New Album ... "ICE Fishing in America-- Songs in the Moment"

---

- Brad Spencer – musician & sculptor

This well-crafted collection of songs embraces a wide variety of musical genres. The witty and often humorous lyrics reflect a tradition in folk protest music suggesting that sometimes levity is the sanest response to the political absurdity of our times.

- Elaine Chiosso -- founder & executive director, emerita, Haw River Assembly

What a great collection! This should be the official Playlist for every national holiday!!

ICE Fishing in America is the best of folk music telling truth to power, in the tradition of Will Rogers, Pete Seeger and Jesse Welles. Clever, biting and funny political lyrics by longtime songsters Larry Vellani and Si Kahn, played by Vellani and the great Mebanesville band. ICE, DOGE, Tesla, Mar-a-Lago, Tariffs, US as Canada’s new 11th Province, pipeline fighters and water protectors - they cover it all!

- James Sheilds -- musician, actor, museum director, African American History & Cultural Arts Center

Love the album. Clever lyrics, stellar musicianship!

- Jason Crazy Bear Campos-Keck & Crystal Red Bear Cavalier-Keck -- Founders of 7 Directions of Service, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation

The relevance and resonance of songs like "Water Ways" and the album’s title track "ICE Fishing” fill our hearts and bones with the proud and peaceful spirit of resistance that our collective ancestors survived on. As Indigenous local descendants and modern- day protectors of Air, Land, and Water, we look to musical inspirations such as this to breath back into our lungs that we may continue the tedious work of preparing for our descendants a life in a world worth contributing to.  Take time and close your eyes as we did to clever lyrics and the soulful sound of a mover and a shaker and an organizer’s soundtrack of sustainability. These are the rhythms that have carried movements for generations, and we are grateful not only to have the artists continue to carry us on their melodies but to also know and have stood and have spoken and have advocated with the artists. Grateful for this album, grateful for the creativity, grateful for the spirit of responsibility and respect for life. All around sense of gratitude and readiness for more to come. As they say thank you in the language of the current day, Occaneechi Saponi People's whose ancestors kept balance for generations on these lands and waters, we say Bila:huk and Mani:en:ise Water Lives.

- Michael Sisson – musician, scholar & co-founder, Scioto Valley String Band

In ICE Fishing in America, L.D. Vellani tackles the issues of our day with passion and humor. He helps us laugh at the absurdities all around us while reminding us that we must take action to thwart injustice and corruption. Like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Vellani takes aim at the political and financial elites, and empathizes with their victims. I have known of Vellani’s lifelong commitment to making music a weapon in the struggle for social justice since his early days in Ohio in the 1970s, and his voice is every bit as clear and convincing as it was then. The vocals are complemented by the rich sounds of a large ensemble of folk-acoustic instrumentalists whose varying arrangements make this album a fun and appealing listen.

- Olena Oksana-Pates -- Ukrainian emigrant, US-Ukrainian Co-National & Director, Ukrainians in the Carolinas

These songs are clever, canny, and exquisitely lyrical. Listen closely, because not a word is there by accident. Every line carries its own quiet gravity, revealing fresh shades of meaning with each return. Even when delivered with tongue firmly in cheek, the wit never comes at the expense of the truth; if anything, the humor is the sugar that helps the wisdom slip down.

- Si Kahn -- writer, composer, lyricist, organizer & co-creator of  "ICE Fishing in America"

Given a crisis like the one the Trump administration is imposing on the people of the United States today, standard advice might be 'to fight fire with fire.'  But that approach can leave the entire world in flames. In our new album ICE Fishing in America - Songs in the Moment, my collaborator L. D. Vellani and Mebanesville have taken a far more effective approach: Fighting fire with humor.  If there's one thing petty dictators like Trump can't stand, it's to be laughed. at.     "And laugh uproariously at Trump and his entire gang of thieves is exactly what Larry and I do in these songs. Trump imposes tariffs on everything that does or doesn't move, including two islands in the Antarctica with where no humans live?  Do they critique it from the point of view of economic policy? No way! But curious to know how those two islands' living inhabitants about how about the impact of tariffs, they 'Ask the Penguin, Ask the Seal.' Beethoven, to whose 'Ode to Joy' they set their lyrics, must be laughing his wig off.

Sing these songs of the moment to the sold-out politicians, sing them to the murderous ICE terrorists -- but also sing them to your children, to your sisters and brothers in the struggle, to all of us who are united in this fight for freedom