October 06, 2006
May 31, 2006
Springsteen, Seeger and American Song
Springsteen promotes folk music, values
Concert inspired by Seeger, New Orleans
By Curtis Schieber
The Columbus Dispatch
Wednesday, May 31, 2006 PDF version
Setlist: John Henry/O Mary Don't You Weep/Johnny 99/Old Dan Tucker/Eyes on the Prize/Jesse James/Adam Raised a Cain/Erie Canal/My Oklahoma Home/Bring Them Home (If You Love Your Uncle Sam)/Mrs. McGrath/How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?/Jacob's Ladder/We Shall Overcome/Open All Night/Pay Me My Money Down - Encore: My City of Ruins/Rag Mama Rag/You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)/When the Saints Go Marching In
From Backstreets.com: Report Form the Road
Video from Columbus, OH concert
Also Check Out Rolling Stone: We Shall Overcome The Seeger Sessions and brucespringsteen.net
David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation magazine, reviews Springsteen's Seeger Session's: We Shall Overcome Concert and Album. In his review of the concert he writes about Bruce's rendition of Pete Seeger's Bring Them Home
Penned by Pete Seeger during the Vietnam War, "Bring 'Em Home" quickly achieved anthem status in the anti-war movement. Springsteen first recorded the song in January 2006 and added a final lead vocal during his European tour, at a studio in Oslo, Norway. His poignant rendition, performed frequently on the Seeger Sessions tour, adds several new verses and connects the song to a much earlier topical song, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." "Bring 'Em Home" was written in 1965 and originally released on Pete's 1971 Columbia album, "Young vs. Old."
"Bring Them Home" by Pete Seeger with Billy Bragg, Ani DiFranco & Steve Earle
Video - young Pete Seeger singing "Bring 'em Home"
Articles about Pete Seeger on peteseeger.net
Pete Seeger on NPR and in Mother Jones
While Mr. Springsteen claims to have approached the material on "The Seeger Sessions" without a political agenda, he acknowledges that context can color things, and suggests that ideology is in the ear of the beholder. "What makes these songs vital, and catch fire now," he said, "is all the connections you're making, in your head, to this moment."
From Born to Strum
By WILL HERMES
NYTimes April 16, 2006
Song of America - The Library of Congress Presents: Music, Theater and Dance)
May 26, 2006
Sweet Home Chicago
Intel-Tele
The Intel-Fender Telecaster
CNET News.com
Introduced last November, the Intel/Fender Telecaster marries the features of the venerable solid-body electric guitar with a Hewlett-Packard TC1100 tablet PC. Equipped with 1.25GB of RAM, an Echo Indigo I/O sound card and Intel's Centrino wireless technology, the tablet allows the guitarist to play the instrument while listening privately through headphones, record a demo, e-mail the demo to friends, tap into online resources, and use the guitar-PC's Webcam.
Where the Blues Brothers Began
Robert Cray on his Animal House Appearance, and the Beginning of the Blues Brothers
Guitar Player
December 2005
Righteous Reverend Guitars
Interview with Reverend Guitar founder Joe Naylor
Bob School
On the singer's 60th birthday, a musician remembers the lessons his dad taught him about Bob Dylan, rebellion and following your heart.
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By Joey Sweeney
May 24, 2001
Salon.com
In 1984 my father and I were rotating on twin axes. At age 11, everything I'd started was something that I'd quit: baseball, soccer, drawing, comic book collecting, piano, choir. My father, who'd just turned 27, had never quit anything at all, and that was starting to wear on him and everyone he knew.
How Does It Feel? Dylan on Everything, Everything on Dylan
By Janet Maslin
NYTimes
May 22, 2006
Rethinking Schools Online - Lesson Plans and Teaching Ideas
Bob Dylan and Folk Music Traditions
Independent Lens . STRANGE FRUIT . Protest Music - Civil Rights and Vietnam | PBS
Time: Bob Dylan at 65 (PDF)
May 24, 2006
Bob Dylan's 65th Birthday
When Bob Dylan hit the snowy streets of New York in the winter of 1961, it seemed cameras were waiting for him, as if there%u2019d been news of his coming. In No Direction Home, director Martin Scorsese digs up early home-movie footage of Dylan clowning like Chaplin. The fresh-faced 20-year-old looks incredibly innocent; there's no indication that within a year he'll reinvent the Greenwich Village folk scene, or go on to blur forever the line between poetry and songwriting.
Paste Magazine Feature - Bob Dylan: No Direction Home
April 27, 2006
Silvertone 1482
April 16, 2006
Springsteen on Seeger
While Mr. Springsteen claims to have approached the material on "The Seeger Sessions" without a political agenda, he acknowledges that context can color things, and suggests that ideology is in the ear of the beholder. "What makes these songs vital, and catch fire now," he said, "is all the connections you're making, in your head, to this moment."
From Born to Strum
By WILL HERMES
NYTimes April 16, 2006
April 04, 2006
Museum of Musical Instruments
February 09, 2006
Picturing the Banjo
January 26, 2006
Touch lightly Nature's sweet Guitar
1389
Touch lightly Nature's sweet Guitar
Unless thou know'st the Tune
Or every Bird will point at thee
Because a Bard too soon -
Emily Dickinson
c. 1876
December 29, 2005
Forever Young
In August 1964, twenty-one-year-old photographer Douglas R. Gilbert, on assignment for Look magazine, journeyed to the then-obscure upstate New York hamlet of Woodstock to photograph an up-and-coming folk singer named Bob Dylan. Forever Young captures a young Dylan in the last days of his innocence. Rarely have we seen the camera-shy, taciturn singer seeming so comfortable in his own skin. At Experience Music Project check out Bob Dylan’s American Journey, Dylan and Hendrix and Experiencing the Blues.
