Springsteen Pete Seeger tribute album

[bambooneedle]

A new press release on http://www.brucespringsteen.net/news/

For Immediate Release
March 2, 2006

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN:

COLUMBIA RECORDS TO RELEASE BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S 'WE SHALL OVERCOME - THE SEEGER SESSIONS' ON APRIL 25

Columbia Records will release Bruce Springsteen's twenty-first album, 'We Shall Overcome The Seeger Sessions,' on April 25. The album features Bruce's personal interpretations of thirteen traditional songs, all of them associated with the legendary guiding light of American folk music, Pete Seeger, for whom the album is named. Speaking of the origins of the new music, Springsteen said, "So much of my writing, particularly when I write acoustically, comes straight out of the folk tradition. Making this album was creatively liberating because I have a love of all those different roots sounds... they can conjure up a world with just a few notes and a few words."

Springsteen recorded the album with a large ensemble. The musicians on the record are Springsteen (guitar, harmonica, B3 organ and percussion), Sam Bardfeld (violin), Art Baron (tuba) Frank Bruno (guitar), Jeremy Chatzy (upright bass), Mark Clifford (banjo), Larry Eagle (drums and percussion), Charles Giordano (B3 organ, piano and accordion), Ed Manion (saxophone), Mark Pender (trumpet), Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg (trombone) and Soozie Tyrell (violin). Lisa Lowell, Patti Scialfa, Springsteen, Pender, Tyrell, and Rosenberg contribute backing vocals.

'We Shall Overcome The Seeger Sessions' will be released in DualDisc format, with the full album on one side of the disc and DVD content on the other side. The 30 minute video side of the DualDisc contains extensive behind the scenes footage of the recording of the album. In addition, the DualDisc package will contain two bonus tracks and a special booklet including a note from Springsteen.

Springsteen is planning a short tour in the U.S. and Europe to accompany the release of the album. He will be appearing with most of the musicians who appeared on the CD. Details will be announced separately.

According to Springsteen's longtime manager Jon Landau, "'We Shall Overcome The Seeger Sessions' has a lightness and ease to it, a sheer joyfulness, that makes it very special from top to bottom. Bruce has taken a core group of classic American songs and transformed them into a high energy, modern and very personal statement."

'We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions' Track Listing

1. Old Dan Tucker
2. Jessie James
3. Mrs. McGrath
4. Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep
5. John Henry
6. Erie Canal
7. Jacob's Ladder
8. My Oklahoma Home
9. Eyes On The Prize
10. Shenandoah
11. Pay Me My Money Down
12. We Shall Overcome
13. Froggie Went A-Courtin'

Bonus Tracks:

Buffalo Gals
How Can I Keep From Singing




Back row L-R: Sam Bardfeld, Jeremy Chatzky, Lisa Lowell, Frank Bruno, Soozie Tyrell, Mark Pender, Charles Giordano, Ed Manion, Larry Eagle
Front row L-R: Mark Clifford, Patti Scialfa, Bruce Springsteen, Richie "LaBamba" Rosenberg


Seeger had very little to do with writing the songs, they're traditional, he just made a few modifications. Some posters on the http://www.backstreets.com Springsteen forum posted this background info on them:

Old Dan Tucker - Written and Arranged by "Dan. Tucker, Jr." - 1843

Jesse James - Vance Randolph collected this song in Arkansas in 1920 from a man who reportedly learned it from his father-in-law, "who had often entertained the James and Younger boys in his cabin." Performed and recorded most popularly by Woody Guthrie.

Mrs. McGrath - The composer of the words and lyrics to this song is unknown. It was definately known before World War I and was popular with Irish Republicans before that war. It was also popular in the Easter Uprising of 1916.

Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep - Traditional Gospel

John Henry - One of the best known traditional folk songs, done in many different ways. Probably dates from late 1800's to turn of the century. Done by Woody, Leadbelly et al. On Leadbelly's Last Sessions album he calims that 'back home' it's a dancing song. Tell that to Mississippi John Hurt who made it a slower one and popularized it with his 1920's recordings.

