"Springsteen Hears Voices" . . . Rolling Stone . . .

[OneBlueSky]

For his new album, he digs into classic labor and protest folk songs made famous by Pete Seeger

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9961901/springsteen_hears_voices


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EU1PNC/sr=1-1/qid=1145776272/ref=sr_1_1/002-7025532-7996803?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=music

snip

The band has three weeks until its debut performance, at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Scheduled afterward are a ten-date European tour and a monthlong American roadshow, which kicks off on Memorial Day. However, this ensemble is not Springsteen's walloping blood-brothers the E Street Band. It's a mix of old friends and new faces, a thirteen-piece outfit that has been nearly ten years in the making. In various incarnations, it has convened exactly three times before this stretch of rehearsals. Those three times led to Springsteen's newest and perhaps least commercial album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, a collection of labor, civil-rights, protest and story songs from the repertoire of Pete Seeger, the pillar of the midcentury folk revival, now eighty-seven and laid up with a bad leg in upstate New York.

snip

Where most of Springsteen's repertoire is for the people, the new songs are music by the people; they're field songs, not stage songs, many originally intended to be sung by civil-rights marchers, dockworkers, draft dodgers. These range from ultra-canonical songs etched into the brain of anyone who's ever been in a grade-school music room, like "John Henry" and "Froggie Went A-Courtin'," to spirituals that faced hardship head-on, like "Eyes on the Prize" and "Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep." He doesn't attempt to recontextualize the songs so much as to resuscitate them, to pick up and pass them on to, as Springsteen puts it, "the next guy with a guitar out there on the highway willing to come along and give them a ride.

"The songwriting was what struck me, how alive the songs were," he adds. "You have all those lost voices floating in there. And that's something I pursue in my own work all the time. I'm interested in lost voices. I don't know if I'm chasing that or if it's chasing me."

Though one might expect sparse, haunting acoustic ballads in the vein of The Ghost of Tom Joad, The Seeger Sessions is more of an old-timey party album, with influences reaching into jazz, zydeco, bluegrass and, in the newest songs, gospel, which has been Springsteen's kick lately.

- more . . .

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9961901/springsteen_hears_voices

[DanCa]

1. Hah I allready have this cd preorderd.

I can't wait for Tuesday. :D

[flyarm]

2. IN THE SUMMERS OF 1969 & 70 I USED TO GO

out on Pete Seegers sailboat/sloop out of Atlantic Highlands Nj on sunday afternoons..he used to take a boat load of us kids and he would sing and play his banjo...and guitar...

ahhh what memories!!

ohhh those were the good old days.....everyone would sit quiet and listen to him sing..then he would have us all join in...

an i grew up with Bruce ..and he played at my beach club every Thursday night!! teen night!!...

i get to see him every so often...

from a joisey gal...

exit 114

fly

[OneBlueSky]

3. I worked with Pete on the CLEARWATER project . . .

and was at the launching in South Bristol, Maine, on May 17, 1969 . . . a date I remember so vividly only because there's a commemorative plaque from the launching hanging above my desk . . .

also crewed and sailed several times way back when . . . I especially recall being docked in Pete's hometown of Beacon one night, when he stopped down to the boat with his banjo . . . all of a sudden, instruments started popping up everywhere, and we had one hell of a hootenanny! . . .

we were doing "Oh, Mary Don't You Weep," and different folks were singing verses . . . after Pete finished one, he tossed it to ME, of all people -- a non-singer and non-instrumenalist (my only musical talent is listening) . . . "Take a verse, Mike!" he says . . . and I did! . . . don't know if I was on key or not, but everyone chimed in on the chorus, so it didn't really matter . . . great, great memories . . . :)

[flyarm]

5. ahhh you were a lucky one!!!

funny but i remember the Clearwater so well..i can close my eyes and see her vividly...and now i live in clearwater!!

fla that is....

ahhhhh...the cycles of life...

fly:hi:

[bklyncowgirl]

4. I remember Pete & the Clearwater's first appearance in Highlands NJ.

We were sitting around Conner's pool looking out over Sandy Hook Bay when this big beautiful sloop came gliding in under full sail like the ghost one of the pirate ships that people said used used to haunt the area.

She created quite a stir.

