, plans to oppose the marriage equality legislation that is soon to be presented and voted upon in the New York State Senate.

I don't know why he opposes it. I've been emailing him and calling his office for an explanation, and have not received one as of yet. I can only assume, however, that he's making this rather antiquated, regressive stand on his religious convictions. With a name like "Oronato," I'm guessing Catholic.

Please explain to him that he is is a Senator, and not a Cardinal. This is a democracy, not a Theocracy. Religious sentiment has no place in creating civil rights laws. Everybody deserves equal treatment under the law. (You know the drill: be respectful, but firm and to the point).

Call Senator Onorato and tell him to do the right thing. Tell him to support marriage equality in the State of New York.

Albany: 518-455-3486

Long Island City: 718-726-9706

email: onorato@senate.state.ny.us

United for the Ride

Sometimes I think Terry Christopher has more energy in his little finger than I can muster in my whole body.

Recently, Mr. Christopher (in all of his spare time) put together a CD project, called United for the Ride, which will benefit the 2009 Braking the Cycle bicycle ride from Boston to New York City and the sponsor of said ride, the New York City LGBT Center. He approached all the artists, coordinated the mastering process--hell, he even did some design work on the website.

And in honor of him and his heroic effort, I'm putting out this additional project call. In anticipation of the 2010 edition of the United For the Ride effort, write a song that could be considered for the project.

 It doesn't have to deal directly with HIV or AIDS (though it could), but something "uplifting" or "hopeful" or "I will survive-ish" or...you get the idea.  You'd have to be willing to donate the proceeds of the sale of the song to Braking the Cycle/LGBT Center of New York to be on the CD.

In his own words, here's how Terry describes the songs he's looking for:

I just wanted to reiterate that the message of the songs is so very vital. If you can start with Hope and Perseverance as the main anchoring message to your song, that would be awesome. Love, Sense of Self, Determination etc...are also great, positive, hopeful themes in these songs.

There is no "due date" on these songs for now. I'll keep you posted on that front. However, if you'd like to get an early jump on it, and would like more info, you can get in touch with Terry here.

Great video

Hey, y'all,

I  am veering from the usual songwriting fare to post this video. This is one of the clearest, most concise debunkings of the scare-mongering arguments put forth by the Far Right against Marriage Equality.

And, hell, why not write a song about it?

California Blues

I was certain that the mean-spirited, anti-everything that's decent and fair Proposition 8 would be overturned by the California Supreme Court. It seems pretty open and shut to me. Here's a revision of the California constitution, passed by a (slim) majority of Californians, that limits the rights of what the CA Supreme court has already declared a "protected class" of citizens. Which is unquestionably wrong. If the majority had been able to vote on the rights of African Americans in the '60s the Civil Rights Movement would have come to a much different conclusion.

But, judging from the reporting from the proceedings of the hearing, it sounds as if the CA justices are afraid of "overturning the will of the people." Well, that sounds cowardly to me. And I hope they surprise everyone and overturn this hateful amendment.

Is this a surprise to anyone?

Okay, warning:  I'm veering out of the usual songwriting territory and veering into pure politics, but I saw this and I had to comment. Does this surprise anyone? It seems there are studies on everything these days, and the subject of this particular study was on the popularity and consumption rate of pornography from state to state, using anonymised credit card data from a major online adult entertainment provider as the criteria.

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.

Typical. I'm so not shocked by this news I may not pass out and hit my head on the floor. Those that decry the evil pornography the most are those that are using it more than anyone else. If this was just a simple question of human foibles and harmless hypocrisy, that would be one thing. But this is a much deeper issue than that.