Erie Canal - another old folkie, mostly regarded as kids music - copyrighted in 1913

Jacob's Ladder (aka English Carol) - dates from the 1870's -- additional verse added in the 40's by Seeger

My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away) - by Bill & Sis Cunningham can be found on Best of Broadside 1962-1988

Eyes on the Prize - copyrighted 1965 by Alice Wine. If you're familiar with Dylan's 1st album, it takes the tune of the traditional "Gospel Plow" For those too young to remember it was a popular civil rights song ... sung by Len Chandler, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez at the March on Washington

Shenendoah - Probably the second oldest song on the album dating from the early 1800's and gaining popularity in the 1840's. Story of a trader who fell in love with the daughter of the Indian Chief Shenandoah -- covered by many an artist. Dylan hacked it to pieces in the mid 80's

Pay Me My Money Down - old sea shanty (sp?) most famously covered by kingston trio, also covered by Jerry Garcia in his jug band/bluegrass days - definitely see the banjo here

We Shall Overcome - probably the best known song on this collection. Became a folk anthem in the 60's. Adapted from a few old Gospel songs "I'll Overcome Some Day" (1900) and "No More Auction Block" (pre civil war) NOTE: No More Auction Block also provided the melody for "Blowin' In The Wind." Legend has it that Seeger first heard Dylan perform "Blowin'" at the Gaslight and was so upset over the reworking of the melody to such a taditional song that he walked out.

Froggie Went A-Courtin' - Easily the oldest song on the album. Versions of this have been passed down from generation to generation since the mid 1500's in Scotland. There are hundreds of verses added and deleted as time has gone by and the song has taken so many different twists and turns. On Good as I Been To You, Dylans version was supposed to capture more than what was recorded, but he supposedly tacked on the "Little piece of Cornbread layin' on the shelf, if you wnat any more you can sing it yourself" verse and stopped a few verses shy of what was intended. Known by many and caught 'mainstream' from the "Anthology of American Folk Music". Also on Tom & Jerry cartoons with the "Crambone" guitar guy.

Buffalo Gals - This was a blackface minstrel song published in 1844 by Cool White. Although Neil & Alan Lomax - probably the people most reponsible for the rediscovery and preservation of folk music in America believe that this song predates minstrelry

How Can I Keep From Singing - A Sunday School song written by Rev. Robert Lowry that was published in a songbook he edited titled Bright Jewels for the Sunday School (New York: Bigelow & Main, 1869). Seeger helped make the song fairly well-known in the 1950s by publishing it with Doris Plenn’s additional third verse in his folk music magazine Sing Out! (Vol. 7, No 1. 1957) and recording it.

[bambooneedle]

And if you forgot how much you love him, check out Brucey baby trying to nail Backstreets in the studio complete with horns:

http://dreambabydream0.tripod.com/siteb ... take75.mp3 *


* This Bruce song is no longer up but you can download others from: http://dreambabydream0.tripod.com/id1.html

[bambooneedle]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0307-20.htm

The best entertainment news of the weekend had nothing to do with the Oscars (though kudos to George Clooney, who picked up a statuette as best supporting actor, for defiantly defending Hollywood's out-of-touchness by hailing its ahead-of-the-curve support for civil rights and AIDS research.) No, the most interesting showbiz 411 was the announcement that Bruce Springsteen next month will be releasing an album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, featuring thirteen traditional songs associated with Pete Seeger, the writer, performer, preserver, and champion of folk music.

