Dana Lyons | |
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Genres | folk music, alternative rock |
Instruments | guitar |
Dana Lyons is a folk music and alternative rock musician from Bellingham, 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 before releasing the song he is most famous for, "Cows With Guns," on the album of the same title, in 1996.
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 21.
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 Öyster Cult. His policy of "I’ll play anywhere once" has landed Lyons 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.