Dana Lyons

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Dana Lyons is a folk music and alternative rock musician from Olympia, Washington. He was born in Kingston, New York and graduated from Swarthmore College in 1982.

He is known for his environmentalist song "Our State Is a Dumpsite", which was actually the subject of a serious proposal in the Washington legislature during the 1980s to be made the official state song. He went on to perform music for the environmental group Earth First! and to record an album of children's music, At Night They Howl at the Moon, and more recently, he has moved from folk music into alternative rock with the album Cows With Guns.

Dana Lyons is the author of the children's book The Tree (2002). Jane Goodall penned the foreword and David Danioth is responsible for the illustrations. He also wrote "Circle the World", a song which was inspired by Jane Goodall's idea for people around the world to make peace dove puppets that can glide every September 21st.

[edit] Career

Dana has toured in 46 of the 50 American states, around the East Coast of Australia and across Ireland, England, New Zealand, Mexico, Kazakhstan and Siberia. Dana performs at festivals ranging from Farm Aid with Willie Nelson and Neil Young to the Harley Davidson Festival in Sturgis, South Dakota where he shared the stage with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Steppenwolf, Nazareth and Blue Oyster Cult. His policy of "I’ll play anywhere once" has landed Dana gigs on a tropical island in the Great Barrier reef of Australia, an Irish Pub in Beijing and the Hanford Nuclear Waste Dump in his home state of Washington.

Two of Dana’s songs have been made into award-winning illustrated books: Cows With Guns, published by Penguin (winner of the Bullitzer Prize), and The Tree, published by Illumination Arts. The Tree was endorsed by Dr. Jane Goodall, has forewords by Pete Seeger and Julia Butterfly Hill and has won numerous awards.

Dana has also shared the stage with many notable performers including Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Pete Sears of Jefferson Starship, Stephen Stills, River Phoenix, Nickel Creek, Country Joe McDonald, Utah Phillips and John Trudell.

[edit] Misconceptions

The song "Cows With Guns" is often credited (especially on programmes such as limewire and other music sharing programmes) as being created and sung by "Weird Al" Yankovic, Denis Leary or the Arrogant Worms, due to its comic nature, this is actually false. (See Songs misattributed to "Weird Al" Yankovic.)