Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – July 8, 2025: Peggy Seeger at 90

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU, 93.1 FM, in Ottawa on Tuesdays from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

This episode of Stranger Songs was recorded and can be streamed on-demand, now or anytime, by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/70985.html

Theme: Peggy Seeger at 90.

Peggy Seeger – who I’ve known for many years – turned 90 on June 17. Peggy was born in 1935 to a musical and activist family. Her father, Charles Seeger, was a musicologist, composer and folklorist. Her mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a composer and musicologist. Her older half-brother was Pete Seeger, and her other siblings were Mike Seeger, Barbara Seeger and Penny Seeger. Peggy’s life partner from the 1950s until his death in 1989 was the preeminent British folksinger and songwriter Ewan MacColl.

The show includes some of Peggy’s original songs, as well as traditional folksongs and songs written by other songwriters that were part of her repertoire from some of Peggy’s many recordings and collaborations, and by other artists.

Peggy Seeger- Sing About These Hard Times

Teleology (Red Grape)

Peggy Seeger with Barbara Seeger & Penny Seeger - Five Nights Drunk

Folk Songs with The Seegers (Prestige)

Sheesham & Lotus & ‘Son- I Truly Understand

Clear the Table (Sepiaphone)

Kate & Edith- Pretty Saro

Live at Kelso Hall (Kate & Edith)

Ian & Sylvia- Lady of Carlisle

Four Strong Winds (Vanguard)

Peggy Seeger- When I was Single

The Folkways Years 1955-1992: Songs of Love and Politics (Smithsonian Folkways)

Linda Ronstadt with Dolly Parton- I Never Will Marry

Simple Dreams: 40th Anniversary Edition (Elektra/Rhino)

Mike Seeger & Peggy Seeger- Little Birdie

Fly Down Little Bird (Appleseed)

Bonnie Dobson- The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Philadelphia Folk Festival – 40th Anniversary (Sliced Bread)

Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger- Dirty Old Town

Black and White: The Ewan MacColl Definitive Collection (Cooking Vinyl)

Peggy Seeger- On This Very Day

An Odd Collection (Rounder)

Kate & Anna McGarrigle & Roma Baran- Willie Moore

Tell My Sister (Nonesuch)

Peggy Seeger- Tell My Sister

Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle (Nonesuch)

Rufus Wainwright & John Legend- Heading for Home

Folkocracy (BMG)

Sue Foley- Freight Train

One Guitar Woman: A Tribute to the Female Pioneers of Guitar (Stony Plain)

Rosalie Sorrels with Peggy Seeger- Schofield Mine Disaster

Strangers in Another Country: The Songs of Bruce “Utah” Phillips (Red House)

Fourtold- Ballad of Springhill

Fourtold (Appleseed)

Peggy Seeger- It’s a Free World

An Odd Collection (Rounder)

Robin Greenstein- I’m Gonna Be an Engineer

Images of Women, Vol. 2 (Windy)

Peggy Seeger with Irene Pyper-Scott- Fatal Flower Garden

Live (Appleseed)

Peggy Seeger- Bring Me Home

Bring Me Home (Appleseed)

Next week: Blues in the Night.

--Mike Regenstreif

The Dust Busters with John Cohen – Old Man Below

THE DUST BUSTERS with JOHN COHEN

Old Man Below

Smithsonian Folkways

thedustbusters.blogspot.com

In 1958, when he would have been 25 or 26 years old, John Cohen got together with Mike Seeger and Tom Paley and founded the New Lost City Ramblers. At a time when most of the folk revival-era groups – think Kingston Trio, etc. – were smoothing the rough edges out of folksongs to create a folk-pop music for pre-boomer college students, the New Lost City Ramblers dedicated themselves to reviving and preserving the rougher, decidedly rural old time country music recorded in the “golden age” of the 1920s and ‘30s – the kind of music assembled a few years earlier by Harry Smith on his monumental Anthology of American Folk Music.

With just one personnel change in 1962 when Tom Paley left and was replaced by Tracy Schwarz, the New Lost City Ramblers played together and recorded lots of Folkways albums for about half a century. All of the revivalist groups striving for that ‘20s and ‘30s authenticity playing old time music over the past half-century have followed in footsteps of the New Lost City Ramblers. (One of my favorite folk festival memories was being there for a rare reunion of the original group when John, Mike and Tom, all booked as solo artists, played together at the 1997 Champlain Valley Folk Festival in Burlington, Vermont.)

The Dust Busters, three young musicians in their 20s based in Brooklyn, are the latest group following that trail blazed by the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Many of the old time artists whose 78 rpm recordings inspired the New Lost Ramblers were still alive and playing in the 1950s and ‘60s and they were able to learn directly from some of them in addition to the old records. That’s not possible for today’s young musicians in groups like the Dust Busters, but they can and have been learning from first generation revivalists like John Cohen and Peter Stampfel (whose Holy Modal Rounders played a bent and twisted version of old time music informed by beat poets and ‘60s culture) in addition to the old records (which have never been as easily accessible as they are now in the digital age).

Not only have they learned from John Cohen, John collaborates with them throughout  their first album, Old Man Below, an album that sounds like it just as easily have been a Ramblers LP from 50 years ago.

The Dust Busters – Eli Smith on banjo, guitar, mandolin, harmonica, jew’s harp, pump organ, manjo; Walker Shepherd on banjo, guitar, bantar, fiddle, manjo, piano; Craig Judelman on fiddle, piano; with John Cohen on guitar, banjo, mandolin; and Frank Fairfield on fiddle on two songs; and Eli, Walker, Craig and John trading lead and harmony vocals –repertoire on this entertaining CD is highlighted by such numbers as “Black Jack Daisy,” Dillard Chandler’s variant of “The Gypsy Laddie” and “Black Jack Davy,” “The Roving Gambler,” “Free Little Bird,” and “Baby, Your Time Ain’t Long.”

