Thank you John Lennon, Thank you Beatles, Thank you Jerry Levitan, Thank you Josh Raskin, Thank you Everyone…
There’s no fate but what we make…

jrc

Hey Everyone… Jesse here with a link about a major push that’s going on right now from the Environmental Defense Fund… Click on the link that says “Please Call Your Senators Today” to make a phone call to your local senate representatives to help them make their decisions about the near future of clean energy in the United States… It’s really easy, you just type in your phone number and the website automatically connects the call to your phone.

They say each phone call is worth 100 e mails…

Go on… try it! Tell em we want them to do the right thing and give us a sustainable future NOW!!!

Many Thanks.

jrc

http://support.edf.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=8541.0

Ladies and Gentlemen… may I present to you… creativity…
genius… inspiration… OK GO!!!!

Greetings Earthlings… welcome to another week of life on this planet… hope everyone is doing well today. 

Two things:

1. We are starting to finalize the mixes on our new music… everyone is stoked… It all sounds great… Very excited for all of you to hear it soon.

2. I am also very excited by this video… enjoy… it should give a nice sense of perspective to your day

much aloha
jrc

Hello all you beautiful happy people sitting with your computers or cell phones and reading this…

it’s Monday night… February 1st!!!! 2010!!!! THE FUTURE IS NOW!!!!

I’m listening to dub music on headphones and writing this post to y’all about www.350.org

On this website you’ll find the information about how numerous scientific and environmental agencies around the world have agreed that we need to keep our global carbon dioxide emissions under the limit of 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide…

Currently we are well above that 350 ppm limit…

“Accelerating arctic warming and other early climate impacts have led scientists to conclude that we are already above the safe zone at our current 390ppm, and that unless we are able to rapidly return to 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from increased permafrost melt.”

There is a great video on this site by the journalist Ross Gelbspan who has spent the last 15 years of his life investigating the issue of global warming because he didn’t like the idea that the coal and oil industries were paying scientists to claim that global warming was not a true threat to the future of the human race… DUH!!!!

“The central drama underlying this issue is crystal clear: It pits the the ability of this planet to support civilization, versus the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history, the oil and coal industries together generate about a trillion dollars in revenue (per year) and in this battle their resources are virtually without limit...” -Ross Gelbspan

I JUST REALLY WANT US TO TRY AND BRAINSTORM SOME WAYS TO SPREAD THIS INFORMATION AROUND SO THAT ENOUGH PEOPLE CARE ENOUGH ABOUT THIS ISSUE TO INFLUENCE THE POLITICIANS AND BIG BUSINESSES WITH THEIR VOTES AND THEIR WALLETS…

THAT IS OUR JOB AS CITIZENS… WE CAN’T JUST WAIT FOR SOME MAGICAL CHANGE TO COME FROM ABOVE… WE HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER FROM THE BOTTOM UP AT THE SAME TIME AS PEOPLE ARE WORKING AT THIS ISSUE FROM THE TOP DOWN…
THAT’S THE QUICKEST WAY TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE…

So, check this stuff out… and if you are moved by it… phase it into your life… and then talk to people about it… bring it up in conversation… i know it’s not easy to talk about it with people who are currently more interested in only their smaller bubble of existence… but each of us that is concerned has to figure out how to try to inspire without turning people off by being preachy. The bottom line is, this global warming issue affects every living thing on the planet… and so let’s get moving about recognizing the change that must happen to turn the tide away from the tipping point that scientists are warning about…

i’m staying optimistic…

let’s stay in touch about what we are doing to help spread the word about www.350.org and about what we are doing to help cut down our consumption, transitioning more and more to renewable energy sources like Solar, Wind and GeoThermal, Hybrid and Electric Cars, Public Transportation and Bicycles, Re-usable Grocery Bags, Environmentally Friendlier Lightbulbs, Re-usable To Go Containers and Bamboo Silverware for every time you get food to go… etc… etc…

A Change is Gonna Come… and The Answer is Blowin’ in the Wind…
and… um… Here Comes The Sun…

any other environmentally friendly song titles?

Muuuuuuuch Aloha
jrc

Hello Everyone… we’re all back in the States now… Great to be here… And great to be almost completely done with the recording of our album… Now it’s time for final finishing touches and the mixing process. I stayed on LA time this whole last trip to Switzerland… Very interesting to have been eating lunch at 1am and dinner at 6am… Now we’re in Dallas playing a private party tonight, and then heading our separate ways tomorrow.  Definitely feels like the holiday season these days… Hope you’re feeling it too…

Just picked up a copy of the Beatles remastered Abbey Road album… one of the best albums of all time… And after the short documentary that came on the CD it redirected me to www.thebeatles.com and I thought… oh my god… my whole life, the whole time the Beatles have been my favorite band, and I’ve never been to their website?!?!  So fun to see old videos of their crazy ride through the 7 years that they released albums… can you believe that? 1963: Please Please Me, their first album… to 1970: Let It Be, their last official album… I think they did more, and had more of an impact than any other band in the history of time… thoughts?

Anyway… I just wanted to pass on this great little video (thanks John) that shows how important the concept of Fun is to the idea of things changing for the better… nice food for thought… how else can we use the concept of Fun to entice people to get involved with things that are good for them/good for all of us…

Much Aloha
jrc

Hello Everyone… good afternoon from Vevey, Switzerland… such a beautiful place here… looking out onto Lake Geneva and the Alps… a great place for recording music.

We are almost finished with the album… putting the last guitar and keyboard touches on the record. 

Very excited for you to hear it…

It’s raining here right now… and I’m listening to Gene Kelly “Singin’ in the Rain”
so great… have you seen it?

OK… so that’s that… and that’s beautiful… but there’s another video that I wanted to share with you that’s much more important… it’s about the situation we’re facing on this planet as our world population, and the pollution we are creating, both continue to grow exponentially.

You’re probably aware of this situation on some level… and the real question is, how can each of us contribute to solving this serious problem? I think the answer, beyond making conscious choices in our daily lives about little things like individual conservation, is to get involved with the debate that is taking place on the political and legislative level. 

Here’s a video about why we can’t just sit back and accept the proposed solution of “Cap and Trade” that is being presented to us as a means to reduce Carbon Emissions and stop the growing problem of “Global Warming”.

