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Rants & Raves - Concert Reviews Re." The Songs of Conscience" event in ...But this wasn't the last of the exciting collaborations in which
I was involved at the festival. On Sunday 28th January, myself and
my friend Corrina Hewat, co-hosted "Songs of Conscience",
a celebration of women singers and songwriters with something to say.
Chief amongst these was the remarkable Peggy Seeger, who stepped in
at two days notice, as a replacement for the equally majestic, but
recovering from an illness, Odetta. I was fortunate to perform last
year with Peggy's sons Calum and Neil McColl, as part of the Folk Britannia
series at London's Barbican and I was well aware of her stature and
repertoire and, most especially, with partner Ewan McColl and radio
producer Charles Parker, as one of the creators of the original 1950s/60s
Radio Ballads programmes. But I wasn't prepared for quite how radiant,
gracious and gutsy she would appear both in person and as a performer.
It was like watching a master class in folk performance to be frank:
a truly positive force...(Karine Polwart) October 2006 I have been looking forward to this show for YEARS. It took a long time to put it together and Peggy's moving to the Boston area made it possible (as well as the great favor Josh did for me). We were able to workout a deal for Peggy to do both a songwriting workshop in the morning and a concert in the afternoon. Her workshop is unique, her perspective on Folkmusic and songwriting is really helpful to people starting out as well as more experienced writers. The concert was standing room only. Peggy has a way with an audience that gets everyone involved. We had people from 5 to 85 in the audience. The houseconcert setting was a great way for Peggy to get close to the audience, and she was great in this kind of intimate setting. She is the REAL THING. I was just amazed to hear the stories from her time in England, it was wonderful. Peggy is a very strong personality and she lets you know here positions thru her music. I don't know Josh, I wish I could be better at 1 or 2 liners. It was a surreal experience to have PEGGY SEEGER in MY livingroom. I think she had a good time, and I really enjoyed talking to her and getting to know her a little better. As I said to her when she left, I have to go find another dream to come true. -Barry (Excellent Host and Manager of Everything, says Peggy)
It was such a great pleasure to sing with you and meet you Wed. at Common Thread. I really mean that! I'd wondered who that woman I recognized was when I came into rehearsal, but just couldn't place her! I had never seen you live but always a great admirer of your work and person. You are a woman to emulate in so many ways. There are very few feminist role models I could relate to in the over 60 crowd, for one thing, and you have such a way with phrasing. Besides your voice just gets better and better in my estimation. I couldn't get a ticket for your house concert which I heard was fantastic, but I bought most of the CDs. .... I hope you'll come to Toronto again before too long, maybe for Eve's launch in September... Thanks again, LDP
Francis Devine Review 2005 Peggy Seeger At the Market House, Monaghan, October 20, 2004 Working in Monaghan recently, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Peggy Seeger was playing at the tastefully refurbished Market House. Is there not something slightly surreal about Peggy Seeger playing Monaghan! Well, maybe, maybe not - but she did cause consternation when introducing a song called Swallow & Trout. She said it was written by a Devon pig farmer and then innocently rambled into a number of jokes about pig farmers and the likelihood of them writing songs - and us only a few hops, as the pig flies, from Iniskeane and Patrick Kavanagh himself! Born in the United States in 1935, daughter of Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger - both musicians, musicologists and composers in their own right - Peggy Seeger was surrounded by music from birth. She is sister of Pete Seeger - Grand Old Man of American Folk - and Mike Seeger, a multi-instrumentalist. In 1956, she met Ewan MacColl in London and began a wonderful, creative partnership. Together they had three children - Neill, Calum and Kitty. Ewan died in 1989 and Peggy has since migrated back to the United States. so, the chances of seeing her in Ireland are limited. The Monaghan gig was small, intimate, involving and encouraging. Peggy sang unaccompanied and to her own accompaniment, variously, on 5-string banjo, autoharp, concertina and grand piano. Much of the material came from a recent recording Heading For Home, material she describes as 'all but one, Anglo-American traditional pieces. The selection is classic, the accompaniments simple. These are songs with which I feel completely at home. songs which have lasted for generations and which I hope will last for generations more'. Now, I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of this tradition or of its singing style. but I was won over on the night by a superb delivery. American material included the Mississippi song John Gilbert, a peanut and cotton boat, and another sing-along 'song about these hard times, When will the good times roll'. Not at all typically American, Seeger's views of the imminent Presidential election and on the Iraq invasion were interesting, if, for some of the audience, controversial. She prefaced a song inspired by the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon by reading a list of all the countries the US had bombed since the Second World War. Well, she selected from the list as time constraints were pressing. Her anti-GW song, Go Easy On Him, was vintage - angry but insightful oppositional but constructive. By now, the audience were with her and against him. She did a few requests including her 