Tag Archives: Pete Seeger

We Need Pete Seeger Now More Than Ever

Wikimedia Commons

At the opening to this year’s Great Hudson River Revival, a music festival an hour north of Manhattan that was founded by the late Pete and Toshi Seeger 40 years ago and emphasizes environmental activism, I think it might have been either folksinger Josh White Jr. or Tom Chapin who invoked the words “a musical antibody for a political virus” while leading a few thousand people in song. Participatory group singing has always been the calling card of the Seeger clan and their extended family, and that spirit continues.

Pete Seeger had said that “No one can prove a damn thing, but I think that singing together gives people some kind of a holy feeling. And it can happen whether they’re atheists, or whoever. You feel like, ‘Gee, we’re all together.’ I like the sound of average voices more than trained voices, especially kids singing a little off pitch. They have a nice, rascally sound.” (New York Times)

June 18, 2018: McAllen, Texas — Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. More than 1,100 people were inside the large, dark facility that’s divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children. The cages in each wing open out into common areas to use portable restrooms. The overhead lighting in the warehouse stays on around the clock. Stories have spread of children being torn from their parents’ arms, and parents not being able to find where their kids have gone. A group of congressional lawmakers visited the same facility Sunday and were set to visit a longer-term shelter holding around 1,500 children — many of whom were separated from their parents. (Associated Press)

Throughout Father’s Day weekend as I wandered through the festival grounds, it was hard to tamp down the taste of bile emanating from the actions of a despicable and morally bankrupt administration that has ripped to shreds the values and morals of our great land. And yes, while a folk festival is indeed a clustered group of mostly white progressives, and despite the shortcomings of inclusion, it still felt like a better place to spend a hot summer day. As the sweet sounds came pouring from the stages, there were many musicians raising their voices and sharing their anger and frustration, occasionally tempered with hope. At a small workshop beneath a tent, Rhiannon Giddens spoke a harsh truth: “If you want to know what’s happening today, don’t read newspapers. Read the history books.” This song seemed fitting for the day: “Mal Hombre.”

Willie Nelson has issued a statement on the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The country-music icon and Texas native ripped the Department of Justice’s policy under President Trump. “What’s going on at our Southern border is outrageous. Christians everywhere should be up in arms. What happened to ‘Bring us your tired and weak and we will make them strong?’ This is still the promise land,” Nelson says, citing lyrics from songwriter David Lynn Jones’ “Living in the Promiseland.” (Rolling Stone)

Willie does not stand alone.

Singer Sara Bareilles wrote: “I am so sad and feel so helpless about the families being separated. This is beyond inhumane … I am just appalled. I am grateful for those sharing how to engage and help, thank God for you. The idea that there is anyone who believes this is justice is simply heartbreaking.” When House Speaker Paul Ryan sent out a “Happy Father’s Day” message, singer John Legend replied: “Seriously, f**k you. Reunite the families at the border and we can talk about father’s day.” (Channel 3000)

I imagine that many of you would rather read about the Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore set at the festival — it was better than I could possibly have imagined, and the new album has been No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart since its release. And there were a few dozen other singers and bands I had been looking forward to hearing that didn’t disappoint. And maybe I could have shared a little about the concert I saw earlier in the week with Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, and Dwight Yoakam. It could have been a great week for music, but much of it was buried under sadness for the families torn apart.

June 19, 2018: A group of more than 600 United Methodist clergy and church members are bringing church law charges against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration crackdown. The group accuses Sessions, a fellow United Methodist, of violating Paragraph 270.3 of the denomination’s Book of Discipline. He is charged under church law with child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and “dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of doctrine of the United Methodist Church.” (NBC News)

“The world is like a seesaw out of balance: on one side is a box of big rocks, tilting it its way. On the other side is a box, and a bunch of us with teaspoons, adding a little sand at a time. One day, all of our teaspoons will add up, and the whole thing will tip, and people will say, ‘How did it happen so fast?’ ”

— Pete Seeger

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #10

Photo by Nathan Copely/Pixabay License

Easy Ed’s Broadside column has been a fixture for over ten years at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

How Many Times Can You Write Isbell In Two Paragraphs?

The 2017 Americana Music Awards‘ nominees announcement ceremony included special performances from the Milk Carton Kids, the Jerry Douglas Band, Caitlin Canty and more — but it also featured one particularly special moment: Jason Isbell and the Drive-By Truckers‘ Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley coming together for an acoustic performance.