The video was made by a woman named Annie Leonard (who made a great video a while ago called “the Story of Stuff") her explanations are simple direct and clear, and the animations are engaging and make the concepts she’s talking about even easier to understand…

I think it’s really important that as many people as possible see this video…

I hope it connects with you on some level…

1. solid caps
2. strong laws
3. citizen action
4. carbon fees to pay off ecological debt

And that 3rd one is where we come in… Citizen Action… first we need to get passionate about the issue… and then we need to gently and lovingly spread the awareness of the problem to other people. And very soon, there will be a time to voice our opinion to our leaders… because they really do listen to the people when the outcry is overwhelming. 

Don’t be afraid that you don’t have the right to have an opinion about something on this large of scale… in our hearts we know what is right for the planet and the future of the human race… we have a big transition ahead of us… from a state of mindless consumption and a false sense of invincibility to a conscious state of balance and sustainable co-habitation of this planet with all the other people, animals, and plants that we share it with. I’m very excited about this transition and I think we can make it as fun and inspiring as we want it to be. 

With love,
jrc

Happy December 1st Everyone!!!  (except for everyone over here on this side of the planet… where it is already December 2nd… and in those cases… Happy December 2nd Everyone!!!)
Well… here we are… Another day of getting one day closer to finishing the record for us… things are slowly happening… in a very nice way… Hope everything is going well for you right now.  Here’s some good words from the website Daily Om

December 1, 2009
Everything You Do Matters
The Ripple Effect

In a world of six billion people, it’s easy to believe that the only way to initiate profound transformation is to take extreme action. Each of us, however, carries within us the capacity to change the world in small ways for better or worse. Everything we do and think affects the people in our lives, and their reactions in turn affect others. As the effect of a seemingly insignificant word passes from person to person, its impact grows and can become a source of great joy, inspiration, anxiety, or pain. Your thoughts and actions are like stones dropped into still waters, causing ripples to spread and expand as they move outward. The impact you have on the world is greater than you could ever imagine, and the choices you make can have far-reaching consequences. You can use the ripple effect to make a positive difference and spread waves of kindness that will wash over the world.

Should the opportunity arise, the recipient of a good deed will likely feel compelled to do a good deed for someone else. Someone feeling the effects of negative energy will be more likely to pass on that negative energy. One act of charity, one thoughtful deed, or even one positive thought can pass from individual to individual, snowballing until it becomes a group movement or the ray of hope that saves someone’s life. Every transformation, just like every ripple, has a point of origin. You must believe in your ability to be that point of origin if you want to use the ripples you create to spread goodness. Consider the effect of your thoughts and actions, and try to act graciously as much as possible.

A smile directed at a stranger, a compliment given to a friend, an attitude of laughter, or a thoughtful gesture can send ripples that spread among your loved ones and associates, out into your community, and finally throughout the world. You have the power to touch the lives of everyone you come into contact with and everyone those people come into contact with. The momentum of your influence will grow as your ripples moves onward and outward. One of those ripples could become a tidal wave of positivity.

-jrc

Hey everyone… thanks for a great tour… we had a blast… such great energy from all y’all that came out to the shows…


and thanks to everyone who helped put the shows on at each college…


Now it’s time for all of us to give thanks with our families… and then get over to Switzerland to finish the album.


2010 is gonna be a good year…


But that is then… and this is now…


and tonight I saw something on the ever enjoyable and educational superforest.org that made me soooooo excited…


Here is a video of an austrian composer who took an audio recording of a child’s voice and then broke the sound down into its tiniest pitch variations (he described this process of breaking down sound waves as being similar to breaking down an image into individual pixels) and then had a machine player piano play those notes in a way that made the exact sound of this child’s voice come out of the piano strings…
you have to see it to believe it… it’s amazing… got me thinking about how much can be communicated by a musical instrument…


wow…





happy thanksgiving…


much aloha.
jrc

Yo!!!!!! hello everyone… from nashville… college tour starts today… excited…


here’s a video i just saw on a website called I Want To Hold Your Hand...


the text underneath the video reads:


“Brazilian duo Cecilia Siqueira and Fernando Lima of Duo Siqueira Lima performs Tico Tico no Fuba with one guitar.”


it’s soooooooo beautiful and inspirational and fun… this is where I see our band going in the future…


ciao bonitas!!!


jrc

Yoooooooooooo!!!!! happy daytime/nighttime everyone… I’m just
sitting here having my mind blown by the genius of this video…
please check it out and smile and laugh and cry and get excited and
have a good time…

HoPe EveRyoNe iS haVinG fuN!!!

LOVE,
JRC

Hello Everyone,
Jesse here with some news about an important event that’s coming up soon.  On October 3rd Adam, James and I will be playing a short acoustic set at a fundraiser for an organization called Hollywood Arts (a great school and drop in center for homeless teenagers in the hollywood area).  The Hollywood Arts center is an amazing place where kids who live on the streets and in abandoned buildings can go to learn skills that can help them get their lives on track… the school offers job placement assistance and wrap around support for young people whose lives are filled with struggles. 

This fundraising event is the main way that Hollywood Arts gets its funding for the year, and they are selling tickets to attend the event for 200 dollars each.  I know it’s a steep price, but I just thought that if any of you were interested in supporting this organization, this would be a fun way to do so. 

Check out their website for details on purchasing tickets or making an online contribution to a very worthy cause.

The fundraising evening is called “the Dream Awards”
Thank you very much for your time…
jrc

http://www.hollywood-arts.org/

Maroon 5 launches several contests for fans to win tickets to see the band live on tour & win prizes via their official Twitter account

Los Angeles, CA, September 10, 2009- GRAMMY winning, A&M/ Octone recording artists Maroon 5 have announced plans for an exclusive nationwide college tour that will kick off this November. The multi-city tour will launch at Murray State University in Kentucky on November 2nd and make eleven stops before wrapping in Kansas at the end of the month. Hip Hop MC, griot, and singer/ songwriter K’naan will serve as the tour’s opening act on all dates. Both artists will be joined by Guster in Lewisburg, PA who will be making a special guest appearance.

Maroon 5’s college tour precludes the release of the group’s new album, which is set for release in the spring of 2010.  Earlier this summer the band announced that they have entered the studio with legendary producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange to record the follow-up to It Won’t be Soon Before Long, their multi-platinum selling sophomore album. The quintessential pop-rock producer has produced blockbuster albums for acts like AC/DC, Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, The Cars, Shania Twain and Foreigner.

“After spending the summer in the studio recording overseas, we are excited to be returning home and to the road this fall,” said the band’s frontman Adam Levine. “It’s exciting for us to hit the stage again together and also get a chance to debut some of our new material that we’ve been recording for our fans.”