'albatross', the classic, feminist anthem, I'm Gonna Be an Engineer. She sang songs by Aunt Molly Jackson - Peacock Street or Cross Bone Scully - and a Carolina version of Little Musgrave, having guided us through the roots of the song from Barnard Castle on Teeside in County Durham. The People are Scratching was a satirical song about resources, man's continuing stupidity, globalisation and bleak winters advancing - and it all started with killing rabbits! Old classics Love Is Pleasing and, with great echoes of Pete Seeger, the 1960s, hope and times when we really could change the world, Where Have All The Flowers Gone. It echoed the courage and persistence of radical America, the beleaguered Left. In acknowledgement of the wisdom of the Smoking Ban, she sang of a woman's revenge against an unreformed smoker in a restaurant that involved eating many beans, artichokes, leeks and cabbage - you can guess the rest! For a woman heading for seventy, Peggy Seeger looks terrific, always striking, she engaged and encouraged her small, shy audience until we were sitting in our parlor, singing along. She is a vintage and unique performer, carrying a rare but still developing tradition. This was evidenced by her final song, Heading for Home. Always on the move The song looks over the horizon - all our horizons. It induced a reflective
melancholy - for ourselves, for each other, for the peoples of Iraq
and Palestine, for the helpless of Darfur and shanty towns across the
Third World, for the victims of AIDS, the disadvantaged, the downtrodden,
the dispossessed. We thought of Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly
and Bessie Smith, Seeger and MacColl. Her penultimate verse brought
echoes of Monaghan and our own Troubles. The memory of love will burn in my hart, We hummed the last verse together before she rejoined And it's time I was heading for home Undervalued as a songwriter - especially in the shadow of MacColl, Heading for Home is but one of scores of valuable songs that Seeger has written, many grafted onto or from the living tradition. Her themes are love and betrayal, human solitude and need for affection, as well as the broad sweeps of socialist, feminist values and ideas. I looked across the amber light of the stone, timber and whitewash Market House, heard the incessant, sleety rain on the roof an witnessed an audience enthralled, left to sing on their own and all heading for home with thoughts and emotions drawn from deep, deep wills. Great gig, Peggy! Francis Devine
I just want to thank Peggy for the great time I had at her show. We
met briefly in Bemidji MN in March of 2003 and discussed atonal composers
and Italian folk melodies. I just noticed she will be in Wisconsin
this summer and if she is still as delightful as she was... I will
be there.
GLORIA HOLLOWAY (Tampa, Florida) On May 12, 2004, Peggy Seeger was featured at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tampa's Concerts in the UU Dome series. As chair of the concert committee, I want to thank you for helping make this happen. Peggy is a delight. Not only is she a wonderful artist, she's personable, down-to-earth, and very easy to work with. She's also caring and considerate. Our sound man that night was an old-time banjo player and a big fan of Peggy's. I mentioned this to her prior to the concert. She didn't forget it. After the concert was over, she more than made his day by inviting him to join her in some jamming. She had him play her banjo as she accompanied him on guitar. The two of them seemed to have a grand ole time. And for those of us who were cleaning up, we got treated to a post-concert jam as we worked. As for the concert itself, after it was over, I got lots of hugs and verbal thank yous from folks as they were leaving. I also got written feedback which I'd like to share with you. Jan Milner: I was absolutely captivated by Peggy Seeger. Her performance at the UU Dome was more than just a concert. It was an experience that involved and touched me. Her music is a wonderful blend of traditional and original songs. Marbeth Bingman: ..... All week I have had on my mind to thank you for having Peggy Seegar at the dome. I'm so glad that I was able to attend her concert. What a woman! Her music spoke to my soul. I bought one CD and have listened to it every day since. Mil Pelrine: We enjoyed Peggy Seeger VERY much. She is very talented, down-to-earth and friendly -- a truly class act. Loved the variety of her presentation and her relaxed way of delivering it. Gerald Strain: She made me realize my importance as an individual, and my contribution to others. Lucy V. Parker: For me, the Peggy Seeger concert was a trip to the past -- so many coffee houses, hootenannies, and sing-alongs in the '50's and '60's, so much outrage, so much hope, so many dreams. It was a reminder of our heritage of ballads and story songs -- of our country and its roots in the Old World. At the same time, it was the present laughing at us (and with us) as we all grow older, asking where our "get-up and go has got up and went." It was the present staring us unflinchingly in the face with a song about 9-11 that mourns our dead while mourning those killed by our many bombings in the name of democracy and freedom over the past half century. No, no one walked out of that enlightened Unitarian Universalist gathering, as Peggy told us some audiences have done. We were there to hear Peggy, whatever she had to say -- Peggy switching instruments as she battles carpel's tunnel, her voice still clear, as timeless as her music, her concert an homage to the past, an insightful look into male-female and other current struggles, her demands.for peace and justice urgent and ever-relevant. "My grandson smiles at me," she recalled in her final song, "growing wiser, growing older. He swears he'll never smoke or drink or go to be a soldier. Oh, how I long for peace!
