and we have on my far right joseph demosthenes and if you have noticed there's a resemblance and that's because it's his twin brother and his name is john demasi and they're both folk singers and acoustic guitar players musicians and they've been doing it most of their life ok so what got you into being a folk singer how did it start but i'll tell you joan john and i like to say we've been singing together since the crypt days because we twins and people say well if you guys are twins had come i have a beard and he doesn't and the truth is i was born with my beard most people don't know that i was a very hairy beat that you might have read about in the national enquirer and i love that story my favorite is they say he does people do  when we realized that we like to sing and it's kind of hard to play the violin and sing at the same time and we also started working as volunteers at a a recreation program for kids with disabilities is back in one thousand sixty nine and just you know you teenagers that  doing that we started singing and got into folk music and just everything we loved about folk music was that we could sing about things we believed we could sing about social issues back in the vietnam war was going on the civil rights movement was going on in folk music actually said a saying about the issues those type of issues and we were very politically involved back then and we were just like we are now and we certainly had opinions and beliefs that we strongly held and we wanted to use our music to express those things and and it's interesting that because i say we both strongly believe that while you would have it your ethnicity from your family you don't necessarily inherit your spirituality spirituality is certainly unique to each and every one of us and we live in a society that  that in lot of ways tries to force you to conform rather than in encouraging you to explore and find what personally speaks for you and so i thought and it's kind of interesting you know because once people begin to get the freedom to what speaks to them i've was reading an interesting statistic something like forty percent of a close to fifty percent of the people that are are in it in a church are not in the church that they grew up in you know but they but as as things open up and people are given  chance they will find something that speaks to them another song that we do that people really love and i think it has a really important message is a song called living in a world of kindness and you know one of our favorite poems we like to talk about that is a poem called everything you need to know you learned in share share know to take care of each other and it seems like certainly in you know art in today's world we seem to forget that you know it's not ok to bully we learn these things in kindergarten you know and if that song live in a world of kindness shall we hear that ye but humanity is something we encourage and people you and it's not something that just comes without the examples that are set by the people around us so what about the people today i mean are your songs in demand now are yours do you think that people want to hear more about what you are singing about even than perhaps a year ago yeah i actually like to make the joke the sixty's are back because it used to be that the eighty's music was real popular i bet the kids were all danton but now it seems that up because about the political climate that we find ourselves in there are certain certainly on the the left of the political spectrum i've noticed certainly where i am and i think this is happening all across the country a lot of them young parents they see what's going on and they fought that very disturbed by the fact that we have a president that thinks it's ok to bully people that it's ok the incidents of bullying have been reportedly going up under this president think all of the trump effect if not yet as it may be impeached and certainly young people feel that that you know it's my duty i don't i don't want this kind of a world i want to create this kind of world for my child is never underestimate the power of a motivated feel like a lot of other people are responding to it and want to hear the messages and the other thing that i think is important is it you need to history is is is is like a newspaper kick will talk about it from a daily perspective a magazine will talk about it like the talk time magazine will talk about it from a weekly perspective but it's also good to look at it for from a decade perspective and for john and i we were one thousand nine hundred fifty four which was the year that rosa parks refused to give up her seat on the bus or like to our life to a large extent has paralleled the progress the progress that we have made it in this country and you see you should never underestimate the power of indeed that individuals have to change the world that we've made so much progress that doesn't mean that we shouldn't should discard or not give credence to what we need to do today but and i think there is always one step it's always two steps forward one step back and of thing but we have come a long way in our own our own lifetime i can remember i specifically well interracial marriage became legal while we were as in high school when he did yeah you know all kinds of think the when they are people with disabilities act ok women's rights ok when we were i remember watching shows like bill donahue in the seventy's and oprah and they were talking about domestic abuse you know things like when w e were growing up everybody smoked you watch movies from the seventy's today and it looks so odd that the one for that used to be one for the road yet now it's called a designated driver so things things do change but you it's when you when you look at it from a long perspective over the last well where should we celebrate or sixty third birthday this year if you look at it from a long perspective you know it's over sixty three years we've made a lot of point we've made tremendous amount of progress in our society but we have to keep working it have to keep striving in a way you're inspiring people to understand that they're not alone and they're not helpless and they have a voice to be heard and you know we like to say if you want to change the world change your world you know you start in your new because you could end it in its arms like the ripple effect the stone and put put the stone in the pebble in the ripples go out here you know i mean that's how the world gets changed in one person at a time and you 'd be surprised the effect that you can have on people you know joe and i saw this when we were in high school we started work like joe mentioned before i'm at it were volunteering at a camp for people with disabilities enjoy i always very blessed we've been be been professional musicians our whole lives you know like john said we played with chris for twenty years we had a record record deal on b m g we recorded but i think four or five c d s a bunch of different things and now we're back at yeah yeah i live at the midwest yes now you're visiting us here and yes i actually have you we have you have people ask me what's good and i tell you from new york doing in the midwest and they say well i'm in the witness protection program i was hoping for a while but i ended up in north dakota but the truth is like i say if you're things ok so this is a new song what is it you want to commit what's different what are you telling us ha all the others with every civil rights movement workers rights movements women's rights movements there were always musicians singing songs of about these issues and it just seemed to be it's certainly within in the last election in the last year what's happening in this country i kind of feel like we've come so far now many of the values of the things that we've we've worked for the last thirty four years are being challenged they're being  of immigrants we welcome people here we shouldn't be rounding up people yes maybe that they are undocumented but rounding up children that were brought here you know when they were born two years old who rounding up people that are that have lived here for twenty thirty years you know a family of this isn't what america is about i don't believe and you know and we we you know we have to keep including people you know  it seems that these ideals are being challenged and being attacked right now and so we have a lot more work to do it looks like for you you know so then i guess the journey it's a lot of what we call it a long walk because the jury never really had it's a low warp you know to for truth for justice for inclusion for you know talk to welcome people you know for equal rights for everyone here i mean one of the things when you look at the the the cabinet that our president has put together it doesn't look like america looks and that's really i think that's more and more ok yeah america is not only a white man's society it belongs to everyone and that's something that we really have to talk about and sing about and