Written By Cary Barnhard

HB: What started your interest in music?

RC: In elementary school I got interested in music, wanted to learn more about it. I found I wasn't disciplined enough to continue with the piano lessons I gave up for the urban lake fishing I was doing, so they fell by the wayside. But my interest was rekindled in High School, as a lot of young men's interest's are because girls listen to guys who play Rock 'n Roll. So I picked up a guitar and formed one of many bands, and finally one stuck in College called The Mortals, and we started writing our own tunes, and that dissolved but I reformed another band that became The Refreshments. We got signed to Mercury Records, put out two albums, had a quote unquote hit on the radio, got on The Conan O'Brien show and had a pretty high, good rush of celebrity status and then Mercury Records got consolidated into some other larger corporate program and lots of artists fell by the wayside and we were one of them. And that wonderful apocalypse The Refreshments broke up, I got my independence back. I met the fello9ws I'm with now who are truly talented and my true comrades and brothers and we've been making music independently ever since, and touring the United States in trains, planes and automobiles and tour busses that break down quite frequently and we're having a ball!

HB: How are The Peacemakers different than other projects you've worked on?

RC: How is it different? Good question! It's the same it that it's still a continuation, it's still an answering of the call. I really do consider music a vocation, a true calling, and this is a vehicle by witch to answer that call. And here we are together! Independence is a very good thing for the marriage of art and commerce because we can do what we want to do free of the good opinion of anyone who holds purse strings. So our relationship is very, very close to our audience and we let art lead the commerce. So we create a feedback loop that way, and it's all because of the audience response to the art and I wouldn't change a thing!

HB: At one point you lived in kind of a commune for musicians?

RC: That's sort of romanticized. It wasn't a commune, it was just what a lot of people do in college, which is just "The apartment costs four hundred dollars and you got eight people to pitch in fifty, there you go!" You can call it a commune, but it was really just a space of like minded people playing guitars and steel drums and reading Henry Miller and Nietzsche and talking about broken hearts and how to save the world. If that's a commune then probably everyone's been in that commune!

HB: How did that experience shape your songwriting and your attitude towards music?

RC: It was a really nurturing place to be. Being with like minded people, people who put art above fashion and trends. Art that was enduring, art that was meaningful, art that could be affective with an 'A'! It seems there's always an "Us and Them" in the art community, and I was in that "Us" that thought that music should be organic and full of soul, and work irrespective of the trends and the fashions of the day, and I still operate that way! So I assume that sort of a culture that I grew up in was very formative on my views on what art can and should be.