IRISH TIMES REVIEW Nov. 2002 LIVE REVIEW: PEGGY SEEGER, WHELAN'S NOVEMBER 6TH 2002 When chance and genetics collide, anything can happen. Peggy Seeger's gene pool may have predicted a solid folk career (sister of Pete and Mike, daughter of avant garde composer, Ruth Crawford Seeger), but it was probably her electrifying encounter with Ewan MacColl that really marked her cards for greatness. Their combined passion and political zeal were the spur for an entire generation of music fans who liked their politics and politicians well-roasted - on both sides. The chance to catch the divine Ms. Seeger in a cosy venue is one that only the foolhardy would miss. For much of her performance in Whelan's this week, the rewards more than measured up to the reputation. Her multi instrumentalism (guitar, autoharp, banjo, keyboards, concertina), her unashamed fealty to the politics of folk music (where gender wars, labour laws, ecology and Napoleon jostle for space), and her magnificent voice conspired to still a surprisingly small crowd who hung on her every note and syllable. Armed with a scrapbook of unlikely, sobering and downright surreal press cuttings which she interspersed between the music, Seeger's repertoire was a timely reminder of just how searingly real folk music can be. This is music by, of and about folks, and when their lives are touched by war, by discrimination, by greed and by love, their stories are most definitely worth telling - and telling again. For A Job straddled the past and present with its references to silicon and lint, asbestos and coal, a labour song stripped of the usual jingoistic elevation of work to pedestals unreachable by most of us ornery folk. It's A Free World was a wry peep at the dubious pleasures of personal freedom (ever tried discouraging an insistent smoker with a fart? Ms. Seeger swears by it), and The Caveman reflected the reaction of one woman's response to 9/11, where rhetoric was supplanted by bald fact, and the unassailable parallels in Dubya's world of terrorism and patriotism were well and truly lambasted. Seeger's greatest asset is her uncanny ability to dissolve the gap between artist and audience. She belongs to a long line of musicians who sunder the meat from the bone effortlessly, rendering the unpalatable visible. Listening and watching her trawl through past and present, it was easy to see where Ani di Franco, Utah Philips and Bruce Springsteen drew from the well. And like all the best conscientious objectors, Seeger defied the curfew and played on, even treating us to a bareboned delivery of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. Now if only the venue could've silenced the till and muzzled the DJ next door, it would have been a night to file high on the list of most memorable gigs. Siobhán Long
Belfast Telegraph, Friday, November 8, 2002 Neil Johnston's Festival Notebook Peggy Seeger: She must be one of the most complete artists around today. Peggy Seeger's tongue-in-cheek look at life comes accompanied by music from all sorts of sources. Alongside the piano, the guitar, the Appalachian dulcimer, the concertina and the banjo, she set the rot aside for a moment or two last night and just simply created rhythm and music by taping the side of her guitar. For her it spelt out a sort of rhythm of life. Peggy Seeger is obviously proud of her family connections with Ewan McColl and Pete Seeger, and she brings them, and her mother, into most of her very engaging narratives. She did sing the love song "The First Time Ever I Saw Her Face" and a lot of others, but it was mainly her other off-the-cuff comments or asides that seemed to appeal most to the audience. Clever stuff, it was necessary to pay careful attention to what she said to "catch her drift". Obviously a fair old advocate of human rights, she is clever and caring, and gave fine treatment to disability with the song 'Roll On, I'm a Woman on Wheels'. Peggy Seeger will be asked back.