Isbell, Hood and Cooley sing “Outfit,” originally from the Truckers’ 2003 album Decoration Day. Written by Isbell alone, the song is one of two songs that the then-24-year-old penned for the album; the other, also written solo, is the record’s title track. Earlier this year, in late January, Isbell — now, of course, a solo artist — reunited with his former bandmates during a Drive-By Truckers show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. (From theboot.com)

Speaking of the AMA awards, I was taken aback by the announcement of Van Morrison receiving a lifetime achievement award for songwriting. No disrespect: Van is indeed The Man, and we know that the organization loves to recognize those from the UK (Richard Thompson and Robert Plant were past recipients), but I just don’t get it. Although I know this guy probably doesn’t give a damn and wouldn’t show up anyway, I think he might be deserving of anything with the tagline ‘Americana’ in it.

When In Doubt, Turn Your Lovelights On

The folks over at Pitchfork have published a User Guide to The Grateful Dead that focuses not on their studio work but rather the gazillion of live tracks that are out there. Which reminds me…Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter…a songwriting team that deserves acknowledgement from the Americana cabal. You know, since the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame people are often slapped around for missing folks like Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers, the AMA might be moving into their elitist territory. Sad…to quote the POTUS.

Rest In Peace: Jimmy LaFave

By now you’ve heard about the sad passing of Austin singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave. Local radio station KOKE-FM published the statement from his label and family, and you can find it here. And No Depression co-founder Peter Blackstock covered LaFave’s Songwriters Rendezvous for the Austin American-Statesman, and I think it’s a beautiful piece of writing. Click here to get there. This video was recorded at SXSW in 2011. Rest in peace.

How Many Ways Can One Love Pete Seeger?

“Every day, every minute, someone in the world is singing a Pete Seeger song. The songs he wrote, including the antiwar tunes, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and those he popularized, including “This Land Is Your Land” and “We Shall Overcome,” have been recorded by hundreds of artists in many languages and have become global anthems for people fighting for freedom.” So begins a story of Pete, and how we keep his spirit alive.

Writer Susanna Reich and illustrator Adam Gustavson have produced a book dedicated to that objective. In 38 pages of text, paintings and drawings, Stand Up and Sing! Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Path to Justice provides a wonderful portrait of Seeger, focusing on how his strongly-held beliefs motivated his music and his activism. The book introduces children to the notion that music can be a powerful tool for change. As Reich notes, Seeger saw himself as a link in “a chain in which music and social responsibility are intertwined.”

Read more about Pete and his music in this wonderful article posted at Common Dreams.

Otis Down In Monterey

This year marks 50 years since Otis Redding died. He’d ignited the crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967; later that year, he and his band were en route to a show in Madison, Wisc., when their plane hit rough weather and crashed in an icy lake. Redding was 26 years old. Half a century later, Redding’s influence as a singer and spirit of soul music remains. Author Jonathan Gould, who’s written a new biography called Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life and you can read more about it here.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Alternative Fact of “Buffalo Gals”

In 1844 a blackface minstrel named John Hodges, who performed under the name “Cool White,” wrote and published a song titled “Lubly Fan.” Over the years it became quite popular throughout the country, and touring minstrels would often switch up the lyrics to appeal to wherever they were playing. Now considered a traditional American folk song, almost everybody knows the chorus.

Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight?
Come out tonight, Come out tonight?
Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight,
And dance by the light of the moon.

According to an article from the Library of Congress, the Ethiopian Serenaders, a white band who also performed in blackface, published sheet music for “Philadelphia Gals” with similar lyrics and no attribution for a composer in 1845, and then again in 1848 for “Buffalo Gals,” presumably for Buffalo, N.Y.

 

That’s a 1929 recording from The Pickard Family, which sounds pretty authentic to the times, but here’s a more homogenized version by Gene Autry that was used for the 1950 film Cow Town. It should be noted that Hollywood used “Buffalo Gals” quite often: It was featured prominently in High NoonTexas, and Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.

 

Pete Seeger learned the song when he was recruited by Alan Lomax in 1939 to work on cataloging field recordings at the Library of Congress in Washington. This version was recorded for Moses Asch years later, and is still available on the Smithsonian Folkways set titled American Favorite Ballads.

