Pete Seeger: Driving Down the Road Alone

by Mike Hall, Sep 23, 2007

The first time I ever saw Pete Seeger was at a 1971 folk and blues festival in Athens, Ohio, where he held more than 10,000 people in rapt attention. Just Pete and his banjo…and his songs, especially the anti-war “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” written for Vietnam but just as relevant today.

That night, as my brother and I left the show about an hour after the last note of “This Land is Your Land” faded away, I looked about 50 feet ahead in the mostly deserted parking lot. There was a tall, slender man with a banjo in a soft-sided case in one hand and a guitar case in the other—Seeger, by himself.

Bob and I thought about rushing over to tell him how great we thought the show was and how much his work and music meant to all of us good whacko, semi-pink, anti-war, counter-culture types—nobody called us progressives then.

But something stopped us. Maybe we didn’t want to intrude on his solitude. So under a yellow light flickering down from a nearby pole, we watched as he approached a four- or five-year old Ford Galaxie, set the guitar down, opened the trunk and carefully set in the banjo and guitar.

He closed the trunk, opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel. Then, all by himself, no entourage or handlers or manager, Pete Seeger drove off into the southeastern Ohio night.

So, here’s this guy who, 36 years ago, already had achieved legendary and icon status for his music, his influence, his politics and his downright honesty, schlepping his own gear and heading to another gig. But I guess that’s what folk singers do.

The last time I saw Pete Seeger was at a tribute to Woody Guthrie about a year ago in this great little club in Alexandria, Va., the Birchmere, with some 500 people this time, instead of 10,000. A friend of mine, Joe Uehlein organized the show with Woody’s daughter Sarah Lee Guthrie, Grammy-winning folksters Marcy Marxer and Cathy Fink and several others. Pete was, of course, the guest of honor.

For much of the show, as the performers traded off Woody tunes, Pete and the other musicians who weren’t playing, sat in a row of straight-backed chairs at the rear of the stage. Pete, with his banjo propped on his lap and his feet keeping time, didn’t sing a lot that night—’The Sinking of the Rueben James” and of course ‘This land is Your Land” with a 500-member audience choir among the tunes.

In fact his longest stint in the spotlight was an interview segment with Uehlein where he shared stories of travels with Woody, how his songs developed, his blacklist troubles, the civil rights movement and more from an activist life.

As J. Freedom du Lac wrote in The Washington Post:

There was great value in simply seeing Seeger one more time, hearing him talk about Guthrie and basking in his powerful presence.

While his voice has seen better days, Seeger remains an expert storyteller who can summon dates, anecdotes and songs with remarkable ease. He has something of an encyclopedic mind when it comes to music and Guthrie’s life, and he’s also an encyclopedia entry unto himself—a one of the most significant artist-activists in 20th-century American music. No wonder, then, that he received multiple standing ovations, the first simply for showing up.

There won’t be many more chances to bask in Pete Seeger’s “powerful presence.” If you get one, take it. If you don’t, be sure to see the movie “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song“ if it’s playing near you or when it is broadcast sometime next year.

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