Epithets such as ‘veteran’ or ‘legendary’ trip all too easily from the pen when describing performers such as Peggy Seeger. With some fifty years’ experience and at least the same number of albums to her name, the New York born musician has nothing left to prove; that did not prevent her from putting on a show that was a model for any aspiring folk singers and a joy from start to finish. With both her parents steeped in music (father, Charles Seeger, was a noted ethnomusicologist and her mother a composer and pianist), Peggy grew up surrounded by music and folklore. When she moved to England in 1959 and married Ewan MacColl, she entered the exciting world of the British folk revival and with MacColl she helped to shape it. At the Folk Club, she said that she had no prepared program yet the evening took on a shape as she shared her lifetime's experience in a series of traditional and contemporary songs from Britain and America. The late Ewan MacColl’s torch burned brightly throughout with the inclusion of his classic The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (written for her) and several others songs written by or learned from him. Her own songs were in turn humorous and caustic. Moving with ease from guitar to banjo and more, she ended, after two and a half hours, at the piano for a look at old age before returning for an encore, Heading For Home. By Geoff Harden
Concert Review in the Village Voice The motorcades belonging to musical celebrities look conspicuous navigating Manhattan's asphalt straits: lumbering 18-wheelers hauling heavy sound equipment; state-of-the-art tour buses decorated with tacky, airbrushed murals; and, for tooling around locally, everything from anonymous black limos to stretch hummers. More unusual, if less pretentious, is the chariot preferred by singer-songwriter Peggy Seeger: a well-appointed motor home named "Maggie," soon to cruise our thoroughfares. "It's seven feet wide, nine feet high, and 19 feet long," she says, "but I can get into an ordinary parking space if I'm in good form and no men are trying to help me." Seeger, one quickly deduces, has a healthy aversion to the passenger seat. It serves her well. The North Carolina resident, a rosy-cheeked 66-year-old with an accent difficult to place, takes to the road an average of five months per year—just the right amount for a "tempered workaholic." After a pit stop at the New Jersey Folk Festival at Rutgers this Saturday afternoon, she will forge ahead to the Advent Lutheran Church on West 93rd Street. A solo concert that evening presented by the Pinewoods Folk Music Club—her first in the city in some four years—will be followed by a Sunday-afternoon workshop on songwriting, a topic she handles deftly in The Peggy Seeger Songbook: Warts and All. She knows whereof she speaks. Since 1959, Seeger has written hundreds of songs. Those who regard Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Laura Nyro as the first generation of singer-songwriters to craft material from women's experiences should think again. Seeger is a missing link between the 1950s American folk-song revival and women's liberation; the guitar-toting chanteuses of the 1970s could not have existed without either of those movements. A member of "the first family of American folk music," Seeger appears to have been destined to her calling from birth. Her mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-53), was the first woman ever awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for composition. Her father, Charles (1886-1979), worked alongside Ruth and folk-song collector Alan Lomax at the Smithsonian and became a leading scholar in the emerging discipline of ethnomusicology. Half-brother Pete, her senior by 16 years, was a driving force behind the folk-song revival with his group the Weavers. And brother Mike, a brilliant multi-instrumentalist, would garner high praise as a member of the old-timey New Lost City Ramblers. Peggy began learning the piano at six, guitar at 10, and banjo at 15. There was so much music in the suburban Maryland home, she says, that she only listened to her radio for The Lone Ranger, Inner Sanctum, and Backstage Wife. Frequent visitors included Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Elizabeth Cotton. The diminutive Guthrie, her equal in height when she was nine years old, carried his guitar without a case, dragging it by its strap like a dog on a leash. Elliott also happened to be on the S.S. Maasdam when Seeger left Radcliffe College to kick around Europe; they had hootenannies in every corner of the ship. She would find the other major influence in her life across the puddle: British playwright and songwriter Ewan MacColl (1915-89), her life partner for over 30 years. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," his best-known song, can be tied to a precise moment: "March 25, 1956, at 10:30 in the morning," Seeger remembers—the moment they met. She settled in England—one reason why she is less recognized here than her siblings—and only returned to the States permanently in 1994. Together, she and MacColl produced two volumes of traditional British songs, collaborated on the annual "Festival of Fools" by the Critic's Group in London, and, with BBC producer Charles Parker, created Radio Ballads, a groundbreaking series of documentaries woven from interview material, sound effects, and original music. She compiled the Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook in 2001. Her original material, as one might gather, draws heavily on the Anglo-American folk tradition. "The ballads are your anchor," she explains. "They're your heart songs. They're your history." Her writing certainly owes a debt to their formal structures, as well as their stark and plainspoken