 

In true folk tradition, the tune was appropriated and lyrics changed for rockabilly singer Ray Smith’s version, and he sold over a million copies in 1960 for Judd Records.

 

In 1958 a group called The Olympics had a top-ten single with “Western Movies,” which was written by Fred Smith and Cliff Goldsmith. Two years later, those two composers adapted “Buffalo Gals” in a completely different way:

 

Skipping ahead about 15 years, Malcolm McLaren was a British visual artist, performer, musician, clothing designer, and boutique owner. He supplied stage costumes to the New York Dolls and eventually became well known as the manager of the Sex Pistols. After they self-destructed he was involved with Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, The Slits, and Jimmy the Hoover.

In the early ’80s I managed a record store in Santa Monica, and an unlikely album captured my attention. McLaren had teamed up with producer Trevor Horn and a duo of radio disc jockeys – The World’s Famous Supreme Team – from New York City who hosted a hip-hop and classic R&B show on WHBI 105.9 FM and were among the first DJs to introduce the art of scratching to the world. Duck Rock was on my turntable almost every night in 1983, and it was this version of “Buffalo Gals” that is my hands-down favorite.

 

Somewhere along the way I lost the album, but 20 years later I found a used CD reissue at Amoeba Records. It always traveled with me in the car along with the twang stuff I listen to, and my kids – who were about ten and seven at the time – learned all the lyrics. Together we could all recite the spoken word interludes that were ripped from the radio shows of Sedivine the Mastermind and Just Allah the Superstar.

A few weeks ago my oldest son and I got to talking about that album, and he reminded me he wrote a paper in college about the evolution of “Buffalo Gals.” I asked him to send it to me, and while he might be disappointed that I strayed from his original narrative and main topic, I have to give him credit for prompting me to write this column. It’s just a great song and the perfect example of how a folk song will twist and turn, with each version presenting an “alternative fact” of the original.

Alright kids, I’ll leave you with my second-favorite version of the song. Play it through and play it loud. And thanks for the catchphrase, Kellyanne.

 

This was originally was published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression dot com.

Does It Matter That Loretta Lynn Supports Donald Trump?

loretta-lynn-donald-trump-getty-640x480I can’t recall a single time that a celebrity endorsement, whether for a politician or commercial product, influenced my decision to vote or buy. I come to my opinions and choices based on my own experiences, research, and conversations with other folks, and while there’s always more to learn that could make me change course, adding a celebrity’s opinion into the mix is probably the lowest factor on my totem pole.

During the current election season in America, political endorsements range from the obvious to humorous. For example, Neil Young and Lucinda Williams have spoken out in support of Bernie Sanders. George Clooney is a Hillary supporter, and he joins a star-studded list that includes Britney Spears, Kendall Jenner (her parent, Caitlyn, likes Ted Cruz), and Snoop Dogg. I can’t find any celebrity speaking out on behalf of John Kasich, but Donald Trump has quite a long list of supporters including Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin, Kirstie Alley, Tom Brady … and Loretta Lynn.

Last January, Lynn gave an interview to Reuters where she said, “Trump has sold me – what more can I say?” Here’s the rest, in case you missed it:

Lynn, 83, who penned and recorded country hits like “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Pill” and “Rated X,” still performs between eight and 10 shows a month. She said she has been stumping for Trump at the end of each show, and declared her support for him at an awards dinner in New York in early December.

She said her audiences generally respond warmly to her cheers for Trump, and that’s unusual.

“When you get up there and try to say you want to see Hillary Clinton win, that wouldn’t go over so big,” she said.

Other Republicans can’t live up to the real estate mogul, Lynn said, but Texas Senator Ted Cruz would be her second choice. However, she said: “When you’re advertising for the best, forget the rest!”

Lynn added that she wants to campaign for him.“I just think he’s the only one who’s going to turn this country around,” she said, but added she had no plans to try to contact Trump herself. “I’m going to let him call me.”

For the past month, I’ve been thinking a lot about Loretta Lynn. Her first new album in a dozen years is high on the charts, generating a lot of interest. Media on every possible front — from Pitchfork to AARP’s monthly magazine — are paying attention. There’s her staggering duet and video with Willie Nelson that has made the rounds on social media, and the PBS American Masters documentary Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl. It’s almost impossible to escape the majesty of her talent and achievements. This seems to be her moment.

