When it comes to good causes, Ray Rivers is a musician who knows whereof he sings. Like the internationally renowned artist Robert Bateman, and Juno nominee Sarah Harmer, Rivers’ love of the environment was nurtured along the Niagara Escarpment of Ontario. A fifty-ish looking figure with a grizzled beard, Rivers hoists a chainsaw as dexterously as an acoustic guitar, and looks as comfortable in a stable as a recording studio. A farmer, environmentalist and political junkie, Rivers prepared himself for the world of folk music by his experience in protecting the environment, organic farming, business and politics. It’s not every folk artist who weaves words like “thermodynamics”, “atrazine”, and “Tim Flannery”, into his lyrics forcing the listener to places he wants to take them, in a manner used by contemporary folk artists such as James Keelaghan. Those lyrics are accompanied by Rivers’ own acoustic guitar, and occasional backups of harmonica, accordion, electric base, double-bass, banjo, trumpet, and tin whistle. In 2006 Rivers released his first CD, Angry Old Men. The whimsical title is aptly matched by cover-art done by his partner, bassist and artist, Jean Rivers. The album is a mixture of calls for social justice, peace, social activism, and environmentalism. Where are the angry young “boomers” today he laments? They were going to change the world? Did the hippie generation set its sights too high? Rivers poses this question in the title track, and answers it in the concluding cut, “It Matters”. “It matters when we change the clime, extinguish species before their time.” It matters how we spend our time, and how we treat each other. Rivers followed up in 2007 with an album whose title is suggestive of perhaps the greatest challenges facing society – global climate change. “I wrote Weather Makers All after reading the book of a similar name by (Australian environmentalist) Tim Flannery”, he says. The book explains how carbon emissions are changing the climate, and its title is the topic of the album’s lead track. Both of these albums were produced, at the Pipe Street Studio with the help of Guelph environmental activist and noted songwriter singer James Gordon, who accompanies Ray on some of the songs. Perhaps the most poignant track is “Goodbye Polar Bear”, with additional vocals by good friend Wendi Hunter. This song, starting from a child’s perspective, cuts right to the heart of climate change issues such as polar ice-cap melting and species extinction. The song concludes to an almost desperate line; “but now I think it’s too late.” The recurrent themes in Rivers’ music - peace, social justice, and the environment, are reinforced in songs like “Black Lung Blues”, and “For Katrina” on the first album, and “Nine-Eleven” on the newest release. The “Last Folk Singer” laments that vacuum that exists for someone to press the messages of peace that influential ‘angry’ singer-songwriter and social activist Phil Ochs imprinted on Rivers in his youth. Perched in the Canadian hinterland, Rivers uses lines that might appear strident to American ears. “I wish that I could meet George Bush; I’d like to kick him in the tush.” The song “Cuba Libre” smacks of the audacity of James Cockburn and would not resound well in George Bush’s Oval Office since it suggests that Fidel Castro will leave a legacy of pride and freedom that so many American presidents would have denied him. In the haunting “Nine-Eleven”, Rivers cries out that “we are all American”, but laments the subsequent destruction wrought in Afghanistan and Iraq, questioning the choices involved in trying to preserve the freedoms we all love. Intriguingly the next song asks uses the tragic event in a small Pennsylvania Amish farming community to criticize the behaviour of world figures including Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and George Bush. “Forgiveness is the key to peace among mankind”, he concludes. Rivers had forwarded a copy of the CD to the then campaigning Senator form Illinois, Barack Obama, with a note wishing him success in his Presidential race in order that Rivers could start writing a different kind of song about America. Local and personal issues are also given attention in songs like, “Adrian”, “It Gets All Men”, and “Peace in the Country”.“Adrian” is a song about an honest, hard-working farmer, struck by cancer in his still early years and the chemicals which may have caused it. “It Gets All Men” muses about the harmful effects of DDT, nuclear fallout, and a personal struggle with “the big C”. “Peace in the Country”, is a protest song about a proposed quarry, a concern to so many in our modern society who feel helpless to be able to stop these kind of destructive development as they take almost hopeless refuge behind fences adorned with “stop the quarry” signs, and whose cause has also been championed by artists like Sarah Harmer and the Barenaked Ladies. But Rivers concludes the album with “This Dance”, a simple love song with a haunting optimism; “Hold my hand, and look into my eyes; this dance won’t end until the music dies.” Despite all the ardent messaging in his music, it is the children, our relationships, and life itself that Rivers is really singing about. Where will the music go from here? “I plan to stay with ‘message songs’, although I have written some love songs as well”, Rivers says. “I’m looking to a project which can be adapted to stage and screen...along the lines of the Who’s rock opera Tommy.” Despite the whimsy, and gentle self-effacement, Rivers shows few signs of age. He wields a chainsaw as nimbly as an acoustic guitar, and like the land he loves, he and his music should weather the seasons well. Angry Old Men, The Last Family Farm, The Black Lung Blues, For Katrina, Winter’s Changed, There Was Jane, The Only Way She Knew, Hold on Tom, What’s the Matter with Peace, Liberty, It Matters. All words and music by Ray Rivers. Ray Rivers Music, 2006. Weather Makers All, Goodbye Polar Bear, The Last Folk Singer, Listen, Cuba Libre, Adrian, It Gets All Men, Mingle Music Blues, Nine-Eleven, Being Amish, Peace in the Country, This Dance. All words and music by Ray Rivers. Ray Rivers Music, 2007.