texts. Her first verse in "The Ballad of Springhill" (1958) eerily concludes, "There's blood on the coal and the miners lie/In the roads that never saw sun nor sky." Like other folksingers, Seeger tackles love, war, pregnancy, politics, nature, and nuclear arms, from what has increasingly become an eco-feminist perspective. But perhaps her greatest gift lies in personalizing these issues as seen through the eyes of others. For example, Seeger joined demonstrators at Greenham Common in Berkshire, England, to protest the presence of cruise missiles throughout the 1980s; "Woman on Wheels" tells the story of Jennifer Jones, a woman she met plying the base's chain-link fence with bolt cutters from her wheelchair. "Missing," a plea for "disappeared" Chilean activist Murielita Navarrete, resulted from a six-hour conversation with Navarrete's mother and sister. She never minces words, a quality that also begets particularly pointed, salt-of-the-earth humor. The sights—and smells—she so vividly captures might make you squeamish. In "It's a Free World" (1993), a determined restaurant patron combats smoking by harnessing a powerful force of nature: flatulence (bringing new meaning to the question "Filtered or unfiltered?"). "I'm Gonna Be an Engineer" (1971), her most popular song and one adopted as an anthem of the women's movement, provides a whiff of a lady's less savory domestic duties: "Well, every time I turn around there's something else to do/It's cook a meal, mend a sock, or sweep a floor or two/Holding out the potty when the baby wants to poo/I was gonna be an engineer!" Some of Seeger's more recent offerings challenge the bombings in Afghanistan—one song is prefaced with the sizable list of U.S. targets since 1945. Seeger's a good eavesdropper, or so she says. Her time spent on planes, trains, in roadside diners, and otherwise in the company of the folk still inspires her. "In my life these days, I travel," she says. "I stay in people's houses. I listen to their stories and I'm astounded by their survival tactics and all that they know. I learn, I learn, I learn." Tell us what you think. editor@villagevoice.com
E-mail this story to a friend. Original article accessible at: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0217/pellegrinelli.php
"The tall and slender folk singer gracefully managed the stage all
evening, moving back and forth from banjo to guitar to dulcimer to
piano to autoharp to concertina.
"She is very much committed to the establishment of a sane world (a goal that she feels may not be reached for hundreds of years) and focuses her creative talents on issues that affect us all . . . she espouses her beliefs through her music in a people-oriented, non-dogmatic way, leaving plenty of room for songs that mirror the joys of life as well." (Coral McKendrick, Winnipeg Free Press)
"She is an irreplaceable repository of significant songs . . . direct, humanized music for real-life situations." (Larry Kelp, The Tribune, Oakland CA)
"After the three traditional songs that opened the show, Seeger sang a fast and funny contemporary song about a woman who wants wages for her housework. Showcasing her perfect diction and constantly amazing sense of timing, she rattled off the seemingly never-ending chores, responsibilities and worries of the 'mere housewife.' " (M. Scot Skinner, Arizona Daily Star, Tucson)
"Her success lies largely with her ability to work and write within traditional modes. Many of these songs sound as though they have been around over the centuries . . . " (Ira Mayer, New York Times)
"In one of the most moving songs of the program, 'Song of Myself,' Peggy made her own stand clear, not the least remarkable aspect of which was that without once using the teminology of womens' liberation, she defined herself as her own person in her own terms." (Irwin Silber, The National Guardian,)
"Miss Seeger is a charming entertainer. She was entirely at ease, yet in complete command of her varied, enjoyable program. Her casual manner disarmed her more than 400 listeners and created that relaxed intimacy that facilitates communication between performer and audience." (Lowell Durham, Salt Lake Tribune)
"In October 1990 on a BBC TV programme about MacColl, a year after his death, Peggy Seeger, accompanied by her own autoharp and a discrete background guitar, sang 'Thoughts of Time': it was one of the most frankly and directly beautiful musical moments I have ever seen on television." (Donald Clarke, The Rise and Fall of Popular Music)
(about the 6-part radio documentary on Peggy Seeger, produced by Jim Lloyd of the BBC, June-July 1994) "There is a new radio documentary series which will send shivers of recognition down the spine of anyone who likes songs and singing, who believes that words and music combined tell a story greater than their separate parts. Peggy Seeger is on Radio 2 on Wednesday nights for the next four weeks. Last week, for impact and significance, it outshone most competition from Radios 3 and 4 . . . Peggy's turn of phrase are like sun and shadow. Lloyd's quiet interviewing style probes while seeming only to prompt. When you're listening to it, the world seems to open out." (Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph)
“For decades, Seeger has been one of the most authoritative voices in American and English folk...While she is acknowledged as an esteemed interpreter of traditional material and a gifted instrumentalist, she is perhaps best known for her observant and caustic original songs about women.” - Chris Morris, Billboard
“Peggy Seeger does an outstanding job of exploring and singing songs that help illuminate the condition of women through the difficulties we face.” - Mollie Whalen
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