Brucenanny!
Gather around the campfire, kids, put out whatever you're smoking, and clear your throats for action. Bruce, the new music counselor, is gonna lead us in a good old-fashioned sing-along. Just a guitar or two…and a banjo and a mandolin and a fiddle and an accordion and a brass section – don't forget the tuba! – and our own good spirits: that's all we need for some late 50's-style fun the Springsteen way.
And fun it is. Bruce's newest release is We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Think folkie hootenanny produced by
There are the Civil Rights stalwarts “We Shall Overcome” and “Keep Your Eye On The Prize” and the anti-war Irish ballad “Mrs. McGrath” and the depression song “My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away)”; there are work songs like “Erie Canal” and “John Henry”; there’s an outlaw ballad that casts “Jesse James” as Robin Hood – and all these songs are connected to a very American form of social democracy, a radical egalitarianism that goes back at least to Jefferson and Tom Paine, and which I certainly associate with Pete Seeger (my father was a fan – musically and politically - and we had several Weavers albums). In the abstract, this may seem like a far less outwardly political album than “Devils and Dust” or “Tom Joad’s Ghost”, and it’s clearly not as directly political – but it’s an echo and a calling forth of a broad-based, idealistic social spirit that has not been seen or heard in this country for far too long. This is a powerful iconic moment in which Bruce takes the torch – both musical and political - from the aging Pete Seeger, and runs with it. Or maybe I’m just being sentimental…
As you might guess from the tracks noted above, Bruce has focused on folksongs from the Seeger repertoire – emphatically not the songs of Pete Seeger or other writers' songs he made famous. There's no "Big Muddy" or "Little Houses" or "If I Had A Hammer" or "Turn! Turn! Turn!" or even “Wimoweh”. What there is is a good selection of the many kinds of traditional songs Pete sang and a hell of a job of production. The music styles range from old timey folk to bluegrass to 20’s jazz to straight-up gospel to Irish ballad to drag blues to Mardi Gras second line and more. Keys are switched from major to minor for some numbers (“Oh Mary” works particularly well in this mode and is the set’s most irresistible track), and the Boss is in good voice and high spirits, backed by an excellent set of musicians – all effectively captured live and unrehearsed. You'll hear a lot of New Orleans styles and sounds on this set, a kind of tribute within the tribute.
The disc is one of those dual jobs, with a CD side and a DVD side. I haven't hit the DVD yet, but apparently it's got a 30 minute documentary on the recording of the set and two numbers not included on the CD side (to which one asks "Why the hell not???").
Final side note: when Bob Dylan needed to woodshed, he put out two sets of folk-type songs (really good ones, too; highly recommended) – Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong. From those sets and Bruce's new one, there's one song that they both recorded….one song that appealed equally to these heirs of the folk tradition…one song that spoke both to the Bard of Minnesota and the Boss of New Jersey…one song that both not only chose to play, but positioned as the last track on the set...and what song, you eagerly inquire, could it possibly be? "Froggy Went A' Courtin'". For some reason, I get a real kick out of that. Actually, I’m thinking that Bruce intentionally did this as a tip of the hat to DJZimmy, now spinning the platters for you on his weekly satellite radio show – but why Dylan chose that particularly surreal song in the first place is beyond my imagination.