Tickets for Maroon 5’s upcoming college shows will go on-sale starting with a fan club pre-sale on Thursday, September 17th with college pre-sales to launch on Thursday, September 24th and the general public on-sale to occur on Monday, September 28th.

Maroon 5 has also announced plans for a major contest giving one lucky fan $15,000 using Twitter and TwitVid.  Concert-goers will be required to take a video of themselves at the show and submit it to twitvid.com/maroon5.  Fans can learn more at twitvid.com/maroon5 or maroon5.com. In addition, the band will be running several contests to win tickets to the show.  James Valentine will be challenging students to tennis matches at each tour stop in exchange for tickets.  Fans will have to follow Maroon 5’s twitter at twitter.com/maroon5 to find out where and when James will be hitting the school’s courts.

Adam Levine will also be giving fans unique and creative opportunities to win tickets through his twitter account at twitter.com/adamlevine.  Follow Adam for a chance to win at each stop on the tour.

Confirmed Tour Dates for Maroon 5 are as follows:

Nov. 2nd Murray, KY Regional Events Center Murray State University

Nov. 3rd Louisville, KY Knights Hall Bellarmine University

Nov. 6th Rochester, NY Gordon Fieldhouse Rochester Institute of Technology **

Nov. 8th Ithaca, NY Barton Hall Cornell University

Nov. 10th Blacksburg, VA Burruss Auditorium Virginia Tech

Nov. 12th Fairfield, CT William Pitt Center Sacred Heart University

Nov. 14th Lewisburg, PA Sojka Pavillion Bucknell University

Nov. 16th Newark, DE Bob Carpenter Center Univ. of Delware

Nov. 18th Peoria, IL Peoria Civic Center Bradley University

Nov. 21st San Angelo, TX Junell Center/Stephens Arena Angelo State University

Nov. 22nd Wichita, KS Charles Koch Arena Wichita State Univ.

** Rochester school pre-sale will occur from Friday, September 18th – Sunday, September 27th
**Lewisburg, PA presale will occur for Fan Club and Bucknell students will start, Monday, September 14

Capturing their first of 3 GRAMMY Awards as “Best New Artist” of 2005, and going on to sell more than fifteen million albums worldwide, Maroon 5 won over fans and critics alike with the hybrid rock/R&B sound they introduced on their debut album Songs About Jane. They followed up with the double platinum album, It Won’t be Soon Before Long, that included hits like “Makes Me Wonder” and “If I Never See your Face Again.” The band’s releases have gone gold and platinum in over 35 countries around the world. 

Hey everyone… Hope you’re having a great day today. I’m over here in Switzerland still… really digging into making this record… we all are… and it’s the best music we’ve ever made… far and away… very excited for everyone to hear it…

I was gonna make a post yesterday about a Solar Power related petition that was aiming to stop a law from being passed that would make it harder for people to get rebates when they install solar panel systems to their homes… But before I had the chance to make the post, I found out that the law had already been overturned because of public outcry… the senator’s office in California was overwhelmed by people calling and sending in electronic petition signatures that they changed the law for the better… isn’t that great!!?!?!

yes…

I think it’s so great to see that things like online petitions and calls to our representatives offices really to work… i love the idea of people deciding how things are going to be by consensus… So beautiful…

And so here’s another issue that could use some public outcry…

It’s a site that’s collecting support to try and stop phone books from being delivered to your house unless you specifically request one. Honestly… when is the last time you used a phone book? It’s pretty much obsolete… everyone who has the internet has a much faster way of looking up a number… and check this out…

Every year, up to 5 MILLION trees are cut down to produce the white pages alone… and we as taxpayers spend 17 MILLION dollars a year recycling the phone books!!!!

crazy…

it’s time to stop…

yeah?

please take literally 10 seconds and sign this petition here: http://www.banthephonebook.org/

THANKS A LOT… rest well… have fun… good luck… jrc

p.s. thanks to the the very excellent blog SuperForest.org (www.superforest.org) for the tip. check them out too…

Helllllooooo everyone… happy friday… Hope it’s all going well for you today…
Wanted to spread the word to everyone, and especially people in Los Angeles, that there is a big push going right now to get people to start growing more of their own food…

I just got back from a Weeklong Organic Gardening workshop at Esalen (www.esalen.org) and I’m so excited about the prospect of people starting to bring this practice back into their daily lives… I planted a rainbow chard lettuce in a pot in my back yard on monday, and this morning the first little leaves of it had popped up out of the soil… I’ll post some pictures soon showing how easy it was to start that plant… and it’ll be ready to eat in 40 days… amazing…

Anyway… if any part of you is interested in this, and like i said, especially if you live in LA, check out this link because on the weekend of May 16th and 17th, there is a big citywide movement to start as many backyard gardens as possible… the website has all the information you need, and you just sign up now, and then they tell you what you need to get and volunteers can come out to help you get started!!!

http://www.gardensofgratitude.com/

Their philosophy is really inspiring… Anyone can have a garden, whether it’s just herbs in the kitchen (fresh mint tea anyone?) or container plants on a balcony, or replacing your grass lawn with an “edible forest"…

It’s fun, easy, gives you really healthy vegetables, saves you money, inspires community, helps the environment… yada yada… more soon…
Love and Aloha…
Jrc

OH MY GOD PEOPLE… PREPARE!

this is the sickest… most ill… disgusting… amazing… dopest…
most incredible… mind inspiring… jaw dropping… hip shaking…
head nodding… love making… delicious… soul stirring…
gorgeousness that I have seen in a long time… and the idea behind it is so beautiful…

this man Kutiman has taken youTube clips of musicians and edited them together to create these perfect songs… watch and love…
hope you’re having a great day…
if you aren’t… you will be in about 35 seconds… go now… !!!

http://thru-you.com/

x
jrc

Hello Adventurees and Adventurers… Adventurettes… Adventuristas!