With this disc, Springsteen continues as a pop culture-political force. It's an intriguing move for him. In the 2004 campaign, he spearheaded the anti-Bush and pro-Kerry Vote for Change tour--which also included R.E.M., Pearl Jam, the Dixie Chicks, Jackson Browne, Kenny "Babyface Edmonds, Bright Eyes and John Fogerty. Toward the end of the presidential campaign, Springsteen appeared with Kerry at huge rallies, in which he excited crowds but--unfortunately--highlighted the down-home-real gap between himself and the supposed star of these events. From identifying with Kerry's well-intentioned though poorly-presented conventional liberalism to celebrating Seeger's gritty authenticity and radicalism--that's an intriguing pivot.

Seeger has had a decades-long career that has combined promoting traditional folk music and practicing political activism. The latter led him to being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, where he was grilled on whether he was a communist. Seeger declined to talk about his political associations or ideas, but offered to tell the committee what songs he had sung in public. The committee was not amused. He was sentenced to one year in jail for contempt of Congress, but the verdict was overturned. Still, Seeger ended blacklisted and banned from performing on network television.

Springsteen's album is not an act of rehabilitation. That's hardly needed. Seeger long-ago transcended those ugly days. His neverending devotion to traditional music and activism outlasted his foes. But what Springsteen is doing is reaching beyond his roots to honor a historian of American song--for Seeger's mission has been to keep alive a certain slice of homegrown American music. The new album will include renditions of "John Henry," "Eyes on the Prize," "Shenandoah," and "We Shall Overcome."

Springsteen started out as a fast-singing wordsmith who obviously had been influenced by Bob Dylan and bar-band rock of the 1960s. But the Dylan who hovered over Springsteen's first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, was not the early, political Dylan but the next-generation beat-literary-fantastist Dylan, who threw together images and plot-lines to create impressions, not manifestos. In fact, Springsteen's career path flipped Dylan's arc. Dylan dropped the politics as his star rose; Springsteen expanded his range to include politics as his catalogue grew. It was after his Born to Run breakthrough that he began to identify with causes, perhaps first with his participation the No Nukes concerts of 1979. His songwriting, too, began to examine the plight--that is, stories--of living-on-the-edge Americans. "Born in the USA" was not a jingoistic anthem, as columnist George Will and Ronald Reagan falsely described it. It was a haunting tribute to veterans who had been screwed twice: first by the Vietnam War, then by the deindustrialization. The Ghost of Tom Joad, released in 1995, was a quiet-but-angry, Woody Guthrie-flavored look at the down-and-out of America. (Years earlier, Springsteen had started performing "This Land Is Your Land" during concerts.)

While Springsteen clearly made a conscious attempt to connect with Guthrie (as Dylan had done in his salad days), one might not have associated his decades of rock-driven work with Seeger. But by nobly nodding to Seeger in this way, Springsteen not only closes a circle, he advances it. This disc is a generous gesture. Fans of both men ought to hope the execution is as grand as the idea.

David Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine, has spent years analyzing the policies and pursuing the lies that spew out of the nation's capital. He is a novelist, biographer, and television and radio commentator who is able to both decipher and scrutinize Washington.

===

Springsteen helps Big Easy overcome
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

What better place than New Orleans for Bruce Springsteen to sing We Shall Overcome?

Bruce Springsteen will perform We Shall Overcome when he performs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on April 30.

The Boss hits the Big Easy on April 30 with much of the ensemble that recorded his upcoming We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, rootsy folk and Americana songs popularized by folk dean Pete Seeger.

The dream of getting Springsteen for this year's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival seemed too big and not at all easy for organizers scrambling to rebuild a venue and round up storm-scattered musicians.

"People were afraid to come to New Orleans, and we needed a beacon," says Jazzfest producer/director Quint Davis.

Wynton Marsalis wrote Springsteen, reminding him that all musicians owe New Orleans a debt and that the Katrina-ravaged city was like a death in the family. Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich also lobbied the rocker's manager.

"It has to be divine coincidence," Davis says. "Bruce's inspiration and what's going to feed our souls are meeting at an incredible moment. You have this work of music called We Shall Overcome that's about the triumph of the human spirit and persevering against all odds, and it's real traditional American music. Jazzfest would have been the perfect home for his expression of this music at any time, but talk to us now about We Shall Overcome? We're living it."

