Doug Clegg wields a mean guitar. And a mean fiddle. And a mean mandolin. And a mean piano. And a mean resonator guitar. And ... well, he can play just about any instrument in the folk music tool box. But even a bit more dangerously, he sports a formidable pen too. When he puts lyrics down, he just might channel the folk singer greats and their calls for just labor relations, or a healthy environment, or to call crooked politicians to truth.
Doug has published his own music for years now and has several albums to his credit. He and his partner Kate Wallace have created the Trinity Backstage concert series, now at just over 100 shows, giving singer-songwriter artists a classy venue and listeners a classy act for a totally reasonable price that still lets each party and the host church reap suitable rewards that do everyone some good. Creating a parallel world for artists and listeners to meet and support and inspire each other is itself a form of jubilee economics.
Doug is all that, and a massage therapist, but of interest to us here is the fact he's the board president of Jubilee Economics Ministries.
In May, JEM got volunteers, board, and friends together for meetings and a coffee house concert of Doug's music. Doug came down to San Diego and afforded us the chance to finally do a podcast with him, seeking his perspective on JEM, music publishing on the outside of the mainstream recording industry, the Artists for Change CD, social justice, the plight of Native Americans, and whatever else came to mind in this freewheeling chat. He also played a couple songs for us too and wove their lyrical themes into the podcast discussion.
This is quite a different show than we've ever had.
The weekend also resulted in a rich batch of new audio and video for our library:
The following player has all the songs of Doug's performance at Rebecca's. You can download any of the songs in this playlist, or share it around with a simple link, or if you like, embed it in your site just like it appears here.
The YouTube playlist just below features four of Doug's original songs at the Rebecca's show and two songs from this podcast session.
Total running time for six videos is about 32 minutes.
Oh, our page has been there for some time even alongside JEM's page, but now you can find our show and a convenient list of our episodes, all playable in Facebook via the Libsyn app. You'll have to allow the app to interact with your own account, but isn't it SO worth it to hear The Common Good Podcast? Of course, now it is stupendously easy to share TCGP with your friends. Under the show logo is the magic "SEND" button.
Ed Lucas' home studio and the launchpad for The Common Good Podcast [video] is a thing of the past as of this episode. Oh, maybe someone else will do a podcast from the same room in the funky, 90 year old craftsman house in San Diego's North Park neighborhood, but probably not. Most of the first 26 episodes were done there, and a lot of JEM's present online presence originated there since early 2010. JEM meetings of the San Diego working group were had there, sometimes even on the porch during the summer. It was just a mile from the main JEM office, but a bit more spacious and not prone to the other distractions at the Christ United Methodist church where the office resides. So farewell to the old house. We're going to have to figure out what else to do, either at Ed's new place some miles out of town, or just to do location recording of interviews.
In the works is a new idea for The Common Good Podcast that involves our new collaborator Gerald Iversen. Gerald's long history in the voluntary simple living movement dovetails with JEM's mission. Gerald has contributed many videos and will contribute many more to a new YouTube channel devoted to voluntary simple living. We're working out how to get Gerald in as a regular voice on TCGP, even as he's elsewhere in the nation.
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