I’m reporting from Las Vegas, USA… the Heart of the American Dream (?!)… one of the American Dreams anyway… there are many… new ones arriving everyday too… Worldwide Dreams…

My current favorite is a dream of the future that has Humans living in harmony with nature…
no species going extinct because of our pollution…
healthy food produced locally in every major city… shelter for every human…
clean renewable fuel sources and zero emission transportation alternatives like the magnetic train that still allow us to explore this world at somewhere near this super fast speed that we’ve all gotten used to…
bio technology that allows the outside of our homes to perform the same functions as trees, converting carbon dioxide into oxygen…
etc etc…
the list of beautiful visions that are filtering into all of our minds on this internet is endless… and we should be very excited and optimistic… let’s just keep spreading good ideas…

and in the meantime… it’s all about the humanity!!! right!?!?! the beautiful daily interactions and emotions… the ups and downs that we’re all going through…

and in that spirit… I wanna share the new record by Samantha Shelton with you guys… She is amazing… the voice of an angel/elf/mystic-poet/dragon-tamer/seductress/girl-next-door/vaudeville-queen/mime/goddess… ahhh… i see James has already put something up on our myspace page about her… excellent… well done… now you’ve heard it twice…

anyway… check out her album Are You Kidding Around? on iTunes… and enjoy. 

And if you live in Austin, or if you’re planning on attending that South By Southwest extravaganza… then check out her show on March 21st at the Driskill Hotel at 9pm… she’ll be singing with Taylor Goldsmith from the excellent band Dawes…

“Love is not convenient/ It does not cease at your command… You might take and leave it/ But Love is all I am...”
-Dawes

I hope y’all are having a great night… don’t let em grind you down… etc…
love
jrc

http://teamsuperforest.org/superforest/?p=482

Hello Everyone… This post about transforming landfill waste into energy comes from the amazing Superforest.org blog that my friend Jackson and his fellow superforesters keep up from New York City… there are so many amazing posts on their site… i don’t have the time to post them all here… so Please!!! visit their site everyday! jrc

Hello everyone… happy 2009… I hope it’s been good to everyone so far.  We’re getting ready to head out to Washington DC for the Inauguration parties.  A very exciting time, nice to feel a lot of enthusiasm and hope around the country… although I hope everyone doesn’t waste too much energy on celebration, cause just having a party alone isn’t going to help fix any of the problems… but it could get people even more excited about what needs to be done… and I’m happy to hear from my sister (who works for a solar power lobbying company) that people on the inside of the political world really are geared up to do the actual work that it’s gonna take to put us in a better place as a country… although it’s much bigger than that, yeah? ... in a better place as a human race

We all gotta do what we each can though, cause the government isn’t going to just solve all the problems… it’s an individual thing…

And on that note, I wanted to forward along a post from our friends at www.superforest.org who have come up with their own campaign to raise awareness and collect some money for an organization called the Millenium Seed Bank.

The goal is to get as many of us as possible to blog about this Seed Bank, and see what kind of ripple of awareness and fundraising it can create…

so please click here to join Superforest’s Save-A-Seed-Coalition and help spread the word…

Talk to you soon… look forward to spreading some good news from washington and all throughout the year… a dynamic year, yes?
love,
jrc

Hello Everyone… Jesse here writing on the morning of the eve of the last day of the year… I hope 2009 is the best year all of us have ever had… Thanks so much to all of you who have been a part of our world this last year… and thanks for letting us be a part of your worlds…

In this final post for 2008… I wanted to just take a moment to think positive about the future… We all know that there are a lot of big issues in the world today… and there is a lot of confusion about what is going to happen next… So I’d like to just stay optimistic and remember that what kind of future we’re all going to have is up to each and every one of us… So… let’s see what we can do…

Resources like food and water are going to be increasingly important as the population on the planet increases and so we have to make sure that the people who are in charge of managing them are responsible and conscious people… and right now there is a lot of concern circulating about Barack’s potential choice for The Secretary of Agriculture… Tom Vilsack

Here’s a section of the Wikipedia file on Tom Vilsack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Vilsack):

“Opposition to a Vilsack appointment has come from the Organic Consumers Association, which outlined in a November 2008 report several reasons why it believes Vilsack would be a poor choice for the position, particularly as energy and environmental reforms were a key point of the Obama campaign.[15] Among those reasons the report cites: Vilsack has repeatedly demonstrated a preference for large industrial farms and genetically modified crops;[16] as Iowa state governor, he originated the seed pre-emption bill in 2005, effectively blocking local communities from regulating where genetically engineered crops would be grown; additionally, Vilsack was the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership, and was named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, an industry lobbying group.”

So please go check out this link to a petition you can sign to show that the public is not going to accept anything less than the best man for the job.  This is the amazing thing about the internet, we can all communicate with each other quickly… and now people with shady pasts or ulterior motives cannot hide from the public… PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/vilsack.cfm

And I hope everyone has a great safe night tonight… and a beautiful start to the new year…
LOVE
jrc

That subject title is the longest palindrome I know of… it reads the same forwards and backwards… wild… yes… I think i’ve written it before… but it really applies to this post… so.... there it is again…

Hello!!! Today is December 17th, 2008 and we are in Capetown, South Africa… There is a mountain ridge above this city called Table Mountain, and you can hike or take a tram up to the top of this ridge to see incredible views of the north, south, east and west… looking down on the cities and oceans around Capetown… And as the wind howls across the walkways at the summit, giant billowy clouds appear to pour over the edge of the top, drifting down until they evaporate… it’s amazing… but that’s not why I’m writing… I just happened to notice it outside this hotel window and got sidetracked…

I hope everyone is having a good day today… feeling good… excited about the holidays… family… friends… loves… even enemies… etc… i hope it’s been a good year for you… another full trip around the sun on our floating and spinning home of planet earth… I just watched a movie about BUCKMINSTER FULLER (the architect and philosopher and environmentalist and visionary man...) it’s called THE WORLD OF BUCKMINSTER FULLER… rent it… watch it… there are a lot of good ideas…

He has a lot of similar ideas about how to re-organizine society so that everyone has the ability to enjoy this mysterious experience of being alive as another movie I just watched that I’ll tell you about in one sec…
He says there is a major problem in the way that humans have been thinking about life… He says mankind has been stuck in a pattern of thinking that each person has to prove their worth, and they need to do so by Working a job that puts them on a level higher than someone else in society… which therefore entitles them to more of the worlds’ resources…

But it doesn’t HAVE to be that way…

Here’s a great quote from Bobby Kennedy paraphrasing the play-write George Bernard Shaw , “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

And that is what is on my mind right now… the idea that things are going to have to change… Bobby Kennedy also said, “A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.”

