There Is A Season: The Pete Seeger Podcast

In this month’s episode we chat with folk musician, singer-songwriter and actor Andrea Von Kampen. Based in Lincoln, Nebraska, Andrea Von Kampen writes a variety of songs, and as a follower of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and especially Bob Dylan, Andrea has forayed into the writings of political music, which she says will be featured more prominently on her next record. In our conversation, Andrea discusses her folk music influences, her songwriting process and objectives, her experience acting in the film A Chance Encounter, and what the challenges in presenting political folk music is today in our current era.

In this episode, we dive into the history and the making of the Newport Folk Festival. We’ll discuss how the folk festival grew out of the jazz festival in the 1950s, and Pete Seeger’s integral role in helping to give birth to the event, and the successes Pete and the board of directors had in establishing an incredibly eclectic festival between 1959 and 1965. We also briefly touch on Dylan’s presence at Newport and how this impact led to the festival changing after 1965. We conclude by discussing how and why it disappeared for many years after its original run ceased after 1969.

Join us as we speak to long-time folk musician and songwriter, Tom Paxton. In this conversation Tom speaks about his early musical influences and the role Pete played in impacting his musical philosophy, as well as Tom’s relationship with political music and what the purpose of folk music is. We also speak about the 1968 Woody Guthrie tribute concert, Phil Ochs, Broadside Magazine, and what Seeger’s legacy is in contemporary times.

In this first episode of season 3 we go into depth in discussing the Seeger family’s trip around the world, lasting from August, 1963 to early June 1964. We’ll examine several of the performances Pete makes as he and the Seeger family make their geographical traverse through a dozen and a half countries, and will also discuss the wide variety of music and dance that the Seegers documented along the way. Get ready to hear about an often unspoken piece of Pete Seeger’s musical and cultural work in the family’s travels from Western Samoa, Australia and India to East Africa and West Africa, the Levant, western and central Europe, and eventually the USSR. We’ll discuss the greater meaning of the work Pete and the Seeger family were doing, and in doing so, hopefully have a most holistic understanding of this under-researched period of Pete’s Seeger work.

Join us as we speak with author Elijah Wald, and learn more about his book, Dylan Goes Electric, and its role in being optioned for the film A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. In our conversation Elijah discusses how Seeger and Dylan were represented in the movie, and shares a variety of insights on how both Seeger and Dylan have been interpreted, respectively, over the course of history. We conclude by talking about the lasting legacy of both of these artists, and how both will be remembered going forward.

In this month’s episode, we learn about Camp Woodland, a summer camp that existed in Phoenicia, NY from 1939-1962. Among many of the summer camp settings Pete visited during the 1940s and ‘50s, Woodland was a space Pete visited with regular frequency, and spent much time making music with campers over the course of several decades. As we go in depth with today, Pete’s time spent at Woodland would be uniquely impactful for many people, ranging from the Folk Festivals of the Catskills and song collecting to Pete learning Guantanamera from a Cuban counselor in 1962. To learn more about all this, we spoke with two former attendees of the camp, Bill Horne and Pat Lamanna.

In this episode I discuss my reactions to and thoughts about the recent film, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. I focus on several elements, ranging from how effectively the characters were written, to the extent to which we get to see how Dylan is influenced by other people and other musicians, such as Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez. I also deconstruct what Dylan and Seeger really thought of each other, and what Pete’s reactions really might have been to Dylan’s electric set at Newport ‘65.

In our first episode of Season 2, we discuss Pete Seeger's participation in the civil rights movement between 1962 and 1965. We discuss his early involvements singing in Georgia, his affiliation with the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee, and his We Shall Overcome concert at Carnegie Hall. We also evaluate Seeger's participation in Mississippi's Freedom Summer in 1964, and his attendance in the Selma march in 1965 along with his encountering of the folk process of the singing of Freedom Songs. We conclude with the internal racial shift that happens within the movement, and how that influences Seeger’s gradual separation from singing from SNCC and singing for civil rights.

Join us for this episode where I speak with Pete Seeger’s biographer, David Dunaway. We discuss David’s early connection to Pete Seeger and his music, and how he came to publish three editions of Seeger's biography. We also talk about the archive of Pete Seeger material David has produced for the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, as well Pete’s involvement with Folkways Records, the legacy of the Clearwater, and David’s perceptions of how Pete might be represented in the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”. We conclude by discussing David’s favorite Seeger records, in addition to what general message people should know about Pete Seeger now that we are a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

In this epsiode we examine several of Pete Seeger’s albums recorded and released after the period of the Blacklist. We discuss the Bowdoin College Concert and Live at the Village Gate, and his first Columbia albums - Story Songs, The Bitter and the Sweet, and Children's Concert at Town Hall. We also dissect Pete’s efforts to bring folk music to people through television, particularly the controversy over censorship surrounding the failed attempt to get Seeger to appear on the Hootenanny television show.

In this episode we delve into Pete Seeger's legal challenges in facing the House-Un American Activities Committee in 1955 and the impact of Seeger’s decision not to cooperate with them. We also investigate how Seeger’s status as a blacklisted artist resulted in the prolific amount of performing and music-making he did throughout the remainder of the 1950s into the early '60s. Specifically, we examine the multitude of his Folkways albums, live concerts and the musical foundation he worked towards establishing for other up-and-coming musicians and listeners.

In this episode we examine the quartet, The Weavers, the folk group Pete Seeger formed with Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert in 1949-1950. We go into detail with the founding of the group, their musical style and approach, and their initial pop success with the songs "Tzena Tzena" and "Goodnight Irene". We then investigate how the FBI, Counterattack, and other opportunistic individuals and institutions conspired to cancel the group from show business by labeling them as Communists during the peak of the Blacklist in the early-mid 1950s.

This episode delves into the Peekskill Affair of August and September 1949. This concert, held in Peekskill, New York, functioned as a fundraiser for the Civil Rights Congress, where Pete Seeger opened for the baritone-bass singer Paul Robeson. The show was rescheduled due to violence that erupted at the first attempted concert in late August, and while this second performance did happen, hundreds of Anti-Communist Veterans in Westchester County organized a violent and sorrowful attack on the concert attendees in a fascist Labor Day weekend bloodbath.

In this episode we discuss Pete’s musical activities from 1942-1949. We focus on Pete's activities as a performer in the army during WWII, the additional records Pete made during this period, the founding of the People’s Songs organization after the war, and how that eventually came to a close.

In this episode we discuss Pete’s activities between 1940 and 1942 with the Almanac Singers. This episode will get into the founding of the group and its members, its political and musical direction, and the challenges the group faced in trying to continue playing and performing.

This episode investigates Pete's musical and political discoveries between 1938 and 1941. We look at Pete in New York City after leaving Harvard, his meeting Lead Belly, his work and travels with Woody Guthrie, and his own independent explorations riding freight trains and hitching rides as a budding musician.

This episode delves into Pete Seeger's early years growing up in upstate New York and at boarding school; his political worldview as channeled through his educational experiences and his father, Charles; Pete's discovery of the 4 and 5 string banjo in the 1930s; and his attending and dropping out of Harvard.

Welcome to the show! This four minute introductory episode informs folks of what topics, ideas and objectives this podcast will have.