To order a CD, please send $15 plus $2.00 shipping and handling for each one to:

Graham and Barbara Dean
P. O. Box 332
Great Barrington, MA 01230

To order a “PATRIOTS ACT” T-shirt, please send $20 plus $2.50 shipping and handling for each one to the above address — let us know what color and what size you want. (light blue with navy trim, white with black trim and heather gray with black trim, in M-L-XL sizes.)

For more info, suggestions or just to get in touch with us, please contact us at: deang (at) commonsensesongs(dot) com

On October 26, 2001, President Bush signed into law the USA PATRIOT act, which is an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”. (Try saying that ten times fast). This act gives more power to government agents to track information about and to detain suspects, all under a veil of enforced secrecy. It undermines civil liberties protected by the Constitution, and threatens our most cherished freedoms and rights.

Available in: light blue w/ navy trim
white w/ black trim
heather gray w/ black trim

M-L-XL sizes.

Shirts are $20
(with $2.50 shipping and handling)

One good acronym deserves another. In order to reclaim the word “PATRIOT”, which has been distorted and co-opted by the Bush administration, we came up with our own definition and acronym for this word, which we feel is more accurate.

Listen up: Photo In A Frame [audio:http://commonsensesongs.com/music/02PhotoInAFrame.mp3]

Our first CD is entitled “Tom Paine’s Blues” for several very good reasons! As an Anglo-American couple, we were attracted to Thomas Paine as an Englishman by birth, who considered his country to be the world, and who was a prime mover of the American War for Independence (as well as the French Revolution), who had an uncanny, prescient understanding of what America could become. His writings, which include “Common Sense”, “The Rights of Man”, “The American Crisis” (a series of articles) and “The Age of Reason”, among others, displayed courage, wisdom, foresight and a humanistic, ethical sensibility that rings ever more true today. The “blues” part, refers, as you might guess, to the way he might feel if he were alive today, at the widening gap between his vision of the great destiny America might have in the evolution of humankind, and the reality of its behavior in the world as it became more and more powerful.

The CD contains 10 of Graham’s original songs (as well as a poem by Barbara, and two songs by other writers). With the exception of one song, they were all written in 2002/2003, during the frightening course of the Bush2 administration. He watched, and wrote songs about, the bombing and violence of two wars in two years, the quest for global domination, the shrinking of our rights and civil liberties, the secrecy and lies and arrogance. Some songs express anger and frustration, some use irony and humor, some plead for non-violence and a more humane world. If only we could all heal the world with songs!

To order:
Please go to the Contact section of this website.

Barbara I grew up in a politically left-wing family in Queens, New York, listening to the music of Paul Robeson, Josh White, Leon Bibb, Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger and the Weavers, Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. I went to a summer camp where many of the kids came from similar backgrounds, and I especially relished singing wonderful folk songs every night around the campfire. Those songs were so nourishing, so life- and health-enhancing.

I went to Music and Art High School in Manhattan, playing saxophone and piano, and learned both bassoon and folk guitar while in high school. Though I loved the rock music of the 60’s and 70’s, I never forgot my love of folk and protest music — it always brought me the greatest joy both to hear and to sing good folk songs.

Graham

Graham As a child, I was surrounded by coal mines. The village I grew up in, in Derbyshire, was part of one of the largest coal fields in England. Almost every adult I knew worked in the mines. During my teenage years, all that changed. Most of the mines closed and the motorway was built, bringing with it new industries. Farms gave way to factories. I went south to attend college, and after graduation, taught science for a few years.

Like many of my generation, I was thrilled when I heard the Rolling Stones, and went on to discover Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and other great bluesmen and women. My musical interests expanded; my ears were always open. The Grateful Dead, Little Feat, Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, Michael Nesmith, John Stewart and many others were added to my record collection. Eventually I picked up a guitar and taught myself to play. With friends I played in a rock band for several years. In college, I took up the acoustic guitar more seriously, and was also listening to more songwriters and traditional music. After college, we sold our electric equipment and, with a friend, I hitchhiked across Europe for three months.

Graham & Barbara

Graham & Barbara We met in Sherborne, England in 1975 during a 10-month course in spiritual development based on the teachings of George Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic. One of the things that attracted Barbara to Graham was his guitar-playing and singing the songs of John Stewart, Michael Nesmith, the Grateful Dead, Little Feat, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and other icons of the era. Graham came to New York to marry Barbara in 1977. Barbara already had one child, Tanya, from a previous marriage, and together we had three more children — Naomi, Rachael and Jordan. During the years of raising our kids, singing and playing music together took a back seat to our other responsibilities. For a while, though, we performed together at our kids’ school fundraising coffeehouses, and were happy to hear from people how much they enjoyed our music. All this time, Graham had been busily writing songs, many about the political and social climate, and problems of our times, some more personal. In the year 2000, as a 50th birthday present, Barbara’s family sent Graham off for a week of music camp, to Summer Acoustic Music Week on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, run by WUMB, the folk music station out of Boston. It was life-changing. Ever since, each summer we have gone together to camp, working with such folk luminaries as Kim and Reggie Harris, Bob Franke, Kate Campbell, Joel Mabus, Robert Jones, Anne Hills, Sparky and Rhonda Rucker, Rolly Brown, and others, and in the process, found out that we want to be folk-performers! Since our “baby” went off to college in 2002, we have more freedom now to pursue our passion. [All right, get your minds out of the gutter — you know what we mean!] Though we cannot yet list an impressive array of performances and accolades, as do many of the websites of our most cherished folksinger heroes and sheroes, this is a real beginning for us — we are finally on our way!

We conceived of this section as a place to display and share ideas and quotes that exemplify our values, beliefs and fervent hopes for our country and for the world. We hope that visitors to this site will also send in ideas and quotes in the same vein — we would welcome your comments and ideas! In honor of the release of our first CD, “Tom Paine’s Blues”, we will begin with a few choice quotes from this remarkable man — the Other Founding Father.

“When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness; when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.”

“I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.”

“A right, to be truly so, must be right in itself — yet many things have obtained the name of rights, which are originally founded in wrong — of this kind are all rights by mere conquest, power or violence.”

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

And one from former president Dwight Eisenhower:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

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