Pete Seeger Appreciation Page Updates

Concert raises $5,800 for Utah Phillips

Jim Capaldi — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:57:30 +0000

Concert raises $5,800 for Utah Phillips

A benefit concert held Sunday in Rosendale for folk singer and labor activist Utah Phillips raised $5,800.

On the bill for this concert were Pete Seeger, Dar Williams, Redwood Moose, Flames of Discontent and others. Nearly 300 people packed the Rosendale Community Center on Route 32 and many stood for the show.

Seeger dazzled the audience and led the full house in group sing-alongs. “This Land is Your Land,” was a highlight. Seeger, dressed in jeans and a denim shirt with a rainbow over his heart, grinned through his entire set, which brought the crowd to its feet several times.

Phillips, who has recorded two albums with alternative musician Ani DiFranco, is battling several health issues and can no longer make a living by performing. The concert held Sunday was organized by Rosendale Café co-owner Mark Morganstern, Moose Dmoch of Redwood Moose, John Pietaro of the Flames of Discontent and Sarah Underhill, who was pivotal in getting Seeger and Williams to perform.

For information, visit www.rosendalecafe.com and www.utahphillips.org.

Pete Seeger Sings for Utah Phillips - April 20th

Jim Capaldi — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:02:02 +0000

Friends come together to help Utah Phillips
By Blaise Schweitzer , Freeeman staff

When bad things happen to great activist folk singers - like the cardiac problems that have laid Utah Phillips low these last few years - activist folk singers like Pete Seeger and Dar Williams rally to help.
The Rosendale Recreation Center is the locus of a Hudson Valley fundraiser for Phillips, a renowned hobo-folkie. Currently in cardiac rehabilitation therapy, the 72-year-old Phillips is known for singing and railing against oppressive governments, union-busting employers, polluters, wars and even National Public Radio’s business-program “Marketplace.”

Upon learning of Utah’s plight, organizer Sarah Underhill pitched the idea for a fundraiser to Seeger, Williams, and a few hundred of her closest friends. Seeger and Williams immediately agreed to be the headliners and the event itself gained so much momentum that it jumped the tracks. Originally slated for the Rosendale Café, the event has been moved down Route 32 a ways to the much larger Rosendale Recreation Center.

Reached by phone at his Beacon home, Seeger said he had to help.

“Utah is a hero to thousands of us, maybe hundreds of thousands of us,” Seeger said, lauding Phillips’ integrity and ability to make people laugh.

Seeger, who is 17 years Phillips’ senior, recalled how Phillips came to him for career advice a few decades ago.

The encouragement Phillips received was salted with reality.

“I said, ‘Well you don’t get rich but you meet the best people in the world and you sing for all sorts of people that can’t afford to pay you anything,’” Seeger said. “‘You’re lucky if you get the gasoline money to drive there or train fare,’” Seeger recalled.

And no, folk singers seldom get health benefits, Seeger acknowledged, hence Sunday’s benefit.

Reached by cell phone as she was working in the garden of her Beacon home, Williams recalled that it was at a fundraiser for another cause that she met Utah in 1999. They were both performing for free to support a string of liberal radio stations.

During that performance, Williams said her admiration for Utah grew when she learned he had passed on a well-paying gig in order to support the cause. So a few weeks ago, when she learned that she could be there for Utah now that his finances are in trouble, she stepped right up.

“As soon as I heard that they wanted me to do something for him … I said yes,” Williams said. “There are some things you do reflexively. And that’s one of them.”

She had heard that across the United States other organizers had put on similar concerts to help out Phillips, but this was the first one she was invited to join.

Many of Phillips’ performances, including the one eight years ago at the Bardavon Opera House in Poughkeepsie, often involve as much talk as music, as he regales audiences with memories of riding the rails during his hobo years.

Williams said she’s heard quite a few of Utah’s anecdotes, but hungers to hear more.

“He’s just filled with stories. They’re really important parables for us,” she said, comparing Phillips to Seeger and John Lennon. “I think all of them have the vision. They see a world where people do honest work and honest work gets rewarded and honest work gets culturally valued.”

Bardavon head Chris Silva, who said he’s going to try to attend the Rosendale event, said Phillips brought the house down during his Bardavon performance, part of a solstice concert where he went off on a tangent deriding Christmas consumerism.

“His 15 minutes got a complete standing ovation of the entire house,” Silva said. “The audience was screaming for him to come back. … He’s such a lefty, such a hobo. He’s such a man of the people and it was so sincere.”