Also check out Bob Dylan on Film and Television 1960-1964
December 28, 2005
Gibson J-45
This is such a cool guitar. Woody played one and so did Bob. They're made in Bozeman and they have just what you need. Here's a link to Nashville's Guitar Town - many multi-colored Les Paul's.
December 27, 2005
Blues Lesson
Begin by reading "What is the Blues?" and the life of Muddy Waters at Muddy Waters: Can't Be Satisfied by Robert Gordon. Read Poetry: Blues Style. Look at "Understanding the 12 Bar Blues." - write your own blues lyric following the example by Elmore James. Then read about "The Great Migration" and How the Blues Affected Race Relations in the United States.
Blues Series Discography and PBS - American Roots Music Series
Blues lyrics by Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Coversproject.com lists covers of songs by Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Cleveland's Robert Lockwood, Jr. sings Wednesdays at Fat Fish Blue. Here's a link to Lockwood's biography at the River of Song. More Robert Johnson lyrics here.
The NYTimes piece Blues Musicians Get Help Overcoming Hard Times is about the Music Maker Music Relief Foundation - Tim and Denise Duffy's non-profit project to promote and preserve old blues musicians. Listen to an inteview with Duffy on NPR.
When Moby sampled Vera Hall for "Natural Blues" he used field recordings from the The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip archived at the Library of Congress American Collection. Vera's songs are here. Read more about Alan Lomax here and here.
More sources:
Alphabetical list of Blues Artists, The Year of the Blues, Sweet Home Chicago, The Official Muddy Waters Web Site and explore Blues Road Trip, Blues in the Classroom, The Blues Viewing Guide, The Blues Radio Series, and sample Blues riffs at Fender's Players Club.
How to Write and Sing the Blues
Langston Hughes - "The Weary Blues"
The Rolling Stones & Muddy Waters- I'm A Man
December 26, 2005
Born to Run 30 Years Later
I was living in Richmond when Born to Run was released. It was the fall after my folks moved to the farm in Athens. My roommate at the time had just bought a new stereo - he subscribed to Stero Review and had made a very serious selection. I was working nights at UPS - 10 pm to 2 am - so I'd sleep late and get up after he'd gone to work. We rarely saw each other except in the evenings and on the weekends. One night he asked me why his stereo was always on 7 when he turned it on. All I could say was, you gotta listen to "Thunder Road". Now Born to Run is back - 30 years later. NJ.com: Springsteen
October 16, 2005
Guitar - An American Life
Tim Brookes tells dual histories - the story of the guitar as an American instrument and the story of the construction of his own custom instrument at Running Dog Guitars.
I was half way through when I heard about Reservation Blues with its Robert Johnson connection, so now I'm back into it.
September 15, 2005
The Rap Against Rockism
The Rap Against Rockism "A rockist isn't just someone who loves rock 'n' roll, who goes on and on about Bruce Springsteen, who champions ragged-voiced singer-songwriters no one has ever heard of. A rockist is someone who reduces rock 'n' roll to a caricature, then uses that caricature as a weapon. Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher. " By KELEFA SANNEH NYTimes October 31, 2004.
Also, check out New York Times Sunday Book Review Essay: The Ancestors of Pop By ERIC WEISBARD.
Killing Yourself to Live
August 15, 2005
Cool Amps
July 15, 2005
From Mark Twain's Guitar to the White Stripes
Found this site called Transom.org and a piece about an interview with the White Stripes while looking for stuff about NPR's Lost and Found Sound because they did a piece once about Mark Twain's guitar.
NPR Producer Elizabeth Blair's series, Present at the Creation, looks at creative genesis of social and artistic icons - from Monopoly, The Hollywood Sign, "The Raven," and the electric guitar, to Kerouac's On the Road and Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.
Epiphone Airscreamer electric guitar, the Trailer Park Troubadours and a couple of their hits, Trailer on the Bayou and Pawn Shop of Broken Hearts. And then there's the pawn shop Gibson we saw this afternoon at Uncle Sam's Pawn Shop in Columbus, and the twenty-eight rooms of books at the Book Loft in German Village.
July 14, 2005
Woody's Birthday - July 14, 1912
Today is Woody's birthday - born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma. Check out more at the WOODY GUTHRIE FOUNDATION AND ARCHIVES.
Woody Guthrie Poster Text:
I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim
Too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.
I could hire out to the other side, the big money side. And get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.
-Woody Guthrie
7th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival
July 12, 2005
Guitars to Die For
Fender Europe has a cool site - The Fender Files.
Read about Fender 50th Anniversary Stratocasters: Celebrating the Strat's illustrious first half century by Vince Eagleton and Hail to the king by Dmitri Wojnarowski.
Check out Ten Stratocaster Guitars To Die For! and Ten Terrific Telecasters, including the Muddy Waters Telecaster.
July 11, 2005
Eric Clapton
Saw Eric Clapton at the Gund last night - way beyond words. Click on photo for setlist and review of the Cleveland concert.
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Robert Randolph and the Family Band opened.
Blackie Sold! Read about the sale of Clapton's guitars at Christie's to benefit the Crossroads Center.
More about Clapton at EricClapton.com.
Eric Clapton's Me and Mr. Johnson on NPR.
The Covers Project shows how many other artists have covered Robert Johnson.