So… this makes me think… ok… we’re all in this together… the internet is an amazing phenomenon that links our thoughts, and allows us to quickly access the thoughts and ideas of other people so that we can work together to achieve common goals… And the continued survival, evolution, and refinement of the Human Race, (not to mention all of the other life forms on this planet) is a pretty good common goal… Has everyone seen the blog from some friends of ours in New York called SUPERFOREST.ORG… bookmark that and check out all the good inspiration that comes out of there… cause this is supposed to be a fun experience… we need little bursts of inspiration to make us continue, to feel good about being alive…

Ok… so anyway...there is a movie called ZEITGEIST ADDENDUM that is a follow up to the first ZEITGEIST film that came out a few years ago… The first movie dealt with a lot of darker aspects of our present condition around the world… yeah… it’s true there are a lot of darker elements… but they just need to be balanced out by really beautiful things… and this follow up movie has some very concrete and practical ideas for how to improve many situations that are currently causing so much suffering around our planet.  So over this holiday season, if you can find the time, watch the Addendum movie… please do… and then we can start thinking about how to actually implement some of the changes that are being proposed by this movie… it’s gonna take a lot of cooperation… and a lot of peaceful, level headed communication because it’s no secret that people in power do not like to willingly give it up…

and why is that?

I think it’s because of the deep underlying anxiety caused by the fact that no one really knows why we’re alive in the first place… Maybe that’s a good place to start… trying to find an answer to the question of “what role is humanity supposed to play in the vast unfolding of the cosmos?”

Buckminster Fuller says that because we seem to be unique to all the other life forms on this planet in the way that our minds reason and think and feel and manipulate the physical world, that we have a responsibility to help things move into a more harmonious order.  I don’t know if Harmony is the overriding principle of the universe, or if Chaos is… I guess it’s probably a combination of both… but let’s not leave the tracks… let’s stay with the idea of trying to figure out what we Humans should be doing in the next phase of all of our lives so that things get better, not worse…

Let’s try and figure out why some people would want to resist the idea of change… It seems that some people want to resist the idea of even thinking about whether or not things need to change… But I hope we can all agree that you don’t have to look very hard at the world to see that things are out of balance, and that something needs to happen to correct that imbalance… otherwise we’re headed towards oblivion as a species… yes? no? maybe so?… Well, here’s what I think about why people are resistant… (besides the obvious and simple idea that changing things requires effort and that’s more difficult to muster up than the easier short term choice of being apathetic… although the apathy thing doesn’t make you feel as good as doing something, does it?)

I’ve had the experience in this band of feeling the rush of having people excited just to meet you… to be perfectly honest, to have the power to make decisions about things that affect people other than yourself is somewhat of an intoxicating feeling… and I’m just talking about things related to a rock and roll band… The last time we were in Washington DC, I was looking at the White House, and just thinking how strange the feeling must be for these men and women in “charge” of the world when they make decisions about going to war, or changing the value of money, or creating a new energy plan that will create jobs… it’s probably a strange thing to have your fragile ego get a taste of an identity that has a lot of power… because at the heart of it… we’re all the same… human beings with the ability to feel and think and hope… and I think most people are very unaware of the effect that their subconscious mind, the ego, or whatever you want to call it, has on their decision making process… When people feel insecure about who they are and how they define themselves, they lash out and do whatever it takes to not feel “wrong"… The more power someone has, the more of a fall they would take if their identity gets threatened… This is not just a problem that causes us to fight with each other about the little dramas in our lives, it’s also a big problem with let’s say, religious warfare, because the very idea of doubt is very threatening to the ego, and that makes people very closed minded and aggressive…

So first, let’s just take a step back and be honest… Isn’t Doubt unavoidable? Can’t we work with it and not fight against it?… I don’t know if any amount of Faith can ever really satisfy the deep insecurities and doubts that I think we all have about why we’re here and how we should live… and that could be the reason that people are so quick to aggressively defend their particular beliefs.  There is no doubt that faith can help provide meaning to a life, and there’s no doubt that religions can create a good system of behavior that would create a more peaceful world if only everyone in each religion actually lived the ideas that are being preached… There’s even no doubt that every religion could be exactly right in their views of existence, I mean after all, none of our brains can really comprehend what the term “Infinity” really means… and within infinity there would have to be an infinite number of scenarios, dimensions… in short… everything… EVERY...THING…

wow… it kind of hurts to even think about it… and I got de-railed again…

I just want us all to think… to really think and feel… actually… maybe feel is more important… to really feel what it is that we’re supposed to be doing to make the world a better place… and you know how catchy these things are… look at KIVA.ORG… an amazing charity organization that is really like a person to person banking loan system… you loan some money to an individual or small group somewhere in the world for something that need to run their farming business, or get supplies for their school, or help make their community safer, and then other people also lend small amounts to that same person, and then they get their whole loan and they pay each person back over a set period of time… really exciting…

And then there are all the new industries in the realm of sustainable energy production that will need help over the next couple years… the Zeitgeist Addendum movie paints a really beautiful picture of that growing aspect of the world…

So… what else?

What are we gonna do in 2009 and beyond?

I love you guys… hope you’re all still having a good day… thanks for everything this year… EVERY… THING… Our last show of the year is in a few hours… the last show of the whole last 22 month long world tour… Time to go home and regroup… get ready to make an amazing album, and who knows what else…
talk to ya soon… happy holidays… everyday…
namaste
jrc

Hey Everyone… looking for laughs today? here is a site full of funny
stuff our friend Barry makes… ENJOY!!!

http://www.barryholiday.com

We’re about to leave the hotel for the show in Belo Horizonte in
Brazil… Another big city… the people here that we’ve met have been
so nice, and the people coming to the shows have amazing energy…
Thanks very much everyone… MUITO OBRIGADO!!!

Hope everyone is feeling great today…
LOVE,
jrc

We’re in Rio right now… show tomorrow night… such a beautiful place… amazing mountains… the ocean… trees… birds… people smiling… a lot of poverty… traffic… a lot of traffic all over the world… I wonder if we’ll ever find another planet we can get to safely and live on… wouldn’t that be great… we’d know how to do a lot of things differently… we’d be able to figure out how many people the environment could comfortably and sustainably support… we’d use renewable energy sources like Wind and Solar from the beginning so we wouldn’t have such a pollution problem… and then we’d have more time to figure out why it is that humans have such a hard time getting along…

FOR EXAMPLE>>>

I was just thinking about what a good opportunity we have now for opening up the minds of people who don’t realize that their learned opinions of intolerance are not necessary… that they are just hurting innocent people, and adding negativity into the world.  Tonight as I was reading all of the e mails I got about not letting the discriminatory law of Proposition 8 pass without a fight, I thought this is such a good way to start a positive dialogue with people who have different opinions… (especially when those opinions blatantly oppress and deny equal rights to a portion of the population)

Just in case you don’t know what this is all about… Proposition 8 takes away from homosexual people the equal rights to marriage and all of the legal and financial benefits that come along with it… What makes it even worse is that those rights were recently granted to them by the California Supreme Court by a ruling that was made on May of 2008…

And YAY… wasn’t that a great victory… yes… because… DUH… it’s not right to discriminate against people… right? but NO… because people who want to deny equal rights to homosexuals spent the second most amount of money on any election category other than the presidency and it looks like they may have won (although as I write this… all of the absentee ballots have not been counted yet...)

