DANIEL REDWOOD

I grew up in a home filled with music. My father had a beautiful tenor voice and sang for many years with the Collegiate Chorale in New York City, including under some of the great conductors of his time, Toscanini and Robert Shaw. I have memories from early childhood of him playing the violin and my mother playing the piano. Music was always part of my parents’ lives. I am forever grateful that they passed that on to me. My first guitar was a surprise present from them on my 15th birthday; I had neither asked for it nor expected it, but I’ve been playing guitar and singing along ever since. 

Within a few years, I began writing songs, inspired by the great activist singers and songwriters of the 1960s: Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Malvina Reynolds, Tom Paxton, Len Chandler, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary. And those who preceded them, especially Woody Guthrie.  

For me, songwriting has always been a way to speak from the heart and support causes I believe in. 

During my college years in Buffalo, I sang and played guitar (plus kazoo and wooden salad spoons) with the South Happiness Street Society Skiffle Band, which toured upper New York State and Southern Canada. Soon after, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I sang and wrote songs for the peace and farmworker movements. I was part of the Constellation Vote Project in San Diego, singing before many of David Harris’s talks as we spread the word about ending the war in Vietnam.

Next, I worked as a volunteer ($5 a week plus room and board) with César Chávez and the United Farmworkers Union and was sent by César on a coast-to-coast singing tour, performing at rallies, union halls, houses of worship, folk festivals, on radio and TV, and at countless house concerts in people’s living rooms. Some of my fondest memories from that era involve singing to crowds before speeches by César, Dolores Huerta, David Harris, and other movement leaders. 

With my brother Jon and my former wife and singing partner, we recorded a benefit record of original songs in the spring of 1972, at a studio in Haight-Ashbury called Funky Features, sponsored by Taller Gráfico, the publishing wing of the United Farmworkers Union. Some of the songs had both English and Spanish lyrics. One of those, “La Lucha Continuará / The Struggle Goes On” was later recorded by Spanish-speaking singers in the United States and Chile and then selected three decades later by the Smithsonian Institution for inclusion in their Grammy- nominated 5-CD collection, Best of Broadside: Anthems of the American Underground, 1962- 1988, alongside songs by many of my music heroes, including Dylan, Seeger, Ochs, Reynolds, Sainte-Marie, and others.

In 2005, I joined the animal rights movement. My wife Beth and I (married since 1992) went vegan that year after seeing a film that included footage taken inside slaughterhouses and at sanctuaries where rescued animals were living their lives in peace and dignity. I’ve released two albums of animal rights songs: Songs for Animals, People and the Earth (2013) and For the Animals (2023). Over the years, Beth and I have visited many farmed animal sanctuaries including Animal Place, Farm Sanctuary, Lighthouse Farm Sanctuary, Out to Pasture Sanctuary, Peaceful Prairie Animal Sanctuary, Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, United Poultry Concerns, Veganville Animal Sanctuary, and Wildwood Farm Sanctuary. Beth’s photos and digital artwork of animals living in sanctuaries has appeared in art exhibits internationally as part of the Art of Compassion Project. All animal photos on the Daniel Redwood Songs website were taken by Beth. Her Instagram feed is here. 

Bringing this up to the present … my work with both the animal rights and farmworkers movements converged in the 2018 short documentary film, Cesar Chavez: Respect for All, where I sang We Shall Overcome in English and Spanish in the same room where I sang it 44 years earlier for (and with) César Chávez and several dozen farmworkers, union activists all. The film follows young vegan and environmental activist Genesis Butler, César's great- grandniece, as she retraces his journey, finding deep inspiration along the way. Filmmaker Glenn Scott Lacey captured a conversation between Genesis and me that I will forever treasure.