Overcome, due April 25, finds Springsteen backed by 13 players on 15 lively tracks flush with horns, fiddle, banjo, accordion, percussion and rousing choruses. The DVD side of the DualDisc captures the ensemble joyously recording John Henry, Shenandoah, Erie Canal, Pay Me My Money Down and O, Mary, Don't You Weep.

On the video, Springsteen says he's thrilled to exhume these folk fossils: "You can forget all the life that's in them, all the human experience that's in them. That's music that gets lost by the fact that it hasn't been recontextualized."

Springsteen might opt for a small warm-up date, but Jazzfest is expected to be his only significant U.S. appearance until after a European tour.

*Jazzfest, staged April 28-30 and May 5-7, boasts hundreds of acts, including locals Fats Domino and Dr. John plus visiting stars Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, the Dave Matthews Band and Keith Urban. Etta James, Herbie Hancock and others joined Wednesday.

Fans snatched up 30,000 tickets in the first two weeks of availability, and Davis expects the pace to pick up.

See schedules at nojazzfest.com; tickets at (800) 488-5252 or (504) 522-5555 in Louisiana.



* Ec & Allen Toussaint, too, among others, see below:

http://www.nojazzfest.com/schedule/index04.html

"Fats Domino, Bruce Springsteen & the Seeger Sessions Band, Jimmy Buffett, Dave Matthews Band, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Lionel Richie, Keith Urban, Yolanda Adams, Herbie Hancock, La India, The Meters, Allen Toussaint w/ Elvis Costello, Etta James, Dr. John, The Ohio Players, Irma Thomas, Ani DiFranco, Keb’ Mo’, Hugh Masekela, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Koko Taylor, Pete Fountain, Doug Kershaw, Little Feat, Bishop Paul S. Morton, Sr., The Radiators, Dave Bartholomew, Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick, Warren Haynes, Angelique Kidjo, Yerba Buena, Chris Owens,Irvin Mayfield, Buckwheat Zydeco, Galactic, Deacon John, Rebirth Brass Band, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Donald Harrison w/ Eddie Palmieri, Snooks Eaglin,Cowboy Mouth, Clarence “Frogman” Henry, Kermit Ruffins, Roland Guerin w/ Marcus Roberts, Sonny Landreth, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Terence Blanchard, the subdudes, Le Grand Ballet “Ngalam” du Senegal, Ellis Marsalis w/ Lew Tabackin, Nicholas Payton, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and many, many more".

[Jackson Monk]

I preferred Seeger when he was with the Silver Bullet Band.....


.............and what's Former World Heavyweight Champion, Frank Bruno doing in th band!??!

[verbal gymnastics]

.............and what's Former World Heavyweight Champion, Frank Bruno doing in th band!??!

He's probably got Eyes On The Prize.

Know what I mean, Harry? Hur Hur!

[Jackson Monk]

Looking at that picture above , he's done been to the same plastic surgeon as Wacko Jacko as well!

[noiseradio]

I wish "Waist-Deep in the Big Muddy" was going to be on there. That song seems terribly timely right now.

[johnfoyle]

It's great to see Jeremy Chatzky being part of this. He toured with Laura Cantrell last year and chatted with fans after the shows. Last September in Dublin he was full of questions about the hurling sports final that he had seen on TV that afternoon. He also told me how he was looking forward to getting back to New York the following day. The 'plane was due to land at seven and he was anxious to make the journey onwards to his home to be in time for the nine o'clock showing of the Bob Dylan documentary .

Of course , he's not needed on the road with Laura this year since she's taking time out to have a baby ( due in May) ; I suppose that's a good enough reason!