ANYWAY… there are many constructive ways to voice your opposition to this mean spirited and unnecessary proposition… so keep a look out for the ways that you can try and talk to people who have these types of prejudices… because there have always been humans who tried to oppress things they didn’t understand, or didn’t like… but there is also a great precedent of people coming together to fight for equality and justice and freedom and all those good words…

Here’s one petition you should sign ASAP…

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/seg5130/petition.html

Thanks for your time…
love,
jrc

Happy Wednesday everyone!!! Happy day after the election!!!

truly momentous and exciting… I heard that John McCain gave a very gracious concession speech asking for the people who voted for him to turn their attention towards the work that needs to be done, supporting Barack Obama and continuing to try to get past partisan ideology and just focus on the problems at hand…

I hope it’s the start of some beautiful changes and progress in the United States, and all around the World. 

We’re in Panama City right now… at a layover before boarding a flight to RIO… very interesting to have been in Mexico City last night on stage when the election results were announced… we were playing The Sun at the time… appropriate lyrics…

ANYWAY… I wanted to post here something I just read about… a Protest Rally for the passing of Proposition 8 in Los Angeles… TONIGHT… WED. NOV. 5th…

here’s the info:

PROP 8 PROTEST RALLY TONIGHT From 7pm TO 9pm at West Hollywood Park 647 N San Vicente Blvd. Contact Info (323)848-6460.

If you’re in LA and you are hopefully as outraged by the passing of this discriminatory proposition as you should be then check it out… I mean… it was only about 50 years ago that people were struggling to defeat racist laws during the Civil Rights movement… and here we are today with another type of prejudiced bigotry being passed into Law… CRAZY… this is just one of the many good fights of our times… and we’re all involved… I love you all… hope everyone is having a good day…
we’ll see ya soon.
jrc

Hi everyone… Jesse here in Atlanta… two more shows left on this summer tour… We all just watched the vice presidential debates and were very happy to hear everything put out there pretty clearly by the candidates… the choice should be pretty obvious to anyone who isn’t happy with the way things are going domestically or internationally… don’t you think? But no matter who you believe is gonna do a better job… Click on this link right now to get registered to vote: WWW.DECLAREYOURSELF.COM Because if you’re gonna get involved and get your voice heard, you’ve got to make sure you’re registered to vote… A LOT OF STATES HAVE AN OCTOBER 4TH DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION… WHICH GIVES YOU JUST ONE MORE DAY…
HURRY IF YOU LIVE IN:
ALASKA
ARKANSAS
ARIZONA
COLORADO
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
HAWAII
ILLINOIS
INDIANA
KENTUCKY
LOUISIANA
MICHIGAN
MISSISSIPPI
MISSOURI
MONTANA
NEVADA
NEW MEXICO
NORTH CAROLINA
OHIO
PENNSYLVANIA
RHODE ISLAND
SOUTH CAROLINA
TENNESSEE
TEXAS
WASHINGTON

For all those states you have to register 30 days before the election… your deadline is October 4th (the other states vary between 25 days before november 4th, 15 days, or 10 days in some states, but no matter what state you live in… REGISTER NOW PLEASE!!!) It’s so easy to register… go to this DECLARE YOURSELF website… WWW.DECLAREYOURSELF.COM and please spread the word… thanks jrc

“The world is a very complicated place and there are not always easy solutions to a lot of the problems out there,” says John Brennan, a top Obama intelligence advisor and former senior CIA official who co-founded the Terrorist Threat Integration Center and the National Counterterrorism Center, a post-9/11 effort to integrate the US government’s terror threat intelligence. “If you look at the world in black and white, you miss a lot of the subtleties out there. ‘Either with us or against’—the world is not divided into good and evil a lot of time. Despite America’s military might, a lot of these problems do not lend themselves to kinetic solutions"—i.e. the use of force. And world dynamics are likely to get more complicated and nuanced, not less, by 2025. An intelligence forecast being prepared by the US intelligence community for the next president “envisions a steady decline in US dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy,” according to the Washington Post.

that’s from the website http://www.motherjones.com/

Happy Saturday…
just sitting in the back of the bus… listening to the Radiohead stems from the song Reckoner… I just downloaded them from the i tunes store for 99cents… separate tracks for Drums/Percussion, Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Piano/Strings… It’s so fun to listen to the different components of a song that you know so well…
We’re gonna offer that to y’all soon… there is a very exciting project in the works from us…

I hope you’re having a great day… here’s a nice video to look at…
jrc

Hi everyone… happy night-time… we just had a great show in Denver… so fun… And now it’s on to Kansas City… Hope you’re all having a good night… a good day… a good now…

Like I said, i wanted to write a bit more about what exactly everyone is talking about in the news these days…

Just in case you don’t know what’s going on, here is a brief synopsis of why we seem to have a problem on Wall Street, and why congress should hear from us… the public… that the first proposal from the Federal Treasury is unacceptable:

The Background:
People buy homes with loans from banks, and they pay their loans back in their monthly mortgage payments, which are based on the current interest rates.  When interest rates were low (set low by the federal government in order to stimulate the economy) many people took out loans.  And it seems that many people didn’t understand that the interest rates on their loans could and would increase, thereby making their monthly payments unaffordable after a certain amount of time. Thus, many people lost their homes in foreclosures to the banks that gave them the loans in the first place… and then in the new higher priced climate, since people weren’t buying homes as much, the value of the housing market overall went down, thus the stocks of the banks that made their money by selling mortgages went down… some huge banks even had to declare bankruptcy… thus the entire Wall Street system was shaken and people began to take money out, or at least not put new money in, and suddenly the whole complicated internationally and domestically based American financial system showed signs of potentially grinding to a halt…

The Solution?:
Therefore, after a few seemingly contradictory measures, such as letting one major bank declare bankruptcy, and then deciding to use 85 billion tax payer dollars to bail out the debts of another bank, the Federal Treasury unveiled a plan at 1 am on this last saturday morning asking URGENTLY for at least 700 billion dollars of tax payers money to fix the unstable conditions on Wall Street. And the truth is that everyone seems to agree that some major “bailout” such as this is necessary. And furthermore, everyone is confident that the economy will recover in time…

The Problem With the Solution:
However, the specific terms of this proposal are dangerous because they give too much power to the one branch of the government that was supposed to be overseeing economic matters in this country and making sure that we didn’t get into a financial disaster like this in the first place.  According to the New York Times, the proposal says that the Federal Treasury, which will be in charge of stabilizing the situation on Wall Street with at least 700 billion dollars of tax payers money, cannot be supervised, regulated or prosecuted “by any court of law or any administrative agency”.  That request seems to ignore completely the system of checks and balances that this country was founded on. 