Since 2007 Lynn has been working in the studio with John Carter Cash and her daughter Patsy Lynn Russell. They’ve already recorded 93 songs and she hopes to keep going. As she told The New York Times last month, she is thinking about her legacy.

“I wanted the kids to have ’em,” Ms. Lynn said. “I thought, everybody, they don’t think about what they’re leaving. So I went in and I thought, I’m going to cut every song I’ve ever had out. I started with my first hits and I cut the Top 5s and then the Top 10s. And then I just started cutting some that I wrote and some that I’ve always wanted to sing.”

Mr. Cash said Ms. Lynn has finished full albums’ worth of gospel, Appalachian and Christmas songs, along with favorites from her own repertoire and cover songs. “It was like filling in an encyclopedia,” Mr. Cash said in an interview at the Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tenn.

A few weeks after that was printed, she seemed to offer a different viewpoint for this Garden and Gun article:

Legacy don’t mean a thing to me. I’m just glad people like me. I don’t need to go out and charge a lot of money to do a show. I am proud that people feel that way toward me and I love them for it. I get a bang out of being out there. I don’t think that ever changes, the feeling you get when you’re out there onstage. Some people think they’re better than what they are. Ain’t none of them that good.

Merriam-Webster defines legacy as “a gift by will, especially of money or other personal property, or something transmitted or received from an ancestor or from the past.”  I tend to think that Lynn is interested in what people will remember her for, which the dictionary explains as “recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms.” And music is one helluva mechanism.

Politics? That could be another.

I don’t like Donald Trump. I think he has a black heart full of rage, anger, and intolerance. The thought that he could become the leader of my country strikes intense fear in me, and I honestly can’t understand why other people can’t see or feel what I do. When Loretta Lynn, a person I have enormous respect and admiration for, comes out and says she supports him … I’m just damn conflicted.

But during these times of such sharp divide between people, I find solace in these words from Pete Seeger, who reminded us, “It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.”

While I doubt that Loretta and I will get a chance to meet at Starbucks for a cup of coffee and conversation, I’d like to imagine that if we did there might be a possibility we’d each come away with a better understanding of why we’re standing at opposite points on the political spectrum today. Perhaps we could find a path to move closer. (There is some hope — she’s said that she likes Barack and Michelle Obama, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton.)

It might seem easy to simply condemn Lynn for her support of Trump, but it’s a soft target. If you believe in free will and free speech, then you have to recognize that she has every right to stand on the stage and say whatever she wants. While I won’t pay to hear her say it, I also won’t stop listening to her music and thinking respectfully of the trails she’s blazed for women, and the progressive issues she’s spoken out about, through her music.

But celebrity endorsements? I couldn’t care less.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed Broadside column on the No Depression website.

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #3

SDD5

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column has been a fixture at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music for over ten years. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

New Music Rising

By using the term ‘roots music’ as a description of what I listen to and wax about, you might come to think that I spend all my days listening to stuff like the Fruit Jar Guzzlers, Jelly Jaw Short, Wade Maniner…with a little Bull Moose Jackson and H-Bomb Ferguson thrown in for good measure. And while those musicians were indeed on this morning’s playlist, my taste runs deep, wide and inclusive…a tent so far and wide that I can barely see end to end.

Five years ago this week I published an interview…it was actually the first one I had ever done…on No Depression‘s post-print online website, my home away from home where I contribute a column called Easy Ed’s BroadsideI’d first seen and heard Massachusetts-based musician and artist Marissa Nadler on a few videos that she had uploaded to the Couch By Couch West online anti-festival that ran concurrent to that thing in Austin. Her music captivated and mesmerized me. It was right before her thirtieth birthday, and she’d already released five albums along with several side projects, amassing a highly-engaged international fan base that kept her on the road.

In my article and our conversation, which I do hope you can find the time to read or at the very least watch some of her videos that I’ve included, The Demystification of Marissa Nadler starts out with the words of others who’ve tried too hard to come up with a genre-box to explain who she is and what she does.

“The indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad.”

“She’s hacked away the art school whimsy, tossed out the crystals and burned the floaty headscarfs.”

“Simple, melancholic fingerpicked folk ballads that take advantage of her sonorous, spine-tingling vocals, narrating tales of damsels in distress or lovers absent or dead.”

“Compelling medieval twang.”

