Willie Nelson

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Douglas Kelvin Payne sings “A Peaceful Solution” while drawing upon a deep reservoir of personal pain and suffering caused by war. His is a personal history that makes determined peace proponents.

The long term musical peace activism demonstrated by Douglas Kelvin Payne makes his music more noteworthy. It adds a special dimension to his already splendid singing, picking and harmonica talents.

You cannot get physically farther away from the United States of America than Australia and still be on habitable soil. Despite this geographical distance wars perpetrated by the United States of America have still visited unnecessary suffering and death upon them.

As the historically leading culprit of discharging greenhouse gasses the United States of America has done more to contribute to global warming than any other country. The only reason behind it all is greed.

The United States of America not only creates terrorists by oppressing people at home and abroad. The actions of the United States of America creates entire nations full of people who resent its actions with escalating openness.

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
from W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939″

How much will the nations of the world tolerate before vengeance is taken?

How much will the people of the United States of America tolerate before they take back America?

The answer as to which will occur first is in the hands of Americans for now. It is only a matter of time until this option expires.

* * * * * Artist’s Statement * * * * *

My name is Doug Payne from Cooma New South Wales Australia. I am 54 years old on 30th of October. I am passionate about peace and wrote my first song for peace when I was 16. It was called “Message for the Leaders”. I dug it back up when the war in Afghanistan started and my neighbour’s mother and two children were killed there in 2003.

I dug it up on about 15 occasions since 1969 when I wrote it. On each occasion it was a war where women and children were killed often. I dug it up again recently. Please watch “Message for the Leaders.”

In 1969 my brother was in Vietnam and I was 14 years of age working in his role on my fathers farm. My father was a paraplegic. This Vietnam disaster was such a disruptive thing in my life personally. Then my brother came home in 1969 and to this day still suffers from PTSD which has caused him so much pain. I wrote a song for him called “It Just Wasn’t Right” and in simple words it captures the PTSD disaster that exists still in soldiers from the wars over 50 years past.

I have been thinking about the environment since these times on the farm. I have been talking of global warming since 1970. Now it is coming true just as predicted in 1970 and still there are those who stand in the storms and can’t feel the wind or see the lightning.

I believe that the economy has been boosted at times by war. I believe that war has been made more likely because of this and the economic/political will. I think it can be just as well boosted by focusing on “Green Technology’.

I think we have to get the rogues in Wall Street and the money makers to see that they can get rich making peace and saving the planet just as easily as destroying it. I really think this is true. I would suggest that the greedy can get even richer fixing the mess they made destroying things.

Hundreds of years ago soldiers rarely killed other soldiers, relative to today’s figures. There was a lot of close, hand to hand combat where natural instincts took over and death was not so easy to inflict on another human being.

Modern weapons began to create distance where the soldier is not exposed to these powerful images. It becomes easy to kill from over the hill. It is easy for a man to drop a bomb and kill 100 thousand people when he can’t see them. It is easy for a president in the oval office to approve of things and the death of innocents he can’t see. If he could hear their screams would he sign the orders?

It is our job as artists to bring that face of the terrified soldier, the dying man, the person they are about to kill, the suffering child, right up in their face. Then the message that should go to the killers heart before he destroys another life, will reach its target and maybe the right decisions will be made.

So the solutions are for me:

Put the scream of the dying child in the war room.

Educate the world that we need to clean up.

Get the greedy guys to see they can get rich cleaning up.

I have many songs that reflect this thinking in simple terms. I have an Album called “Sinkers Hooks and Things” and it is available on digital release. (http://cdbaby.com/cd/dougpayne)

My second Album is called “The Green House Gas”. It is not yet available on digital but there are many of the tracks on youtube. http://uk.youtube.com/coomadoug.

Share This

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.