“The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes…but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies.” ―Alan Lomax

Featured within this site are a collection of field recordings – music, stories, snippets, and poems – from Rainbow gatherings around the world. There are over 1600 recordings for you to listen to and/or download. They are live, rustic, and spontaneous, made out in the forests of the world. More often than not, they were recorded in a rugged and unpredictable environment – each of these tracks is a one-source recording, and no additional studio elements have been added.  Feel free to listen to, download, and/or share these recordings, but ― No Sale or Commercial Use.

Download the entire archive: Sounds from the Rainbow (2000 - 2024) 13 GB

I wrote a book about my experience field recording at Rainbow. It is available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook HERE

I am the Host and Producer of a radio show and podcast, Muddy Boots (please subscribe to the podcast, too!). On occasion, I air an episode called Totally High Holy Rainbow-Coloured Spirit Hawk of Awakened Manifestation. It’s comprised entirely of Rainbow gathering field recordings. Listen over on the Podcast page.

Based on prompts from friends, I put together two compilation series, Omnium Gatherum Vol. 1-10 (mix of folk and eclectic) and Heartsongs Vol. 1-12 (mix of heartsongs and spiritually minded songs). To download those albums, look under the ‘Extras’ menu and click on the ‘Albums’ tab. Enjoy ~

To listen to/download more field recording music made at Rainbow gatherings: 1998 Arizona by Hawker and 1981 Washington

Like any field recording, anything and everything may find its way into the song, story, or poem. In essence, they are a shovel full of sound decorated with embers, shouts for wood, mud, laughter, hopes, dreams, profane bleach, sacred tarps, hazy eyes, spoon ladles, gracious garlic, crooked tents, smelly crystals, silty fingernails, magic fires, knotted tongues, happy griddles, churning creeks, sacks of flour, propositions of anything, slippery smiles, interstellar oatmeal mush, hands upon hands upon hand wash, circling circled circles, loosely lost thoughts, cashed coffee grounds, genuine soot, fragrant compost, phantom trails, 6up thrills, quantum verses, sometimes moose, rumors with a mission, kitchens gone mad, kitchens gone glad, musing music, water line spines, tobacco lust, white rabbit chants, changing chain gang supply, whispering whispers, very theatrical spatulas, shouting mountains, moistened clouds, sedated rest stops, daydreams drawings, itchy heads, rambling babble, transient MCs, localized focalized focus, wolf man syndromes, backward causation quips, frolicking faeries, ragtag robes, hodge-podge clothes, not quite ready berries, standing firm trees, busy buzzing bees, rosy reenactments, damp musky teas, sharing of things, hot biscuit DINGS!, questioning knees, chattering teeth, ol’ grey water, fuzzy warmth, slimy toes, careful carabiners, sizzling saws, boo-boo gauze, painted whippersnappers, pit stop patrols, hanging hammocks, musical benches, infinite rice, snickering evening, campfire whispers, rocking rocket stoves, singsong sing along, heigh-ho shitter diggin’, broadening meadows, crawling creeks, noble chocolate, bustling ovens, wheeling wheel barrels, got a cigarette gnomes, important bowls, holy cups, birdsong morn, precious springs, boom boom drums, glittery stares, achy backs, capacious cosmic talk, cardboard which way signs, passionate prophecies, massaging muscles, huggy hugs, nomadic palaces, slow moving buses, misty milky way, raining rainbows, yeeeeeast!, invisible networks and of course free food with an occasional full moon to carry the whole thing along.

Yuppers, it all gets in there somewhere…