Moon Bird: News

The new CD is called 'Red Core'. All the artwork and music are finished. There are 11 songs in all.

Daryl and I are currently working on some new music that will eventually be released on a new CD. To hear some clips from the latest songs go to
Daryl's website.....www.daryllynch.com.

Recession....? Are you f***ing kidding me? It's really a redistribution of wealth. With oil profits at an all time high and $600 billion dollars spent on an illegal war and one-third of that amount is unaccounted for-- is it really a mystery why most of us are feeling a major financial crunch? It is the top 1% of the population who are really enjoying the ride. The rest of us, by the sweat of our brows, are the one paying the price for the ride. We subsidize the oil companies, they pay almost no taxes and they raise the prices tremendously on gas. Supporters say, "well look at Europe, they pay much more". I say look at Venezuela where they pay 12 cents a gallon. The major corporations are turning up the heat on us and are driving us into the ground. This 'recession' is all about greed.

Well, Daryl and I are once again working on new material. It's an organic process so it can take some time, but in the end I think we get the best results we can.
I've just read Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine', and it was very insightful. Recommended reading for anyone wanting a further glimpse into how the economic world is run. Books like this always influence what I write about in Moon Bird songs, just like Chalmers Johnson's 'Nemesis' influenced and pretty much inspired the writing of the song 'Collateral Damage.' I think keeping the communication going amongst ourselves and educating ourselves as to what the power structure is and how that controls us is very important. It is not a benevolent power structure that is going to "take care of us." These people are out to make a profit and willing to kill many people in the process. That is actually what I was writing about in 'Collateral Damage.' Many people die because they are in the way of getting and controlling natural resources. Some day we may be the ones who are in the way and may be seen as 'collateral damage' if necessary. That is why it is important to be aware of what is going on--so we can do everything we can to stop the genocide and the destruction of the planet.

The new CD, 'Collateral Damage', will be out in a week or so, available at CD Baby. There are 9 songs on it, many of them with a potical bent to them. As the title 'Collateral Damage' suggest, it is a strong critique of the military industrial complex and how it seeks to minimize the huge negative impact that it has on the lives of so many innocent people and the environment.

Daryl and I have been busy working on new material for the last several months. Some of our best creations to date will be coming out soon in the form of Moon Bird's 5th CD. It will called 'Collateral Damage' and will have 9 new songs on it.

There is a war on against our freedoms. The power elite (mainly the bankers who own all our money via the Federal Reserve) are tightening the noose around our way of life. Wars are just a way of making them richer and impoverishing the masses while the poor are the ones who put their lives on the line. The extremely rich must be laughing as they get so many to follow their plans to bring in the New World Order. Don't be fooled and think they care about getting the terrorists. They are only interested in controlling all aspects of our lives and making us a nation of slaves. We must act if we wish to keep what freedoms we have left before it is too late.

In early summer 2006, I began writing some songs--songs that were a little different in approach than previous ones in a way I can only describe as songs that I allowed to breathe and take on a life of their own. I wasn't looking for a quick resolution and completion to them. From this approach came the songs, '30,000', 'Sing So Loud' and 'Sacred Love'. I recorded these songs and performed them totally by myself.

I decided to send my good friend and brother-in-music Daryl Lynch a copy of them to show him what I was up to musically along with a couple of ideas for other songs. He showed an interest in the music and had some musical ideas to add to what I had. He ended up replacing the drums and bass that I had on 'Sacred Love' and adding some wonderful backing vocals. He left '30,000' and 'Sing So Loud' as they were.

Daryl then began to add parts to the other sketches and we started to form songs together. We had written songs together in the past, but this time it began to gel a bit more and it seemed to have a more organic feel to it. Creating together while he lives in Phoenix, Arizona and I live in the Catskill mountains in New York is a challenge, but with our love of the music it certainly is not insurmountable.

We sent CD's of our tracks to one another by mail to share our ideas and mostly communicated by emails to discuss what shape these songs would take. As Daryl added his great talents, we completed 'In This Way' with his beautiful piano work. By late summer we had written 'On Her Way'. It is a longer piece in which we played off each others passages and used them as catalysts to make what I consider to be a wonderful song.

I sent Daryl an idea that had a drum beat playing 7/8 time with a guitar riff on it. He added an awesome bass line that defined the whole song. At that point I was able to write the lyrics, put vocals and keys on it and complete the song. That was the song 'What's Going On.'

To round off the collection of songs we decided to do an old song I wrote in 1996. It is the song which Daryl and I played together when we first met and started playing music together. That song is 'Another Form of Living.' It has always been kind of our signature song and we always loved playing it. We wanted to record it in a way that did it justice. We began recording that in late September and took our time tweaking it. With delays in the mail it has ended up taking a couple of months to do. It is near completion now and is sounding great. Once it is completed our new CD --'Sacred Love'-- will be done and available for purchase (probably no more than two weeks at the time of this writing).