[bambooneedle]

From http://www.shorefire.com

A Note From Bruce Springsteen

In 1997 I recorded “We Shall Overcome” for Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs Of Pete Seeger. Growing up a rock n’ roll kid I didn’t know a lot about Pete’s music or the depth of his influence. So I headed to the record store and came back with an armful of Pete Seeger records. Over the next few days of listening, the wealth of songs, their richness and power changed what I thought I knew about “folk music.” Hearing this music and our initial ’97 session for Pete’s record sent me off, casually at first, on a quest.

Through Soozie Tyrell, violinist with the E Street Band, I met a group of musicians out of New York City who played at a fiesta in the field at our farm. Accordion, fiddle, banjo, upright bass, washboard, this was the sound I was looking for, for the project for Pete. I wanted the sound of a bunch of people just sitting around playing. After a few phone calls we set up next to one another in the living room of our farm house (horns in the hall). ‘Till that moment we’d never played a note together. I counted off the opening chords to Jesse James and away we went. It was a carnival ride, the sound of surprise and the pure joy of playing. Street corner music, parlor music, tavern music, wilderness music, circus music, church music, gutter music, it was all there waiting in those songs, some more than one hundred years old. It rocked, it swung, it rolled. It was a way back and forward to the informality, the freeness and the eclecticism of my earliest music and then some.

This is a LIVE recording, everything cut in three one-day sessions (’97, ’05, ’06) with no rehearsals. All arrangements were conducted as we played, you can hear me shouting out the names and instruments of the players as we roll. This approach takes the listener along for the whole ride, as you hear the music not just being played but being made. So, turn it up, put on your dancin’ and singin’ shoes, and have fun. We did. Here’s the Seeger Sessions. Pete thanks for the inspiration!

Bruce Springsteen
March 6, 2006

[Mike Boom]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/homepage.html/ ... 16-4384607

Sneak preview

[johnfoyle]

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1002276459


April 03, 2006, 4:30 PM ET

Bruce Springsteen and his Seeger Sessions Band will spend the month of May on tour in Europe. The 10-date run kicks off May 5 in Dublin and wraps May 21 in Stockholm. A North American tour will follow, with dates to be announced. As previously reported, the artist will play his first show with the band April 30 at New Orleans' Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Springsteen's new album, "We Shall Overcome," arrives April 25 via Columbia. Footage of the artist in the studio can be accessed from Amazon.com.

Here are Springsteen's European tour dates:

May 5: Dublin (the Point)
May 7: Manchester, England (Evening News Arena)
May 8: London (Hammersmith Apollo)
May 10: Paris (Palais Bercy)

May 12: Milan (Forum)
May 13: Barcelona (Badalona Arena)
May 16: Amsterdam (Heineken Music Hall)
May 17: Frankfurt, Germany (Festhalle)
May 20: Oslo (Spektrum)
May 21: Stockholm (Hovet Arena)


-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y

[verbal gymnastics]

I bet those tickets will be easy to get hold of!

[Chrille]

My brother just asked me if I wanted to do. I'm anything but a fan of Seeger, but I still want to go if we can get tickets.

[johnfoyle]

Dublin date in the awful Point venue ; it'll be full of drunken suburbanites/culchies shouting for Born In The U.S.A. etc. Even if I got a ticket I can't go - I'll be in Amsterdam.

[johnfoyle]

Dublin sold out this morning in , like , 40 seconds or something.

[Chrille]

I'll get to see him in Oslo. I've never seen him live before and I sorta wish it had been in tour of a 'regular' album. But I guess it's better than nothing

Perhaps the Stockholm show would've been more exciting as it's the last show of the European tour. Oh well, wasn't my call.