Expect plenty of mutual admiration at the Rosendale event. In addition to their appreciation of Phillips and his work through the years, Williams is a big Seeger fan and vice versa.

Seeger credited Williams with helping extend his career. He’d pretty much hung up one of his favorite songs, “Turn, Turn, Turn” because he had trouble hitting the high notes, he said, until Dar spent some time with him.

“With my old voice I couldn’t sing it high anymore, and I’d stopped singing it,” Seeger said. “Dar said ‘put it way down there’ and all of a sudden now I’m singing it again.”

Williams’ memory of the song is a strong one as well, she said. “We sang that together on the Conan O’Brien show,” she said.

Williams, who is 41, is doing well enough as a singer-songwriter that she actually has health benefits, but just.

“I can barely pay for it right now. It’s a real pain,” she said, laughing at a question about whether she may need to call in any favors if she falls on hard times.

“Usually I do fundraisers for groups that can’t raise money for me, so I don’t know if that’s going to happen,” Williams said.

Seeger and Williams will be joined at the event, by Norm Wennet, Redwood Moose, the Flames of Discontent, Jude Roberts and Lily McCabe and Sarah Underhill with the High Meadow Larks.

IF YOU GO

What: Concert to benefit folk singer and activist Utah Phillips

Who: Featuring Pete Seeger, Dar Williams, Sarah Underhill with the High Meadow Larks, Norm Wennet, Redwood Moose, the Flames of Discontent and Jude Roberts and Lily McCabe.

When: 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: Rosendale Community Center, Route 32 Rosendale.

HOW MUCH: $20

ONLINE:

www.rosendalecafe.com; www.utahphillips.org.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song on DVD

Jim Capaldi — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:55:37 +0000

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is available on DVD, with a 24 track CD, from http://www.shopthirteen.org/product/show/31668

CD/DVD: Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
An 82 minute American Masters version of three time Emmy winner Jim Brown’s documentary film with 3 bonus features and the 24-track soundtrack CD from the film.

Power of Song DVD/CD Track Listing: 1. Union Train - The Almanac Singers, 2. Round And Round Hitler’s Grave -The Almanac Singers, 3. Tzena Tzena The Weavers, 4. Goodnight Irene The Weavers, 5. I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Paul Robeson, 6. Jacob’s Ladder Pete Seeger, 7. Pretty Polly-Pete Seeger, 8. Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring Pete Seeger, 9. Union Maid Pete Seeger, 10. Passing through-Pete Seeger, 11. This Land Is Your Land Pete Seeger, 12. Kisses Sweeter Than Wine Pete Seeger, 13. Little Boxes Pete Seeger, 14. Where Have All The Flowers Gone? Pete Seeger, 15. We Shall Overcome Pete Seeger, 16. Turn! Turn! Turn! (To everything there is a season) Pete Seeger, 17. Cindy- Pete Seeger, Brownie McGhee, & Sonny Terry, 18. Waist Deep in the Big Muddy Pete Seeger, 19. My Dirty Stream Pete Seeger, 20. The Water is Wide Pete Seeger, 21. To My Old Brown Earth Pete Seeger, 22. Bring them Home (If You Love Your Uncle Sam) Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, AniDeFranco & Steve Earle, 23. Bring them Home (If You Love Your Uncle Sam) Pete Seeger Live 1970

DVD Bonus Features: 1. Beacon Sloop Club Strawberry Festival / Beacon, NY (2:14), 2. Pete Making a Salad at his home in Beacon, NY (2:05), 3. How to Play the 5 String Banjo. A Film by Pete and Toshi Seeger (2:51), 4. Guantanamera

Pete Seeger: “I Feel Optimistic”

Jim Capaldi — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:39:58 +0000

The 88-year-old spiritual godfather of American folk music discusses Dylan, Springsteen, Bush and Obama

ANDY GREENEPosted Feb 27, 2008 7:42 AM

This week PBS will debut Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, which traces the eighty-eight year-old folk legend’s life from his time with the Weavers through the Joe McCarthy witch hunts to his days as elder statesmen of the folk community. It’s loaded with archival footage of Seeger singing such classics as “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “If I Had A Hammer” and interviews with fans such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks. Seeger called into Rolling Stone recently to chat about the documentary, his memories of Bob Dylan and Lead Belly — as well his thoughts on the presidential election.

What do you think of the new documentary?
Well, it’s too much a eulogy if you ask me. It didn’t tell all the stupid things I’ve done. I’ve done hundreds of stupid things.