My take? I think Marissa makes incredible folk music. Maybe not your parents folk music, but it comes from a place where an eighteen-year-old Marissa would sometimes leaf through those early No Depression magazines and as she describes… ‘spend my awkward adolescence copying master paintings in my basement and listening to music on the boombox. A lot of this music was prog rock and classic rock. A lot of it was folk and Americana. I loved Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams and they really spoke to me. Also, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels. Elizabeth Cotton.’

StrangersOn May 20th Marissa will release her seventh full-length album titled Strangers, and she’ll be doing April dates on the USA West Coast, followed in May and June with dates in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland and Denmark. Here’s the link to her site

This week she released the new video which she shot, directed and animated herself. I’ll let her own words set it up for you.

 

With ‘All the Colors of the Dark’ I wanted to marry my love for the moving image with the song in a compelling visual that pulsated with the same rhythm. I’ve been inspired by the beautiful phantasmagoric worlds created by Svankmejer and Francesca Woodman, The Brothers Quay, among others. In the video, everyday objects move on their own, representing a lingering presence in my life.

Every Picture Tells a Story

SandyThe image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….including this one I originally published back in January 2014 at No Depression dot com.

From The Pages of Kithfolk: The Howard Rains Pictorial

HR1

There’s a marketing and publicity company that works out of the Shoreline Washington home of the Leger family called Hearth Music. They are musicians, wordsmiths and designers, with a passion for traditional music and art that goes beyond simply running a business.

KITHFOLK is their digital roots music magazine of long-form interviews, engaging articles, video and audio streaming premieres, album reviews, and columns from guest writers. Most of the time they don’t write about the artists that they are currently working with, but the people and places and sounds that catch their attention.

Wandering around the site the other night, I happened to come across a gallery of paintings from a gentleman by the name of Howard Rains that really jumped out at me. Here’s a small sampling of Howard’s work along with his thoughts…the full story will take you to the gallery.

HR2

I have painted since I was a kid, but for many years I have been painting old time fiddlers, drawing only from life and documenting living traditional musicians as they played. These portraits go through the filter of my style and I have often been told they look nothing like the individual I am painting; other times I have been told they look exactly like them. I have done this because I love to do it. Because I am obsessed with traditional music and the incredible people I meet through the music. Click here for the full story.

From The New Yorker: The Awkward, Enduring Influence of Hank William’s Jr.

AMHWJrThere seems to be an avalanche of press focus on the music and life of Hank Williams Sr. with the release of the biopic I Saw The Light, but David Cantrell has written an expansive and absolutely fascinating piece on his son.

Here’s just a little taste, but you should most definitely click here for the full story.

Hank Williams, Jr., was raised to be an echo, not an influence. His mother, Audrey Williams, pushed him to perform as Hank Williams, Jr., (his given name is Randall) and to play songs pulled almost exclusively from the catalogue of his father, who died when Hank, Jr., was three. He made his stage début, warbling his father’s first hit, “Lovesick Blues,” when he was only eight years old; he débuted on the Grand Ole Opry at eleven. He released his first album, “Hank Williams Jr. Sings the Songs of Hank Williams,” for his father’s old record label, M.G.M., just after turning fourteen, in 1964.

His father remains the genre’s key repository of myth and tradition (though he’s lately moved it on over a bit to make room for Johnny Cash). But listen closely to country radio’s defining sounds and points of view at almost any moment over the last four decades and Hank Williams, Jr., is right there—often, he was there first. When it comes to anticipating the direction of country music, Jr. has mattered more than Sr. for a long, long time.

In that picture above, which is from an old copy of Billboard Magazine, Junior is standing next to my cousin, the late Arnold Maxin. He was a true music man…playing horn in the big bands when he was fifteen, selling records for a Philadelphia distributor after the war, working A&R at Okeh Records, producing a number of hits including Screaming Jay Hawkins’ ‘I Put A Spell On You’ and pretty much every Connie Francis album, and ending up as head of MGM Records in the sixties.

Lucinda Williams Takes Me Far Beyond The Blue

On a Tuesday morning, Lucinda Williams’ husband Tom sent me a message asking how far I was from Tarrytown. I punched out “ten minutes” although it’s probably closer to twenty, and hit the send button. She was playing at the old theater there on Saturday night, and up until the day before, I held out hope that I could arise and attend, but it wouldn’t happen. I sent my apologies on Friday afternoon and said “Another time, for sure.”