[bambooneedle]

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/alb ... d/9961290/

Near the end of "Mrs. McGrath," a nineteenth-century Irish ballad that is the third track on Bruce Springsteen's new album, comes a couplet that gives a pretty good sense of why he's putting out an album of traditional folk music right now: "All foreign wars, I do proclaim/Live on blood and a mother's pain." We Shall Overcome -- which was recorded live in Springsteen's New Jersey home with a fourteen-piece band, including horns, banjo, fiddles, washboard, organ and accordion -- is his most jubilant disc since Born in the U.S.A. and more fun than a tribute to Pete Seeger has any right to be. But as on Born in the U.S.A., seemingly triumphant anthems are paired with lyrics of pain and protest that champion the oppressed and the exploited (not to mention the calamity-prone protagonist of "My Oklahoma Home," whose wife, house and crops get blown away by a tornado, leaving him with nothing but a mortgage). Springsteen has always mined a deep vein of Americana, from the hot-rod-and-B-movie-obsessed early albums to the Steinbeckian social realism of The Ghost of Tom Joad and last year's Devils and Dust. But with his first-ever album of songs written by other people, it feels like he's turned to the music of our shared past to find a moral compass for a nation that's gone off the rails. The protest anthems "Eyes on the Prize" and "We Shall Overcome" are performed with an understated urgency; the gospel standard "Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep" -- which Springsteen sings in a gruff Tom Waits-ish baritone and to which the Seeger Sessions Band gives a Dixieland treatment with St?phane Grappelli-style violin -- promises, "Brothers and sisters, don't you cry/There'll be good times by and by." Springsteen discovered most of these tunes -- which also include sea chanteys ("Pay Me My Money Down"), minstrel songs ("Old Dan Tucker") and outlaw ballads ("Jessie James") -- on LPs by Seeger. Among the pleasures of this album is rediscovering childhood staples like "Erie Canal" or "John Henry" via Springsteen's craggy, familiar voice -- which is as mighty and powerful as the steel-driving man himself.


JONATHAN RINGEN

===
For Immediate Release
April 17, 2006

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN:

US TOUR ANNOUNCED FOR BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN WITH THE SEEGER SESSIONS BAND

CONCERTS TO BE AN ALL NEW EVENING OF GOSPEL, FOLK AND BLUES

EUROPEAN DATES SELL OUT AT UNPRECEDENTED SPEED

A US tour has been confirmed for Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band. Following the band's initial US date in New Orleans on April 30 and a series of ten concerts in Europe, the US tour resumes with a series of 18 shows kicking off in Boston on May 27 and finishing in New Jersey on June 25. Each night, an all new evening of gospel, folk, and blues will be presented by Springsteen with the 17-member Seeger Sessions Band.

Tickets for the European tour dates have all sold out swiftly. Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions Band sold out London's Hammersmith Apollo Theatre in ten minutes, The Manchester Evening News Arena in six minutes, and Amsterdam's Heineken Music Hall in just four minutes, all unprecedented. Festhalle in Frankfurt, Germany also sold out in a matter of minutes. Legendary promoter Harvey Goldsmith said, "We announced Bruce Springsteen's concerts in the UK at 9:00am on Friday 7 April. By 9:10am both shows had sold out. This is the fastest selling show ever in Manchester."

In addition to Springsteen on vocals, guitar and harmonica, the US tour dates for the Seeger Sessions Band will comprise the following lineup: Sam Bardfeld (violin), Art Baron (tuba), Frank Bruno (guitar), Jeremy Chatzky (upright bass), Larry Eagle (drums), Charles Giordano (accordion, keyboards), Curtis King (vocals), Greg Liszt (banjo), Lisa Lowell (vocals), Eddie Manion (sax), Cindy Mizelle (vocals), Mark Pender (trumpet), Marty Rifkin (pedal steel guitar), Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg (trombone), Patti Scialfa (vocals), Marc Anthony Thompson (vocals) and Soozie Tyrell (violin).

In Springsteen's note from 'We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,' the musician describes the music on the album. He writes, "It was a carnival ride, the sound of surprise and the pure joy of playing. Street corner music, parlor music, tavern music, wilderness music, circus music, church music, gutter music, it was all there waiting in those old songs, some more than one hundred years old. It rocked, it swung, it rolled. It was a way back and forward to the informality, the freeness and the eclecticism of my earliest music and then some."

