"After The War" by Rod MacDonald on EasyLiving Front Range Colorado

Rod MacDonald is known as one of the top post-60s folk singer-songwriters, called by the All-Music Guide “a big part of the 1980s folk revival in Greenwich Village clubs.” Now with his newest release, After The War, he has come full circle, matching re-recordings of some of his best-loved songs with his newest work. MacDonald has been touring and releasing new work since his first solo recording in 1983, bearing “American Jerusalem,” “A Sailor’s Prayer,” and “Every Living Thing,” three songs widely covered by other artists. This “American Jerusalem,” with vocals by MacDonald and Tracy Grammer, breathes new life into the anthemic tale of redemption on the streets of New York City. Current writing tells of looking through the darkness to find “Wings of Light”, and, of watching “Two Americans”--a Tel Aviv businessman and a Lebanese restauranteur--eating and debating peacably at a sidewalk cafe: “Picture two Americans/in the land of the free/free to speak their minds/free to disagree/why can’t you and me?” “After The War,” MacDonald’s first new cd since 2005, boasts a top-flight band (Gary Burke of Joe Jackson’s hit bands, Pete Levin from the Gil Evans Orchestra, JP Bowersock from Ryan Adams’ Cardinals, and longtime bassist Mark Dann). MacDonald’s supple voice and precise writing are in top form, and show the range of a career that has brought him to audiences throughout North America and Europe, spanning Greenwich Village, Italy, the Czech Republic, US Native American reservations, and since 1995, south Florida, where he and his wife have two young children. “A fraction of the songs that exist in the public domain possess much more than a fleeting immediacy. MacDonald has for decades crafted in word and melody, living and breathing entities that bear repeated hearing,” writes Arthur Wood in Folkwax.