My column this past week at No Depression is mostly about me and some trouble I’ve had, but also about how Lucinda and her music moved my needle last June on a stormy night. Click here to check it out

On the day you fly away, far beyond the blue
When you’re done, and your run is finally through
I’m forced to let go, there’ll be no greater sorrow
On that day you fly away, far beyond the blue

OH NO…A FACEBOOK FRIEND SUPPORTS DONALD TRUMP…WHAT WOULD PETE SEEGER DO?

I’ll make this quick. I used to be a serial-social-media -politicalized-poster. You know…that guy. The friend on Facebook who links every left (or right) leaning story on the internet because they think YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS!!! It’s ok….I’m in recovery. Here’s my story about what I now ask myself before I hit the button. What Would Pete Seeger Do?

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

Oh No…A Facebook Friend Supports Donald Trump…What Would Pete Seeger Do?

peteOnce upon a time I collected Facebook friends as if they were baseball cards. The more the merrier it seemed, drawing together a large community and network of people from my past, present and future. Childhood friends, high school girlfriends, long lost co-workers, fellow travelers and even the friends of other Facebook friends who I’d meet only via comments and online chats. I linked them on Linkedin and connected with them on Twitter, put their email addresses in a contact file and stayed in touch such as it was by watching their lives move across the magic screen in an endless parade of family and pet pictures, status updates that ranged from silly to sad and of course news, views and opinions. Lots of those.

Like many, I fell into the trap. With too much time on my hands and a sense of self-righteousness, and indignation, I used Facebook as a means to communicate political rants and anger by finding articles with similar viewpoints as my own and sharing them along with my wonderfully witty and sarcastic personal observations. It seemed like the right thing to do…quickly reaching a few hundred folks with a cut, paste and post. And when my friends responded by hitting the ‘LIKE’ button, it only fueled that addictive rush of confirmation and acceptance.

Look ma….they like me, they really do.

A couple of years ago I recognized that I didn’t much like the ‘social media Ed’ anymore. He’d grown jaded and isolated and snarky and petty. And I wasn’t alone. So I took a break, stopped posting anything for  a few months, quietly watched what others were using social media for and went through my list of Facebook friends…silently deleting more than half of them. The next thing I did was to create a new Facebook identity, one that only reflects my passion and interest in particular forms of American vernacular music and serves as a place where I can share my published work. It seems healthier for mind and spirit. (If you care…here it is.)

The other night a gentleman named Ian from Minneapolis who I once worked with about fifteen years ago and remains on my list of Facebook friends posted this…which I am slightly editing to cut to the essence of his thoughts:

I find myself stepping away from Facebook as I’m appalled by the endless, vile and petty posts that serially savage political candidates on an hourly basis. I understand that people are passionate but endless repetition changes nobody’s mind. Maybe going for a walk and screaming obscenities is a better plan. I prefer to remember my Facebook friends as they were before this endless political cycle.

Yes…I could feel my head nod in agreement to that. But wait…he can’t possibly be talking about me, could he? Haven’t I been a good Facebook citizen these past years? Wasn’t I a recovered and reformed serial poster who walked through social media with better judgement than in my past?

I ran to my personal page…a few pictures of my kids, a couple of links to recent music-related articles I’ve written, shameless self-promotion of my other Facebook page, my personal website and…oh no…almost a dozen anti-Donald Trump stories mostly from Huffington Post or Politico going back to last July. Where they hell did those come from? What was I thinking?

In ten minutes they were all deleted. Without even realizing it, I had became the angry Ed again on a mission to share my political feelings to friends. And to be clear, sharing thoughts and having conversation is not only important but essential…and I am extremely angry and pissed off and scared about the rise in popularity of a man I consider to be exactly what the Huffington Post calls him out on every single day:

Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liarrampant xenophoberacistmisogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

But the dilemma is how does one express and communicate emotion and passion about any issue on a slash and burn media platform that is in reality not conversational in any way, shape or form. Whether you post an update or leave a comment, you are pushing out and not pulling in. It may give you satisfaction and inner-bliss, but it does nothing to connect you to another person and you’re left shouting words over the roar of an ocean.

