This Week with David Rovics

Chris Cook did an absolutely wonderful wrap-up of 2025 for his Gorilla Radio podcast, consisting of snippets from interviews he did throughout the year, with a song of mine between each one!

Perhaps the most broadly notable thing about Bisbee is the town's outsized role in US & Mexican labor history. And the most timely piece of information about Bisbee? I'm playing there this weekend!

 

 

 

One of the things that 2026 holds in store is what some are already calling "the trial of the century."

A guided tour of Ai Tsuno's 9th album, which consists of 12 songs David Rovics created with Ai Tsuno over the course of December, 2025. Topics covered include the ongoing Gaza genocide, the trial of Luigi Mangione, the corporate internet, and the beauty of Bonoboville. The Red and the Blue drops on the music streaming platforms of January 9th, 2026.

If you're feeling hopeless, most likely the first thing you should do is leave all your devices in a hole somewhere and go outside.

This will be one of the tracks on my next album with Ai Tsuno, The Red and the Blue, which, if all goes as planned, will drop on all the music streaming platforms on January 9th.

The modern internet, controlled as it is by the world's biggest corporations and their conflict-promotion algorithms, has become a nightmare of monolithic proportions.

This will be one of the tracks on my next album with Ai Tsuno, The Red and the Blue, which, if all goes as planned, will drop on all the music streaming platforms on January 9th.

There's really no such thing as red or blue -- just lots of folks like me and you.

My biggest hope for 2026? That by the end of it we'll be experiencing a more or less normal winter in the northern hemisphere, and not a nuclear one.

This will be one of the tracks on my next album with Ai Tsuno, which, if all goes as planned, will drop on all the music streaming platforms on January 9th.

What makes a piece of music good? What makes a song a good song?

The music industry has, for a century or so, been obsessively oriented with creating mysterious and exciting identities for artists they want to turn into stars. The industry emphasizes the artist, rather than the art. The art itself, along with the producers, lyricists, session musicians, engineers, and promoters, are all those kinds of things happening "behind the curtain" that, like the Wizard in Oz, are meant to be ignored.

But if you extract all the PR and music business hoopla, what makes a song a good song? Is it actually about the artist recording or performing it, or is it about the music itself? If it's the artist that makes the song, then what about the artist? Does the artist need to have lived a virtuous life in order to make likeable art? Does the artist need to be from a certain part of the world, and not another? Does the artist need to be human?

My take on these questions is in the end, other factors may play into how a song is perceived in a big way, but what really matters is the song itself. If it's delivered well by a competent performer live or recorded, and the listener is in a good place for really listening, then a sad song will make the listener cry. A song about memories of your youth will evoke such memories. A satirical song about current events the listener is following in the news will likely make the listener laugh. These reactions of the listener are the measure of the song's impact.

That's what this song is about. I invite you to close your eyes and give a song your full attention. You might try doing that every day, and call it meditation.

I sat down this morning with the intention of writing a bit of a travelogue about my recent travels in Texas and Georgia, but then I wrote this song instead. I'll probably eventually write the travelogue, too.