Tom Paxton - Recent Career

Recent Career

As the 1990s rolled around, Paxton began delving deeply into children's music, recording nine children's albums during the decade. In July 1994, Paxton was invited to perform at a folk festival in Israel, "Jacob's Ladder", and he played there and a series of concerts around Israel accompanied by folk guitarist and harmonica player Shay Tochner. Paxton recorded a live album in 1996 with his good friend Jim Rooney, and it contained some new comical songs about current events. Eric Weissberg, John Gorka, Robin and Linda Williams, among others, also performed; and the album was titled Live: For the Record. In the mid-1990s, Paxton also began to give more workshops in songwriting.

In 2000, Paxton once again began to write more of the topical songs for which he originally became known. In 2001, he released an album with Anne Hills entitled Under American Skies, and in 2002, he released an album of all new songs entitled Looking for the Moon (Appleseed Recordings). At the time of its release, Paxton was quoted saying that it might be his best album so far. Looking for the Moon contains the song "The Bravest", which is about the firefighters who gave their lives while trying to save others in New York City on September 11, 2001. Also, around this time, Paxton began writing and releasing his "Short Shelf Life Songs" about current events for free download on his website. The "short shelf life songs", as he calls them, are about politics and things going on in the news. Paxton wrote a number of topical protest songs that were critical of the Bush administration's actions. For example, the song "Homeland Security" lampooned exaggerated terror threats, and "John Ashcroft and The Spirit of Justice" comically mocked John Ashcroft's prudishness over the Spirit of Justice statue. In 2007, Paxton rewrote a song of his from 1965 entitled "Lyndon Johnson Told The Nation", about the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and transformed it into "George W. Told The Nation", about the surge in the Iraq war.

In 2007, Tom Paxton became one of the founding members of the Copyright Alliance, whose purpose is to promote the cultural and economic benefits of copyrights.

In 2008, Paxton rewrote his song "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler", about the federal loan guarantee to Chrysler in 1979, as "I Am Changing My Name to Fannie Mae", about the 700 billion dollar "bailout of the U.S. financial system".

Paxton continues to perform yearly tours of the United States and United Kingdom.