Tell me one.
Not realizing that I had an extraordinarily talented wife, and there were things that she wanted to do sometimes. But she put them aside to help me do the things that I wanted to do. She was an artist and projects that she undertook ended up having to put aside because my projects took precedent.

The film also has the nice things that I’ve done. I’ve had some good songs if I say so myself. The best songwriting I did was to think of three new words for an old gospel song, “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” The old song used to end “Soldiers of the cross,” and I wanted to sing it for all sorts of people, whether they were Christians or Jews or Atheists or what. And now I simply sing ‘Brothers, sisters, all,’ and then after a couple of verses, I say, ‘Sisters, brothers, all.’ It sings well, and they have a nice shot in the movie of the whole crowd joining in with me on it.

Were you opposed to the idea of a documentary when they first approached you?
Well, it’s created problems that I never foresaw. I usually joke that I was protected all my life by my left wing reputation. Now, the telephone rings every five minutes and the mail comes in by a half bushel a day. “Mr. Seeger, will you please sign autographs for these pictures? Will you come to our school and speak to the children? Will you accept this award?” Just answering the mail takes up most of the free time I used to have.

What did you think of Bruce Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions album?
Oh, it was a great honor. He’s an extraordinary person, as well as an extraordinary singer. He told me that he got one of my records and was playing it at his house, and his 10-year-old daughter said, “Hey, that sounds like fun.” And all of a sudden, he says, “I pricked up my ears.”

You met Bob Dylan right at the beginning of his career. Were you surprised just how far he went?
He’s an absolute fantastic songwriter and thinker. He put out that John Wesley Harding record, and I used to put it on the outdoor speaker and play it over and over while I was skating in the backyard.

What’s your first memory of Dylan?
It was down in Greenwich Village. I knew a lot of people down there and they said you got to hear this guy. I heard him once, and I asked him to be on a Hootenanny at Carnegie Hall. I remember sitting down at a long table with a batch of other people who were going to be on and said, “Folks, we only have time to sing three short songs because we all have about ten minutes a piece.” I had asked too many people to be on the program. And this skinny guy raises his hand with a wry smile, I said, “What is it?” He says, “Well, one of my songs takes ten minutes.” It was, “Where have you been my blue-eyed son? Where have you been my darling young one? And it’s hard, hard. Hard rain’s a-gonna fall.” What a song!

What comes to mind when you think about your time with Lead Belly?
Extraordinary physical strength, yet he spoke very softly. I was nineteen and I was visiting Alan Lomax in New York where he was briefly studying anthropology at Columbia. This man of a little more than medium height came in wearing a suit, and Alan said, “Oh, Lead Belly, you should meet Charlie Seeger’s son, Pete.” I shook hands with him. And I got the impression of a very strong man, but keeping himself politely in reserve. He walked light on his feet, like a prizefighter. When he sang out, it came out in this extraordinary strength, a very strong tenor. He sang “Irene, Good Night” way up in the key of A. And people had to reach to make those notes, but it was right in the center of his range.

What do you think of Obama?
I guess if I had my choice, he’d be the one. I would’ve liked Kucinich. However, what I am for is I.R.V. Most people don’t even know what it is: Instant Recount Voting. When you vote, you vote for your first choice, your second choice and your third choice. I went to a school where we had proportional voting and that’s the way we voted for the student council. If your favorite already made it onto the council, then your second choice counted.

So you’d vote first for someone like Dennis Kucinich first?
That’s right. And if he didn’t make it, I’d vote for Obama and if he didn’t make it, I’d vote for Hillary. If she didn’t make it, I’d vote for Huckabee. Huckabee is a good speaker! He’s the most radical speaker of any of them.

Do you think America is on the verge of leaving these dark times with the impending election?
I’m absolutely convinced that the extraordinary tradition in America of speaking your mind has saved us decade after decade after decade. Right now I’m more optimistic than I was after Hiroshima. I felt then that surely it would only be 20 or 30 years until another of those bombs would be dropped and if we weren’t killed, we’d be poisoned by the fallout.

So you think the pendulum is going to shift back after eight years of Bush?
Well, I describe it this way. You know, if you bounce a ball on the sidewalk, the harder you throw it down, the higher it bounces. So, we may have some very good things happening. But who knows? There could be dirty tricks still tried.

Website Redesigned.

Jim Capaldi — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:30:47 +0000

Welcome to the new and improved Pete Seeger Appreciation Page designed by my daughter Mary-Therese Capaldi.