It was at this moment I should have shut off my computer, turned off the lights and went to bed. But I decided I needed to respond to my old friend. This is in part what I wrote:

Everyone has access to whatever news media they choose, everybody can read, discover and come to their own opinions, everybody carries their own experiences and views. Does anybody think that posting yet another HuffPo or NYTimes piece about some politician saying something outrageous will move the needle? No. I imagine we think it portrays us as witty or clever, or we have this delusion that we can change peoples views with a simple cut and paste or worse yet….our very own ‘on the fly’ observations.

So anyway, I’m sort of going to start moving forward with the WWPD approach. What’s that you ask? What Would Pete (Seeger) Do?

From what I’ve been told by friends of his, and I won’t pretend to know for sure if this is the truth or a tale, in his later years when something happened that Pete felt he needed to speak out on, he’d write it down on a piece of cardboard, go stand on a corner in his hometown of Beacon New York, and hold it up for people to see. I can imagine some folks would drive past and ignore him, and some might pull over and ask ‘What’s up Pete’?’

If you are the person who wants to work toward a goal, or make a change in someones life, do it one to one. Person to person. In conversation, not a meme. Leave social media for cat videos, signposts of life and passing, new restaurants, trips, friends, promoting your products or services and the very very very very occasional moment when you can connect again with someone you’ve thought you lost.

Lights off. Sleep came.

Yesterday I took a few hours and looked over my current list of Facebook friends. There are just 305 of them now, down from what once was over a thousand. I have found two who are very vocal about supporting Donald Trump and one who used to like Marco Rubio but now is pushing Ted Cruz. All three individuals are professional colleagues from over two decades ago, but they’ve remained on my friends list because I liked them when we worked together and we created a connection that is unexplainably still there at the very least with good memories.

I won’t lie…for a moment my finger hovered over the delete button…the kill switch. Is it possible to actually have a friend in my life…online or real…whose views run polar opposite of my own? And it’s not like we talk or see each other or likely ever will. I should just cut and run. They’re still there.

I recall this quote from Pete Seeger, and it has helped untangle my thoughts.

It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

The next few months are likely to get more turbulent and divisive. The shouting will get louder, the rhetoric more heated, the lines further divided. While I have not been one who actively campaigns or takes to the streets in protest as I did in my youth, neither apathy and inaction…nor hiding behind a keyboard…can be the acceptable default position. I will raise my voice, but I will speak to people and not at them.

I’m not completely in touch with why Pete Seeger’s spirit and voice have long resonated within me, but they do. He’s the closest thing to what I would call a hero, and I wish he was still here with us today. His presence would comfort. What would Pete do? 

He’d make us sing together of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Week Before Pete Seeger Died

Pete Seeger / Uncredited / Creative Commons 2.0

I wrote this article for No Depression: The Roots Music Journal on January 22, 2014 and it speaks to the events two days earlier, on the national holiday where we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My youngest son and I had hoped to spend the day with Pete Seeger and members of a small community church in the town of Beacon New York. Pete had a dream for that day and we wanted to be a part of it. Five days later I got word that Pete had been taken to a hospital in New York City and that the news wasn’t good. In 48 hours on January 26, 2014 he passed. 

PSeeger

When my editor Kim Ruehl from No Depression tipped me off that there was something goin’ on up in Pete Seeger’s town of Beacon New York on the day we acknowledge the life, work, accomplishments and passing  of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I hit the interwebs to dig up the information. In my mind, whenever the ninety-four year old Pete comes out to do something, it’s pretty damn big news. An event. A happening. A gathering. So it was sort of surprising to discover barely any details of what Pete Seeger and the town of Beacon were up to.

Having recently migrated across the country from California, I inquired around town to my new folkie friends here in the Lower Hudson Valley which led nowhere. Talking to all the Brooklyn hipsters I work with in SoHo led to blank stares. If you live in Manhattan south of 14th Street, the Bronx is considered “upstate”, Long Island is just a completely different state and anything above I-287 and the Tappan Zee Bridge might as well be Lower Canada.)

MLK

 

Being resourceful, I soon discovered that Beacon was south of Woodstock and north of Croton-On-Hudson, where Pete and the Clearwater Festival converge each June. That was the last time I saw Pete, leading the crowd in song as he has done for decades in June 2013 when there wasn’t snow on the ground nor a snap in the air. Turns out, it’s just a 75 minute ride from my apartment. A straight shot up the Taconic State Parkway along the Hudson River. My oldest son who lives in the city was busy, but my youngest said he’d be willing to wake up early on his Monday holiday and come with me. That is sacrifice.