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN WITH THE SEEGER SESSIONS BAND 2006 US TOUR DATES

April 30 New Orleans, LA Jazz & Heritage Festival
May 27 Boston, MA TD Bank North Garden
May 28 Washington, DC Nissan Pavilion
May 30 Columbus, OH Germain Amphitheatre
May 31 Indianapolis, IN Verizon Amphitheatre
June 3 Phoenix, AZ Glendale Arena
June 5 Los Angeles, CA Greek Amphitheatre
June 6 San Francisco, CA Concord Pavilion
June 10 Des Moines, IA Wells Fargo Arena
June 11 St. Paul, MN Xcel Arena
June 13 Chicago, IL First MidWest Bank Amphitheater
June 14 Milwaukee, WI Bradley Center
June 16 Cleveland, OH Blossom Amphitheatre
June 17 Detroit, MI DTE Energy Center
June 20 Philadelphia, PA Camden Tweeter Waterfront Amphitheater
June 21 Saratoga, NY Saratoga Performing Arts Center
June 22 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
June 24 Holmdel, NJ PNC Amphitheatre
June 25 Holmdel, NJ PNC Amphitheatre

http://www.shorefire.com

http://www.brucespringsteen.net

[johnfoyle]

I've been listening to the album on and of all day . Rollicking good stuff. Bruce spits and barks out the lyrics , clearly enjoying himself. The fiddles 'n pianos sprawl all over the place , with ragged backing vocals giving the whole thing a welcome grittiness. The version of Jesse James is just like the Pogues one but there's hardly another way to do it. Shenandoah is done softly and beautifully. I'd love to see this live ; not to be, I guess

[bambooneedle]

A cool article in Rolling Stone

Springsteen Hears Voices
For his new album, he digs into classic labor and protest folk songs made famous by Pete Seeger

"We're in the ballpark," Bruce Springsteen tells his band during a rehearsal of "Devils and Dust" at the Paramount Theatre, in Asbury Park, New Jersey. "One more time, then we'll take a break." The band runs through the song one more time, as instructed, yet the promised break doesn't come. In fact, Springsteen shows no signs of stopping. "The first note is dark," he tells the guitarist. To the backup singers: "Underline 'Fear's a dangerous thing' on the lyric sheet." The band members look exhausted. They have been going for five hours straight.
"It's lunchtime," Patti Scialfa, Springsteen's wife, backup singer, guitarist and timekeeper, suggests.

"Let's just see what we got."

"Maybe we should do lunch first," she hints again.

"One more time, then we'll all take a break," Springsteen presses on.

Wearily, horns are put to lips, violin bows to strings, fingers to accordion buttons. When it comes to energy level and focus, Springsteen, even in rehearsal, remains superhuman.

The band has three weeks until its debut performance, at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Scheduled afterward are a ten-date European tour and a monthlong American roadshow, which kicks off on Memorial Day. However, this ensemble is not Springsteen's walloping blood-brothers the E Street Band. It's a mix of old friends and new faces, a thirteen-piece outfit that has been nearly ten years in the making. In various incarnations, it has convened exactly three times before this stretch of rehearsals. Those three times led to Springsteen's newest and perhaps least commercial album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, a collection of labor, civil-rights, protest and story songs from the repertoire of Pete Seeger, the pillar of the midcentury folk revival, now eighty-seven and laid up with a bad leg in upstate New York.

When the promised break finally comes, Springsteen pulls off his horse-emblazoned country & western shirt, revealing a thinning but still solid frame, and wriggles into a faded black T-shirt. He has small hoop earrings in his ears, string bracelets fraying on his wrists, brown work pants bunched around his boots and two days of stubble mottled with gray.

He wanders through the tangle of musicians and crew onstage, glad-handing and making small talk, slightly uncomfortable in an effort to make sure everyone else is comfortable. At fifty-six, Springsteen has earned his Neil Young pass, entitling him to basically record whatever he wants because, be it good or bad, commercial or noncommercial, it's done with integrity.

