The New Lost Times

Seeger & Hazel Dickens at Seedtime

The second weekend in June, Mike Seeger and Hazel Dickens will be at the 20th Seedtime on the Cumberland festival put on by Appalshop. This sounds like a blast.

Looks like they'll be headlining Friday night and doing various demonstrations, discussions, and jams over the course of the weekend. I've seen Seeger do similar weekends before, carrying on the great tradition of the folk festival weekend workshop. It's a big part of what it means to be a folk music enthusiast -- getting to see, up close, the masters work and talk about what they do.

I can't say much more about Hazel Dickens than what is said at eFolkMusic. Mike Seeger was heavily involved in the Baltimore area's folk and bluegrass scenes in the 1950's -- around the same time as Hazel and her singing partner Alice Gerrard -- so I'd imagine the three met there. They've all worked together often over the years.

 

Schwarz at Mt. Airy Fiddler's Convention

The website of Tracy Schwarz and his partner Ginny Hawker suggests that they're back from some weeks in Scotland -- and now they're off again to the Mt. Airy Fiddler's Convention (the 35th annual, in North Carolina). Why don't they just relax for a weekend?

The convention's website makes no mention of Schwarz and Hawker, so I don't know what to promise on their behalf. Maybe they're competing? Just jamming?

 

Mini "Interview" with Cohen

The editor of The Celestial Monochord reports on his brief conversion with John Cohen at the opening of Cohen's exhibit at the Icebox of Minneapolis (the quotes are approximate -- written down from memory):

Monochord: Ok, I have a question, and I wouldn't ask you this question if I wasn't somewhat eppifficated. In the DVD that came with Dark Hollar -- the Dillard Chandler documentary -- was that a drag queen? Was that a guy in a dress? What was that about?

Cohen: That was the same guy who was in the cafe before -- Dillard's friend. Same guy. They knew I'd be filming at this party and they were putting one over on me. When I saw them coming through the door and he was wearing women's clothes, I thought, MY GOD, what joke are they pulling on me?

Obviously, the editor of The New Lost Times also saw the exhibit and it is great -- seeing well-displayed real prints of fine photos ... there's no substitute. And Cohen is at least as excellent a photographer as anything else he's been during his career.

Read the whole story.

 

Schwarz continues tour of Scotland

Tracy Schwarz continues his tour of Scotland in support of The Crooked Road, a campaign for southwest Virginia tourism. He is joined by a number of other American old time and bluegrass musicians, including Ginny Hawker, his wife and musical collaborator

From the The Herald of Glasgow:

Ginny Hawker ... and Tracy Schwarz come from different areas of the US – Virginia and New York respectively – but when they met at the Ashokan music camp in the Catskill Mountains in 1988, they discovered much common ground. Schwarz was smitten by "cowboy songs" on the radio as a boy, while Hawker grew up surrounded by a large musical family. Her father was one of 10 children, each of whom sang. Indeed, he and her uncles once drove down to Nashville just to breathe the air among the music.

For her part, she discovered early on that she could earn a nickel from the neighbours for singing on the front porch ...

... The Masters from the Crooked Road play Rothes Halls, Glenrothes, on Friday. At the time of going to press, tickets were also still available for the Birnam Arts Institute, near Dunkeld (Saturday 13); St Bride's Centre, Edinburgh (Sunday 14); Greenock Arts Guild (Tuesday 16); the Magnum Theatre, Irvine (Thursday 18) and the Tron Theatre, Glasgow (Sunday 21). Big Big Country runs from May 16-May 28.

Read the article, "On the Road to a Good Ol' Broken Heart".

 

More about Cohen's "Young Bob" in Minneapolis

(from Cohen's "Young Bob" exhibit, via Pulse article)

 

From Nancy Sartor's article in Pulse, one of our local free papers:

As for the Minneapolis exhibit, Cohen said it’s the first one to showcase only his Dylan material. “I think this is the first time there’s been a show of just Dylan photographs and it’s not his famous period, it’s young Bob,” he said. “I’ve given Howard [Christopherson, Icebox Gallery owner] some things to hang up that have never been seen before, and there’s even more that I couldn’t show. There’s pictures of Dylan and his family, but that’s private so we don’t show that.”

Read the entire article.

 

Jolie Holland compared to Elizabeth Cotton

Back on February 8th, New Lost City Rambler Mike Seeger and the young singer-songwriter Jolie Holland honored Elizabeth Cotton at an event in New York CIty. Mike Seeger, of course, was there because he was Cotton's close friend, primary recordist, and his family "discovered" her. The Celestial Monochord has now published some thoughts on why Holland might have been asked to participate in the event:

Holland and Cotton remind us that it's behind closed doors that the real disclosures are made. And when they sit you down in their parlor, we're reminded that the supposedly traditional domain of women is at least as hard and gritty as the world outside.

Read the whole article.

 

Bill C. Malone writing Seeger biography

"Country Music, USA" has been the definitive history of country music since 1968, when it was the only full-length work to treat the genre seriously. Its author, Bill C. Malone, is certainly one of the Grand Old Men of the serious study of popular music. According to The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, Malone is now working on a biography of Mike Seeger.

It's about time -- Mike's life has taken on Homeric proportions in the minds of many enthusiasts of "roots music." He founded the New Lost City Ramblers, created the first bluegrass LP ever released, toured with Maybelle Carter, rediscovered and befriended Dock Boggs in the last years of Boggs' life, and in more recent years, continues to invent and re-invent a vitally contemporary art of musical obsolescence.

I've long been troubled by the lack of a biography of Seeger (or history of the NLCR). I've even thought seriously about writing one myself. Luckily for everybody, the teeny-tiny-bit more qualified Malone has apparently taken on the job.

 

Seeger's new autoharp anthology

Last week, Smithsonian-Folkways released a set of Mike Seeger's field recordings of old-time autoharpists, Masters of Old-time Country Autoharp. The 1957-1961 recordings include cuts by Earnest Stoneman (veteran of the 1927 Bristol sessions), and Kilby Snow, who may be thought of as "the Earl Scruggs of the autoharp" and who Seeger thinks might have influenced Maybelle Carter.

An earlier compilation of Seeger field recordings, Close To Home (with Dock Boggs, the Carters, Clarence Ashley, etc.), included an astonishing Kilby Snow recording, "He Will Set Your Fields On Fire." Listeners to that CD will be delighted to find that the thrilling, technically mystifying performance is no fluke -- Snow's work is consistently amazing.

The track notes for Masters of Old-time Country Autoharp were written by Charles Wolfe -- they must've been just about the last of his many gifts to lovers of old American music.

 

Seeger's brother gets tribute CD

Apparently, Mike Seeger has an older half-brother named Pete who also plays music -- no doubt trading on Mike's fame.

Bruce Springsteen (a New Jersey guitarist and singer-songwriter who is also, no doubt, trading on Mike's fame) has recently released a CD of songs he associates with Pete.

Serioulsy, I own the CD and like it very much. What took him so long?

Read more about Pete and Bruce.

UPDATE (5/3): Today is Pete Seeger's birthday -- the guy was born in 1919.