"What the hell is that thing?"

Eventually word got around that this was Pete Seegar's boat and that he was doing a concert that night. I wanted to go but since I was only around 12 my mother & father who were conservative Irish working class types wouldn't let me. My older cousin went and said it was a blast.

I also remember Bruce playing local teen nights--I wanted to go to his last show at Clearwater Pool--the one that turned into a mini-riot but once again my parents wouldn't let me. The wouldn't let me go to Woodstock either. Damn.

[flyarm]

6. i was in college then ..

and i worked at the Clam Hut!!! highlands...

my dad had the biggest business in atlantic highlands...but i grew up in middletown...

and we belonged to Trade Winds beach club...my aunt and uncle ( god parents)
owned the RumRunner..now McClunes...

..but in late 1970.."i took off for the skys"....and became a flight attendant...back then a "stewardess"...ahhh those were the days.......

i tried to go to woodstock ..but got stuck in my best friends vw bug on the NY thruway in the rain......and never got there...
finally after over 24 hours..some guys picked up her car and turned it around for us ...and we followed an ambulance outta there!!

it was almost as much fun stuck on the throughway...we partied in the road..and on a farm near the road!!

i think back now and wonder where all those people are...and i wonder why we are all not in the streets daily fighting this admin...

where have all the flowers gone...

i marched on washington...and in PA....and NY...seems to me we are all on computers now..and not in the streets...

i wonder if we had had computers back then ..would we have taken to the streets like we did??

hmmmmmmmmm,,,i just wonder..

fly

[bklyncowgirl]

8. Thanks for the trip down memory lane

My parents used to go to Conners for the summer--they met there back before WWII.

We used to eat at the Clam Hut alot. When I turned 18 my mother & my aunts took me out to several bars--including the Rum Runner to "teach me how to drink". It was that sort of family.

By the time I hit college the war was over and the protests had died out but I marched against nuclear weapons and Reagan's proxy war in El Salvador in the 80s and I've marched in Washington against Bush twice. I'll be in New York on Saturday.

I don't know why people aren't out in the streets. I suppose it's because most kids don't feel that the war effects them--the all volunteer army has taken the threat that they might be drafted into a war they don't agree with. As for older people, there is something about having a regular job and a family that depends on you to make you extremely cautious.

[flyarm]

9. ahhh i wish i was in ny...

i do fla in winter and nj in summer..won't be up there yet..

but next one in ny this old lady will be there...

give a shout out for me please!!

fly

[DanCa]

7. They have an all too brief clip of John Henry at amazon.com

www.amazon.com Do a search on Bruce Springsteen, click on the record and viola.
The clip is all too short but from the looks of it it wont be the same songs we heard when we were kids. The Boss is putting his own spin on things.

[Eric J in MN]

10. I wish Springsteen well with this album, but

personally, I prefer Pete Seeger's versions.

I recommend Pete Seeger's 1963 album, "We Shall Overcome: Complete Carnegie Hall Concert."

[OneBlueSky]

13. I just listened to the 30-second samples on amazon and . . .

there's a couple of songs that I agree with you on . . . e.g. I'm not crazy about Springsteen's version of "Oh Mary Don't You Weep", mainly because he changed the melody, I think . . .

for the most part, though, these are just different interpretations . . . not better, not worse, just different . . . I love Pete's stuff (always have), but I also like Bruce's versions . . .

ordering the CD tomorrow . . .

[Initech]

11. This and Neil Young's new album are extremely high on my list

of new albums to buy. Damn... too many albums, need more money.

[Imagevision]

12. Bruce, Bon Jovi - Jackson Browne etc. were soid in Kerry election

only to be defeated by computer fraud as these people were incredibly strong in making a difference until Bushco runs the shit about; " The exit polls got it all wrong, yeah! that's why Karen Hughes even told Bush before 11:30 that he was losing, then Bush staged that video interview mid-day that centered around barney the dog, that's when they did the deed.

[upsidedown]

14. I love this album.

I'm a sucker for folk music and anything Springsteen does, so I've been eagerly awaiting this since I first heard about it. I pre-ordered it from Sony and was ecstatic to find it in my mailbox Saturday morning. It's brilliant.

Thanks for posting this. :)