With early sixties Bob Dylan tunes coming out of the speakers, my son slept while I drove. I imagined that as we got closer to Beacon the traffic would be backed up for miles. Images of Woodstock 1969 danced in my head. Maybe Pete would need a helicopter to get him to the church on time, although I think the log house is only about ten minutes out.

I shook my boy up as we rolled into town and drove down the main street, which may or may not have also been the name of it. ‘Look for the crowds’, I said. There were none. ‘Keep looking’, I said. There were none. ‘Over there’, he exclaimed.

So I followed the only other moving car on the street, and turned right when they did. A church. A steeple. And now I saw the people. I’ll guesstimate there were about two or three hundred souls who entered the doors and took seats in the chapel of this simple yet beautiful Baptist church.MLKDay

 

Taking to the pulpit, a large and handsome man stood tall and proud. This was his flock. This was his community. These…or rather we…were his congregation. “Dr. King’s and Mr. Seeger’s dream for Beacon has arrived today,” said the Rev. Ronald Perry of Springfield Baptist. “We’re all God’s children and we come together in fellowship … moving forward for a better community and a better world.”

Seeger’s vision was “a community parade in honor of King, to accompany the annual birthday celebration” of which the church has been doing for thirty-five years, said Bonnie Champion, an event organizer and member of Seeger’s Hudson River Sloop Clearwater environmental group. He wanted to make sure that the federal holiday — the only one designated as a national day of service — meant something special to the community. “This is his dream,” Champion said on Sunday evening. “He wants his vision to grow with the children.”

And so, on three separate weeknights, Pete came over to the church to teach the local community the three songs he sang alongside Dr. King on the march from Selma to Montgomery. “We Shall Overcome”. “Oh Wallace”. “If You Miss Me at the Back Of The Bus”.

 

The last time I had a good, hard cry was in the days following 9/11. But sitting in that church, listening to the Reverend, waiting for Pete to come and lead us out to the street where we would march just around the block and raise our voices together…at that moment I felt a tear. And another and another and another. I could feel myself on the balcony of that Memphis motel standing next to Dr. King. In the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel with Bobby. And on the plaza with JFK.

Just as easy as I choke up simply writing these words, my body shook and my son put his hand on top of mine and held it there. I’m sixty-two, and all at once the weight of the past fifty years of life’s events enveloped and rained down on me. My eyes were shut when I heard the room get quiet. While on his way to the church, Pete felt too ill to join us and make the short walk around the block. He had the car turn around and he went back home. The Poughkeepsie Journal reported that the crowd was disappointed. They were not.MLK3

 

The Journal did get this part right:

It was clear that Seeger accomplished his goal; religious and political. “It has drawn such an attraction to the purpose of this day,” Rev. Perry said of the parade, ” and the people are coming out with children, celebrating, singing.”

And that we did. Filing out of the church we raised our voices in song. So proud to be here in this moment we marched, or in reality it was more as if we walked slowly. I don’t think anyone wanted to rush through this. Six short blocks. In a small town in upstate New York, south of Canada.

At the end, as we all filed back into the church one more time for a brief slide show on the history of slavery and the civil rights movement, along with food and more music. Someone with a guitar started to sing a song. A song that just came out of that cold Beacon air into the warmth of community. You probably know it, and perhaps sang it yourself sometime in your life.

This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, this little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Ev’ry where I go
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, ev’ry where I go
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
Ev’ry where I go
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

All in my house
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, all in my house
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
All in my house
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

I’m not going to make it shine
I’m just going to let it shine
I’m not going to make it shine
I’m just going to let it shine
Hallelujah
I’m not going to make it shine
I’m just going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Out in the dark
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, out in the dark
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
Out in the dark
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

A week later, on Monday the 27th of January 2014, a small paper from upstate New York reported his death. The story was posted on their website and then pulled down. And then the entire site shut down. Credit goes to The Fretboard Journal as one of the very first that reported the news, quickly followed by Variety and the New York Times. At the same time, there were several people who posted on social media that perhaps it was just a hoax. I knew it wasn’t. Pete Seeger had indeed passed on, but his music, accomplishments and memory lives on forever. 

The photos for this article were taken by me, with the exception of the one at the top.