Rod MacDonald Musical artist

Rod MacDonald (born August 17, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter. He was a "big part of the 1980s folk revival in Greenwich Village clubs", performing at the Speakeasy, Bottom Line, Folk City, and the Songwriter's Exchange at the Cornelia Street Cafe for many years. He co-founded the Greenwich Village Folk Festival. He is perhaps best known for his songs "American Jerusalem", about the "contrast between the rich and the poor in Manhattan" (Sing Out!), "A Sailor's Prayer", "Coming of the Snow", "Every Living Thing", and "My Neighbors in Delray", a description of the September 11 hijackers' last days in Delray Beach, Florida, where MacDonald has lived since 1995. His songs have been covered by Dave Van Ronk, Shawn Colvin, Four Bitchin' Babes, Jonathan Edwards, Garnet Rogers, and others. His 1985 recording "White Buffalo" is dedicated to Lakota Sioux ceremonial chief and healer Frank Fools Crow, whom he visited in 1981 and 1985, and who appears with MacDonald in the cover photograph. His first novel, The Open Mike, about a young man in the open mike scene of Greenwich Village, was published on December 5, 2014, by Archway Publishing.