So please join me in reaching out to our congress men and women, urging them to make sure any plan to fix the current financial instability is not only well thought out and regulated by a bi partisan oversight committee, but that it also distributes the burden of its 700 Billion dollar price tag not just on the tax payers, but also on the banks and financial institutions that helped get us into this mess. To fix this situation, it seems like we need level headed, calm, rational leadership… not frantic, fear based bully tactics that could pressure congress into passing a bill before it has been better thought out. 

Below is the e mail from MoveOn.org which has a link to their online petition as well as the phone numbers to your states congress men and women.  Thanks for your time… Again… Hope you’re having a great day. JRC

“From MoveOn.org
Subject: Main Street before Wall Street

Hi,

This is outrageous. Bush wants taxpayers to give his administration a $700 billion check with no strings attached, which they’ll hand over to the Wall Street firms that got us into this financial mess.

Would it help families struggling to keep their homes? NO. Do taxpayers get any share of the firms we’re bailing out, so we can benefit from any eventual profit? NO. Would the firms we’re bailing out be required to stop paying their executives multimillion-dollar salaries? NO. This is a pure giveaway.

I signed a petition urging Congress to put Main Street before Wall Street, and to not give Bush a blank check. Can you join me at the link below?

MoveOn.Org WALL STREET PETITION

Thanks!”

p.s.

AND… while you’re filling that out… here’s a video to lift your spirits!!!!!!! yaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!
jrc

Yay… new website… hope you like it… i’ll be interested to see what people do and don’t like about it… let us know…

So it is another beautiful day… i’m here in Boulder Colorado with my father the day before our Denver show… My dad is coming back on the road with us to take more photographs… should be nice… i just looked at all the shots he took in Japan… that trip seems like a long time ago… time really flies…

i hope y’all are having a great day.

and P.S.
for any of you that already know that the latest Federal “Bail Out” proposal needs some reworking before we could feel comfortable with congress signing it into action… go to this www.MoveOn.org petition and sign your name…

http://pol.moveon.org/wallstreet/o.pl?id=13979-6855860-Lc49U5x&t=3

for those of you who don’t know about it… i’m gonna write something up that hopefully makes it easy to understand and get involved with… and i’ll post that soon, but i just wanted to spread this link as soon as possible because this really is something congress needs to hear public disapproval about...
Thanks a lot.

AND, as I promised, in the spirit of balanced blogs, for every “citizen responsibility” link I add, I’ll also put up just some cute inspirational animal video… =)
jrc

We gotta start doing more video blogs… we’ll get on this soon…
Another fun show tonight… this time outside of Portland… great crowd… thanks to everyone who came out to the show… I wonder if my new friends I met at the Vietnam memorial out by Washington Park were there… hope you guys are feeling good today…

namaste…

well… life is trippy… isn’t that a crazy understatement? life is soooo trippy…
I was reading a book that james gave me called The Inner Game of Tennis… and it had this passage about how amazing the human body is, how subconsciously interconnected everything is… how right now as you’re reading this, your eyes are differentiating between the color of the letters and the background… comparing them with our memories of other symbols and forming words and cohesive thoughts out of the combination of words… and all the while, our heart is beating constantly and our organs are gathering the essential elements from our food… and on and on and on… it’s just a wonder how everything works…

isn’t it all so wild??? and to think that our bodies grew themselves, and all the hair and skin and bones and everything that keeps growing… how do we know how to DO this?

crazy…
We’re off to Seattle tomorrow… and then on and on…

I just wanted to say hello… and put up a nice video i just saw… here it is…



I was going to put up a post that I found on on http://www.huffingtonpost.com about something to do with the election… but then I decided to just ... not put up anything about the election… Still, that huffington post website is full of good information if you’re interested… and you SHOULD be interested because so much of our deeply interconnected world will be affected by the outcome of this election, and we’d better hope that whoever “wins” is gonna help the most amount of people possible… there is just SO much stuff on the internet… it’s amazing. 

everything is amazing…
all of these beautiful things and all of these tragic things happening side by side everyday…
we all just gotta keep breathing deeply and doing our best…

what a mystery life is…

Hope you’re having a great night… and I hope this Sunday is a day of rest and relaxation for you. 
Love,
jrc

So here we are… how are you? Another day… how did you sleep? enough? feeling rested?
busy? happy? stressed? First of All… thanks to you all for coming out to our shows with the counting crowes and augustana and sara bareilles ... this has been our favorite tour so far… and we’ve really had a great time with y’all so far.  Second of all… Someone responded to the last blog about this upcoming US election with the question “is it really all that simple?” and… i don’t know the answer… part of me says Of course it’s not simple… there are SO many people on this planet, and all of us are leading unique lives with totally different circumstances shaping our worldviews… but then on the other hand, if you look at it from a certain angle, that fact does indeed become simple… because if we realize that not everyone thinks about the world the way that we do, and we give people space to lead their lives according to their beliefs, then hopefully we can figure out a way to set up a structure in society that cares for everyone’s health and basic needs.  Now, i know that there are times when certain peoples worldviews include some kind of insane belief that people with opposing viewpoints from theirs need to be killed… for either economic gain, or in the name of God…

In either case, i hope we can all agree that it’s just not right to go out and kill people… It seems hard to imagine that any divine force out there (an all powerful, all knowing entity that we could call God… or Allah… or Krishna… or Boran… or Shangdi… or Thixo, Gunab, or Tsui… or any other name that humans have given the unfathomable… go look on widipedia for Names of God) would actually want us to kill people who used a different name for IT… I like to think of the different interpretations of this divine force as cultural nicknames… they’re endearing… sometimes people have lots of nicknames… it’s not surprising that God would have lots too. God is very popular. 

