In Episode 51 of The High Note podcast, I talk with Philadelphia-area singer-songwriter Rob Lincoln about his new album, "American Tales & Presidents: 250+ Years of American History, Fact and Fiction," released July 1 to mark the country's 250th anniversary. Rob has written more than 1,088 songs since 1975 and once released a 300-song, 18-hour debut album. For this one, he pulled 15 of them into chronological order, starting around 1740 with a cherry tree that was never chopped down and ending in the present. We get into the story behind nearly every track: "History," written in 1984 and updated with a new closing line about Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah; "Father Abraham" and what Rob learned in Springfield, Illinois, about the integrated neighborhood Lincoln chose to live in; "Teddy," written in 1982 with a vocal lifted off a 1986 cassette; "Gold Rush Hill," an allegory about trickle-down economics disguised as a Gold Rush ballad; and "Glenn Andreotta," a song about the least-known of the three men who intervened at the My Lai massacre - a song Rob has never been able to sing without crying, and one that helped Andreotta's family get him the recognition he never had. Lincoln also explains how stem-separation software let him rescue decades-old home recordings, where he draws his ethical line on AI in music, why he gives away his lyrics and chords for free, and how he wrote two new songs a week for 137 straight weeks on YouTube. Musicians on the album include Jan Alba, Max Davey, Jake Gussman, Steve Lessick, Steve Novoa, David C. Perry and Christine Winchester. Cover art is by Carol Worthington-Levy. He will be at the Philadelphia Folk Festival Aug. 14-16 at Old Pool Farm in Upper Salford Township. The Old Sea Cats play Lower Forge Brewing in Medford, New Jersey, on Friday, Aug. 28. Lessick & Lincoln celebrate 50 years of playing together with a new album and a show at Jamey's House of Music in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, Dec. 10. Subscribe to Rob's YouTube channel for two new songs a week, and email him at lincolnsongs@aol.com for free lyrics and chords. Subscribe to The High Note podcast anywhere you subscribe to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher, TuneIn and Google Podcasts. Follow @HighNoteBlog anywhere you go on social media including TikTok, X, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook. Subscribe to The High Note E-Zine. Paul "Dawg" Dixon wrote, composed and recorded the intro and outro music. The voices you hear at the end are Graeme Armstrong, Steve Poltz and Keller Williams.
