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We are thrilled to announce that folk music legend Leon Rosselson and wonderfully prolific singer-songwriter and legend in the making Robb Johnson are now part of the Trade Root Music family! On July 20, Trade Root Music will release The Liberty Tree: A Celebration of the life and writings of Thomas Paine. The Liberty Tree tells the story of Thomas Paine’s extraordinary life through song and spoken word, weaving in Paine’s own words from the letters and the pamphlets which he wrote. The album also includes extracts from newspaper reports, diaries, letters, and other documents of the times. The songs of Robb Johnson and Leon Rosselson add another dimension to the story, reflecting Paine’s radical ideas and evaluating them in the context of the 21st century. This unique blend of words and music gives one-of-a-kind insight into Paine’s ideology, and affirms the fact that Paine truly was one of the most influential and dangerous writers of his age.
Leon Rosselson and Robb Johnson join Trade Root Music
Please Leave My Mind
Shortstack, Washington D.C.’s favorite veteran post-Americana rock band, celebrates their 10-year anniversary with their most realized artistic expression yet, Please Leave My Mind. While their 3rd full-length offering is their most accessible to date, the band has clearly matured as songwriters and studio artists. Subtly checking a bit of their signature creepy twang at the studio door, Shortstack’s focus this time around is on crafting more a more sophisticated, yet precise collection of rockin’ tracks, while bringing lead singer Adrian Carroll’s vocals to the forefront, and tackling a more personal domain of lyrical topics. It’s as if the band has traded in their Model-T for a Lamborghini in their journey through the dusty roots & blues/early rock n roll landscape that makes up old weird America. Gritty yet polished, uneasy yet relaxed, complex yet simply catchy as your favorite Beatles tune, Please Leave My Mind satisfies the soul, no matter what shape it’s in.
“This is American music that grabs from a number of different traditions and cultures to create something unique and stunningly powerful.”
- Ari Joffe, Transform Online
LIMITED EDITION 180 GRAM VINYL PRESSING AVAILABLE, COMES WITH FREE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD COUPON!
Noam Chomsky at Riverside Church: “Crisis and Hope”
On June 12, 2009, the forty-year anniversary of the publishing of his classic American Power & the New Mandarins, Noam Chomsky gave a historic address at the Riverside Church in New York City. More than 2,000 people attended the lecture, and you can listen to it too on the April 20, 2010 release from Trade Root Music called Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours. In the lecture, Chomsky offers a powerful analysis of the current economic crisis and its structural roots; the continuity in U.S. foreign policy under the Barack Obama administration; and the class interests driving U.S. domestic and foreign policy. He discusses at length the traditions of worker self-management as a concrete alternative to the business as usual approach of corporations and the government during the current crisis.
Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three to release “Riverboat Soul”
Click here to read more about the album 
On February 16, 2010, Free Dirt Records will release the new album from Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three, “Riverboat Soul.” From the first listen, the significance of this title is clear. The Mississippi River runs as an undercurrent through this collection of songs, a tribute to the ragtime and jug band influences of St. Louis, Missouri, the city LaFarge has most recently called home. LaFarge is a neo-hobo, constantly traveling across the country and drawing inspiration from early American roots music. But it’s more than his persona that’s turning heads; it’s the unique blend of raw talent and refined, idiosyncratic charm that’s turned reviewers into poets as they attempt to label the one-of-a-kind sound of Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three. While their music may summon the likes of Blind Blake, Dan Hicks, or Leon Redbone, and may be a fitting soundtrack to R. Crumb’s comics, don’t call it old-timey. Pokey and the South City Three are here to grace our electric world with their uniquely retro sound, throwback and rough around the edges featuring parlor guitar, guitjo (a guitar-tuned six-string banjo) kazoo and harmonica, but all with a modern twist.
Trade Root Music Group remembers Utah Phillips
Folk musician, storyteller, and Trade Root Music Group’s dear friend U. Utah Phillips passed away the evening of May 23, 2008. He greatly inspired our work here at TRMG, and we will miss him dearly. The official obituary as provided by the family on May 24, 2008 can be found at the official Utah Phillips website.
Trade Root Music Group launches!
Trade Root Music Group launches with a selection of recordings that includes:
*Mostar Sevdah Reunion, A Secret Gate*
*Mostar Sevdah Reunion & Ljiljana Buttler, The Legends of Life*
(To download the official press release of these two releases, click here)
*Michael White, Voices*
(To download the official press release of Voices, click here)
Trade Root Music Group is distributed in the USA by Burnside Distribution Corporation and Festival Distribution in Canada.
Howard Zinn: War and Civil Disobedience
“Whenever important things had to be done and injustices had to be rectified, that initiative did not come from Washington; it came from social movements. It was the anti-slavery movement more than Abraham Lincoln that was responsible for the end of slavery. It was the labor movement more than FDR that was responsible for the minimum wage and all that. So we need a new social movement. We need more protests, we need more acts, we need more citizen involvement, yes, and we need civil disobedience.”
–Howard Zinn, excerpt from “War and Civil Disobedience”