Hi folks,

I've got a bunch of projects and other stuff to announce that will hopefully be of interest...

Ukraine, Crimea, etc.

I thought John Kerry needed some help with his talking points on the situation in Ukraine, so I wrote a song for this purpose -- The American Way.  Hope you like it.

TPP, TTIP and "free trade" 101

I also wrote a new song about the latest and worst "free trade" bills currently being discussed in secret by hundreds of corporate lobbyists (to be approved later by their politicians/servants), "TPP 101."  Hope you like it.  (If you do, then share it, tweet about it, learn it, sing it at demos, etc.!)

I painstakingly put together a blog post, a brief musical history of "free trade," but perhaps more to the point, I'll be doing that brief musical history as an internet radio broadcast on Spreaker on Monday, March 17 at 1 pm Pacific Time (4 pm in New York).  Hope to see you in the chat room during the show!  But it will also be archived, shortly after the live broadcast, in the same place...  (I'll also be doing April in History and Song there on Spreaker on March 30...)

Making a Thunderclap clap

8-country, 8-week tour of Europe starts on April 3, and I'm trying to get folks to join me in a social media blast to tell folks about the tour on that date.  If you take a minute to join my Thunderclap campaign, it will sign you up to do that (for those of you who are on Twitter, Facebook and/or Tumblr).  Or if you just want to make a plan to spread the word some other way on April 3 that my tour of Europe is beginning, and point people to www.davidrovics.com for more info, that would be really great, too...

Subscription campaign update

A whole bunch of you responded very positively to the email I sent out a little over a week ago marking the one-year anniversary of the beginning of my subscription campaign.  Two of you even joined the Song Circle, I'm very happy to report!  Now I'm getting close to 300 subscribers...

More tour plans

After I get back home from Europe (via Boston) at the beginning of June, I don't have many concrete plans yet, and I'm very, very open to suggestions!  But the general idea will be to spend most of the summer in Portland and wherever else I might land any gigs, which so far includes, for the first time, the Vancouver Folk Festival in BC!  For the autumn, the plan will be to tour all over the eastern half of the US and Canada (though so far none of that is booked yet).

Other items of interest

PMN's Song of the Month program is now up and running!  If you're a songwriter, check it out!  If you know any songwriters, tell them about it!  There's even prize money each month if your song on that month's topic gets chosen.

The campaign to move my dear friend Marie Mason from her current gulag-like prison environment to a less gulag-like environment has a spiffy new brochure.  You know what to do with it!  People v Towery is another case involving infiltrators and informants that needs to be supported.

There are two great musicians with new albums out, which you can stream online for free, and/or puchase!  One is Vote Nobody by Cardiff-based anarchist songwriting sensation, Cosmo.  The other is The Great Salish Sea by Dana Lyons, from the Salish shores of Bellingham.

Another great songwriter, formerly of Bellingham, currently based in Austin, who is trying to raise money for her next album is Shawnee Kilgore.  Please consider supporting her Kickstarter campaign!

All for now...

David