Another highlight, and the most contemporary song in that it dates from the 1940s, is Butch Hawes’ “Arthritis Blues.”

These are songs that have slipped into tradition because they’ve stood the test of time and because successive generations have brought their own sensibilities to them. I look forward to hearing more from the Dust Busters.

I'm now on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

I'm also on Facebook. www.facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

David Rea 1946-2011

(Photo: Jack Bawden)

David Rea passed away Thursday in Portland, Oregon. He had just turned 65 the day before. Apparently, he’d been ill for several months.

I brought David to play in Montreal a lot in the 1970s. Mostly at the Golem, but he was also on a Pollack Hall concert I produced in 1976 that also included Bruce “Utah” Phillips, Kate & Anna McGarrigle with the Mountain City Four, Erik Frandsen, and the White River Bluegrass Band. David was a sweet guy, an amazing guitarist, a fine songwriter and a great performer.

It was as a guitarist that David first made his mark. Gordon Lightfoot hired David as his lead guitarist when he was just 17. After Lightfoot, he played for several years with Ian & Sylvia and did live and session work with artists ranging from Mike Seeger to Joni Mitchell. He played guitar on Jesse Winchester’s first album.

David made three early LPs with backing from members of bands like Mountain (David co-wrote their hit, “Mississippi Queen”) and the Grateful Dead. But, I think he surpassed those albums with three excellent CDs that were released between 1993 and 2000.

I had a chance to catch up with David at the 2001 Folk Alliance Conference in Vancouver. It was the first time we’d seen each other in 20 or more years. He was as good as I've ever seen him at a couple of too-short showcases I saw him do there.

David was a great musician and – for many years – a great presence in the folk music world. He is missed.

--Mike Regenstreif

Mike Seeger & Peggy Seeger – Fly Down Little Bird

MIKE SEEGER & PEGGY SEEGER

Fly Down Little Bird

Appleseed

mikeseeger.info

peggyseeger.com

Siblings Mike Seeger (1933-2009) and Peggy Seeger (born 1935) came from one of the most important American musical families. Their parents were the pioneering musicologist Charles Seeger and the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger – both of whom became deeply involved with traditional folk music in the 1930s; their older half-brother is legendary folksinger Pete Seeger.

Both Mike and Peggy have had long, important careers in folk music. Mike was a traditionally-based solo singer and multi-instrumentalist, a member of the New Lost City Ramblers, a folklorist and collector, and a collaborator with countless artists ranging from Jean Ritchie to Bob Dylan. Peggy is a singer of both traditional and contemporary songs, an important songwriter, and was, for many years, the musical (and life) partner of the late Ewan MacColl, one of Great Britain’s most important and influential folksingers.

Growing up in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, surrounded by traditional music and musicians, Mike and Peggy were each other’s first musical collaborators. Although they collaborated on a few occasions over the years, their musical careers – and bases-of-operation – diverged over the decades. But they still always looked forward to making music together and less than a year before Mike passed away from a fast-moving cancer, they recorded this set of traditional folksongs they remembered from their youth.

The album opens with Mike and Peggy’s a cappella sibling harmonies on “Old Bangum,” an old ballad about a hunter and a wild boar, the kind of animal whose accomplishments are purely the province of tales and ballads. Their singing sure sounds like it comes from a lifetime of familial harmonizing.

Save for “Red River Jig,” a Canadian fiddle tune and the album’s lone instrumental, the songs are all rooted in Southern Appalachian song traditions. They include versions – great performances all – of such familiar songs as “Cindy,” “The Dodger Song,” “My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains” and “Little Birdie.” Mike and Peggy know just how to communicate the essence of these songs so that they seems as relevant now as they did 60 or more years ago when they first sang them, or in the lost times and places in which they were first sung in the kitchens and on the front porches of the rural South. 

In addition to their singing, both Mike and Peggy play instruments that vary from song to song. Mike is heard on banjo, harmonica, banjo-guitar, fiddle, Hawaiian guitar, cello-banjo, guitar and mandolin. Peggy variously plays guitar, piano, banjo and dulcimer. A bassist, Leo Lorenzoni, who plays on just one song, is the album’s only other musician.

I’ve always enjoyed both Mike and Peggy in their individual musical pursuits – this collaboration, though, is something very special. I know Peggy. I’ve written about her often and she was my guest on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio program a couple of times during her visits to Montreal. I also knew Mike a little bit and got to work with him several times over the years at folk festivals. I wish I’d had opportunities to hear them sing together in person.

--Mike Regenstreif

Mike Seeger 1933-2009

I’m saddened to report that Mike Seeger passed away last night, just a week shy of his 76th birthday. He’d been in hospice care at home in Lexington, Virginia since deciding to end the cancer treatment he’d been undergoing.

Mike's contributions as a musician, singer, member of the New Lost City Ramblers, folklorist and much more cannot be underestimated. His recordings – solo, various collaborations, and, of course, with the Ramblers – are essential to anyone interested in the traditional music of the American south.

I had the great honour of working with Mike a couple of times at festivals. He was always very gracious and a pleasure to interact with. He was also a great resource to turn to when researching anything to do with old-time music.

--Mike Regenstreif

Pete Seeger's 90th birthday party

Pete Seeger's 90th birthday will be celebrated at a huge hootenanny-style concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City on May 3. I wish I could be there.

The line-up of artists is amazing. I was happy to see a bunch of friends on the list. But I must say there are several performers on the list that I would have forsaken in favour of more appropriate artists like Mike Seeger, Peggy Seeger, Rosalie Sorrels, Ronnie Gilbert, Peter, Paul & Mary, and a bunch of others I could easily think of.