 |
| Me, far right, in the Gulf at Galveston, on the road to the Kerrville Folk Festival, sometime in the 90s. |
News of Pete Seeger’s death flowed from my car radio this frigid January morn, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had met him.
I wracked my brain trying to remember where it had been.
Which of the music festivals I’d attended in the early-to-mid-90s? I’d seen
Pete at venues large and small, alongside famous headliners and newbie singer
songwriters nervously crooning at their first festival gig.
Did I ever go back stage? Did Pete ever come around the
campfire late at night to join the all-night sing along?
Truth is, I never “met” Pete. Except through his songs. Which, the more I
learn about Pete, the more I realize, is how you get to know the man.
I remember Pete taking the stage, beanpole tall and lean,
but with nearly perfect posture. His voice was thin and reedy, but clarion
clear. Every word of every song was audible. These songs were stories, and he
didn’t want you to miss a syllable.
Truth be told, at the first festival, when I saw Pete Seeger
was scheduled to take the stage, I thought, this might be a good time to make
the long hike to the primitive campground latrines.
I was there to discover “new” music: contemporary singer
songwriters with a fresh take on the issues of the day. Did I really need to
hear a septuagenarian creakily warble “This Land is Your Land?” (You couldn’t
come of age in the seventies without having had at least one well-meaning camp counselor
attempt to impose her rendition of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” on you at least one too many times.)
But for whatever reason I stuck around.
And as the long tall man with the well-worn banjo offered up
those old familiar songs, the ones I had sung in elementary school music
classrooms and around campfire circles (always accompanied by a teenage
guitarist with his eyes glued to the fingering chart in a Roy Clark Big Note
Guitar Book) I realized, those songs weren’t so old. Or so familiar.
On that afternoon I was hearing Pete’s songs from a makeshift festival
stage, as if for the very first time.
Hearing those songs so clearly, in Pete’s well-worn but
never strident voice, sung with such earnest clarity, it was
impossible to not be moved. And yet Pete Seeger never seemed to be working too
hard, or trying too much. He just sang.
And it was joyful.
And Pete never seemed more joyful than when the audience sang
along. You almost felt like his whole long and remarkable life was culminating
in this moment, in this place, with THIS rendition of “If I Had A Hammer.”
And whether it was one of Pete’s chestnuts or some obscure
sea chantey with an interesting folkloric pedigree, to experience Pete “line
out” a song to an audience was to be clay in the hands of a (very tall) master
sculptor.
A sing along with Pete was almost enough to erase the memory
of the strident camp counselor balladeer (with her music stand and fingering
chart, and her helpful assistant counselor holding up Magic Marker lyrics on a
big butcher paper scroll.) Although I am sure if those camp counselors had joined Pete on the festival stage that day, he
would have received them just as warmly, and sing along with them just as joyously,
as if Odetta had joined him for a double bill.
And so, in a sense, I suppose it is fair to say I DID once
meet Pete Seeger:
On a dusty trampled hillside amphitheatre, in the Hill Country of East
Texas.
Along with 50,000 others.
Each one of us felt like Pete was singing just to us, with a
twinkle in his eye.
And each one of us probably went breathlessly home to tell someone:
I MET Pete Seeger this week!
And thousands upon thousands of us, who "met" Pete at thousands upon thousands of gigs, in thousands upon thousands of dusty amphitheatres, when we
heard the news this morning, probably wracked our brains trying to remember when exactly it was that we met Pete.