I don’t know how to deal with those people who kill for the second reason… I’d like to just say “Look!!! No single person on this planet ACTUALLY knows what God’s will is for us humans… but most people agree that God is interested in us leading basic moral lives… don’t kill others… try not to cause suffering… etc… The golden rule sounds pretty good to me… or as the classic movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure so eloquently put it… “Be Excellent to Eachother… and… Party on Dudes!!!!”

So… to answer your question “is it really all that simple"… I guess i’m gonna go with: NO… it’s not that simple when you try and deal with the whole world… obviously each of us as individuals can’t really change the sweeping scope of this human drama… but we can do our part by trying to peaceful and loving in our own lives… looking deeply into our selves and finding our flaws and working to make them better… respecting each other… finding joy and spreading it… blah blah blah…

I love you guys… I love seeing all the different opinions… and i’m just trying to think about practical things that can be done to make the world a better place… Voting is an important one… especially in this election because things seem pretty chaotic right now.  But to be honest, that’s just the beginning because we all have a responsibility to do our part… I hope we can figure out a way to keep making things better before things get a lot worse...

Here’s a video I wanted everyone to see to just put a simple light on a major problem of the political process, which is that important issues get overshadowed by petty and childish arguments…
check it out:



and also… here’s a link to Joe Biden’s speech from the DNC:

JOE BIDENS DNC SPEECH

Be excellent to eachother…
LOVE,
jrc

Hello From Dallas Texas… another beautiful day… we’re about ready to leave the hotel and go to soundcheck… I’m watching the speeches of Sarah Palin and John McCain… and I just wanted to pass them along to you so you could watch them and see what you think.

I hope you’re having a great day.

Thanks for watching these and taking the time to just look at both sides of this election…

Sarah Palin’s RNC speech

John McCain’s RNC speech

I’m thinking a lot about this election these days because it’s such an important time and i know how much we all want things to just get better.
It’s kind of overwhelming isn’t it? War… Lack of Jobs… Gas prices… Climate Change… Devastating Storms… Pollution… Overflowing Land Fills… Overpopulation… Lack of Food and Drinking Water… Fear of terrorism… Distrust of Politicians… Anger… Racism… Ignorance… Fear…
phew…

I feel like making a list to counteract that one...
Friendship… Love… Family… Hope… Music… Art… Sports… Plumbing… Clothing… The Postal Service (the actual postal service that delivers mail all around the world with an unbelievably high success rate for unbelievably low prices… not the band… but, yeah… now that i think of it… the band too)… Cell Phones… The Internet… Communication… Language!!!… Movies… Eyesight… All the senses… Dreams… Nature… Cities… Recycling… Sustainable Farming… Responsibility… Honor… Nobility… Forgiveness… ETC…

I think we just need to take a deep breath… get informed about what we can do as individuals… and also make the best decision about who to vote for in this next election. What we DON’T need is any kind of divisive or angry or defensive energy… that is my least favorite part of politics… such a distraction from the issues… we need UNITY and UNDERSTANDING and OPEN-MINDED-NESS…

Here’s another blog to bookmark… my friends in New York seek out inspiring things and post them here…

http://www.superforest.org/

I love you guys… happy day.
jrc

hey everyone… happy daytime… or night time… or whatever…
hi.

what a beautiful day it is in los angeles… sunshine… blue skies… etc…

i just wanted to make a post with a link to Barack Obama’s speech from the DNC last week… it was an amazing speech, and I think that everyone in America should watch it regardless of what political party they “belong” to…

I’m looking forward to seeing what John McCain has to say in his upcoming speeches...
honestly, i don’t consider myself a democrat or a republican… honestly I don’t even like to think of myself as an “American"… which is not to say that I don’t love this country… especially the amazing ideas that it was founded on… but I just consider myself a human being who was lucky enough to be born on planet earth on part of this continent known as The United States of America with all of its beautiful and also complicated and also ugly and also noble and wonderful (etc) history… Personally, because I get to travel all around the world, and see how similar people are in different countries, I just wish there was more of a spirit of the United Countries of the World, and not so much divided interests in just our individual countries… but that’s a whole other issue…

getting back to this election… i just want to help elect whichever candidate I believe is going to do the most amount of good for the most amount people, and also put this country back in good standing with the rest of the world… I know we all want that… so let’s just keep watching the speeches, and researching the candidates… it just takes a little time… and then we’ll know… and then we’ll choose…

Please check out Barack’s inspirational speech:

BARACK OBAMA DNC SPEECH

and also… here are some interesting photos from the protests at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis… did anybody see any news coverage of protests from the RNC? lemme know what where you saw it… and what it was like… thanks...
http://www.motherjones.com/:



PEACE!!!
jrc

greetings and salutations… fellow people of the earth… wow… hello.

i’m in washington DC… it was another great fun show tonight… thanks to those of you who’ve come out to the shows so far… this has truly been the best tour ever… onwards and upwards (until the inevitable decline? NO… it can be upwards always… right?)

OK… so… who likes animals? who wants to help an animal shelter that takes in stray puppies, cleans them up and finds them homes? good… here’s the link to this wonderful place in Los Angeles, and you can make a paypal donation on their site… or maybe someone you know is looking for a fundraiser cause… this could be it!!! save the puppies!!!

thanks a lot… check it out please…

http://www.billfoundation.org/

thanks so much. We love you. Hope you’re having a great night. See you soon?
jrc

happy wednesday night… july the ... the somethingth… i’m sitting at home just a few days before we take off for our summer tour… very exciting… our rehearsals have been going well and there are some good new surprises for y’all…

I’m listening to Sly and the Family Stone… the song called IN TIME… have you ever heard it? it’s crazy how good this song sounds… such amazing musicians…

SO!!! the reason i wanted to write this post… besides to celebrate that tomorrow night is the full moon for all of us here on earth… is to talk about the Amnesty International Video we made for the album version of the song If I Never See Your Face Again. My dad shot all the photographs for the video, and then he and some very talented friends put the video together and then donated it to Amnesty… it’s a really beautiful thing to have my Dad, who has supported my love for music for my whole life, come out on the road with us and share the experience of traveling with this band…
I just wanted to see if you all had seen it… check it out and spread the word… spread the love… thanks for everything. Hope you’re doing well today. Love, JRC

http://www.amnestyusa.org/musicforhumanrights/