It has been a great experience creating this music and I really love what we have done. I hope the listener will enjoy it as well.

--James Kwiecinski--

The new Moon Bird album, "Sacred Love," will be out in a couple of weeks. Jim and Daryl are putting the finishing touches on it. There are eight wonderful songs in all, diverse in themes and sounds with great musicianship. It is sure to be a treat.

How are we ever going to stop consuming? When are we going to stop destroying the planet? Some people say there are a lot of good things about civilization, but civilization just keeps growing and devouring everything. A society based on eternal growth in a finite environment will eventually do itself, and all the creatures of the earth, in. So where do we stop it? Anyone have any answers? What do you do personally to stop it in your corner of the world? Something will have to be done eventually even if its already too late -- if only for the innocents now suffering.

Daryl and Jim have been working for the last couple months on some innovative and provacative music. It should be available in a couple of months. This is work like they haven't done in the past. The tracks are longer and themes are given time to develop and take their own course. Themes include further elaboration on the ruling elites' total disregard for people and the planet in their quest for more production and profits; the plight of poor people on the planet and their place as victims of cruel wars. It is very powerful material.

There's a lot to take in and to consider in the age we are living in and it can be overwhelming at times. Our culture of production moves at a blinding pace and gains momentum. It seems that we are hell-bent on annihilation over more sane choices. I think it is still important with all of this going on that we still try -- that we still do what is best for the world although it seems not to matter at all. There are others to connect with who are having the same thoughts even though one can feel very isolated at times. These are the things I personally struggle with. Wondering, with the course that civilization is on, if the things I do really matter. Well, if I don't do anything that is sure to matter. Anyway, there are people and creatures that need help right now--today. Whatever the future holds there are important tasks and deeds to be done in the present. It will certainly matter to someone.

Trust the governments take on what happened on 9/11? Check out the intriguing documentary, "Loose Change" and see if you still feel the same after viewing it. Go to links on this website and access it there.

In "A Language Older Than Words", Derrick Jensen writes:
"..it seems traditional indegenous people generally have their hands full maintaining their cultures under social, ecological, economic, religious, and military stresses placed upon them by our culture, which means it falls primarily on us who know it most intimately, to eat away at it from inside, to break it down, and ultimately, to destroy it before it takes down with it the rest of the planet in its final act of other- and self-consumption. Our culture has created this mess, and it seems only appropriate that in attempting to rectify it we begin by looking inside."

So here once again the proposal is to increase military spending while cutting social programs. Tax cuts for the super-rich and subsidies and kickbacks for the multinational corporations. We also are less secure and our poor are given less and less of a chance as their numbers increase. Meanwhile, there is a huge crisis looming in the environment that, if not corrected (reducing greenhouse gases significantly) within the next 10 years, will have enormous consequences. There is a stranglehold by the super-powerful and rich on the rest of the world that is literally threatening life as we know it. We must do whatever we can to change this situation. The very least needed to be done is to educate ourselves and others around us. So many people are dying and suffering needlessly everyday and there needs to be an end to it. The power is in the masses of people. It is a relatively small amount of people that are controlling things. To have a true democracy we need to become active and take control of our government and get men and women in there who truly represent the people.

In 'Against Empire', Michael Parenti writes:
"Along with all its horrors and cruelties, the history of imperialism is a history of resitsance and rebellion, coming sometimes in the most unexpected moments and places. Resistance to the self-devouring empire is not a chimera but an urgent necessity. Our best hope is that in the times ahead, as in the past, when things look most hopeless, a new cry will be heard in the land and those who would be our masters are shaken from their pinnacles.
"Not only must we love social justice more than personal gain, we also must realize that our greatest personal gain comes in the struggle for social justice. And we are most in touch with our own individual humanity when we stand close to all of humanity."

Repairing the Sacred Hoop is out and available on CD Baby and samples will be on this site soon. Check it out.

Within a month the new Moon Bird CD 'Repairing the Sacred Hoop' will be out with ten new songs.

In 1945, the French worker-philosoher Simone Weil wrote: Whether the mask is labelled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus -- the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier or the battlelines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector amd makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

I recommend watching 'The End of Suburbia' on DVD for some important information on the peak of oil extraction from the earth. The change in our ability to get oil and the depletion of the remaining reserves will greatly affect the future of the world. Right now wars are being fought for the scraps of what is left of the oil and wars will continue for this dwindling resource. Changes must be made in all of our lives in how we consume and how we will use energy in the near future. The way we are living our lives with the excessive use of natural resources will not continue much longer.