"My goal has been to try and put more things out, because in my youth I was so spare with my releases," Springsteen explains. "So now, like, the rules are off. By the time you're fifty-six, hell, if you're worrying yourself at that point, then you haven't learned your lesson. And I can say one thing: I have learned my lesson. The kind of fretting I did as a young man, I don't do anymore. I'm an old guy who can do what he wants, you know." He takes a step backward, laughs and spreads his arms, letting it be known that a big, heartfelt conclusion is on its way. "Right now, I just feel like I'm at the top of my game. And I've never felt freer or like I've had more music in me."

People often use words like "real" and "grounded" when they describe Springsteen, but to get more specific, what's most unusual about him is that he doesn't have a fiber of pretension in his being -- especially rare for a guy who's been called the Boss for most of his adult life. Beyond that, he's the only rock-star dad I've ever interviewed who not only seems happy to chauffeur his children around but can actually remember and quote papers they've written for school.

"We've got two teenagers and one on the cusp," Springsteen says after discussing a paper his eldest son wrote on George Orwell. "And they're people now. I like that a lot. I remember walking in my son's room one day, and I looked at him and it was a man sitting there. And there was something in the way he looked at me where I said, 'Oh, yeah, he's going to be OK.' "

After lunch, the musicians attack the material with renewed energy. Once Springsteen becomes aware that people are watching, the rehearsal turns into a full-fledged performance.

"Get out the way, old Dan Tucker/You're too late to get your supper," he rasps. Guitar cocked back along his hip like a machine gun, right leg thrust forward like a sprinter on the starting block, horse shirt once more on his back and stuck to the sweat, he powers through a performance of the bluegrass-tinged lead track from the new CD.

"Sing!" he yells at the audience.

The audience sits in absolute silence.

"Sing!" he insists, as if insulted by the silence.

The audience looks around, confused.

There are only four people in the theater.

Later, Springsteen relaxes in a small upstairs room. He initially sits on the couch, then switches to an uncomfortable hard-backed folding chair to discuss relationships, politics and The Seeger Sessions.

Initially, Springsteen had no intention of putting out an album of centuries-old folk songs. After touring behind Devils and Dust, he'd planned to take a year off, then get back together with the E Street Band to record some new songs he'd written for them.

But idleness is not something that sits well with Springsteen. First, he thought he'd use the time to dig through the vaults for a second volume of Tracks, his 1998 collection of rarities and outtakes. That, however, led him to consider revisiting a record he made but never released in the mid-Nineties: a solo album of songs over tape loops, extending the terrain he explored in "Streets of Philadelphia."

Still, something kept haunting him: a 1997 session he had recorded for a Pete Seeger tribute album. After agreeing to do a song for the disc, he bought an armful of Seeger records, studied them, gathered a dozen or so musicians in his Monmouth County, New Jersey, farmhouse and cut seven songs; "We Shall Overcome" was used on the tribute album. Because he enjoyed listening to the recordings from time to time, Springsteen decided to release them. So he called the musicians back to his house two more times in the past two years.

"It was the shortest record I ever made," Springsteen says, stumbling to find the right words. "We played nothing more than three times. There were no rehearsals and no arrangements. Everything was live, recorded into old-fashioned room mikes. If you listen to the record, you can hear me calling people's names, conducting as we go."

Where most of Springsteen's repertoire is for the people, the new songs are music by the people; they're field songs, not stage songs, many originally intended to be sung by civil-rights marchers, dockworkers, draft dodgers. These range from ultra-canonical songs etched into the brain of anyone who's ever been in a grade-school music room, like "John Henry" and "Froggie Went A-Courtin'," to spirituals that faced hardship head-on, like "Eyes on the Prize" and "Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep." He doesn't attempt to recontextualize the songs so much as to resuscitate them, to pick up and pass them on to, as Springsteen puts it, "the next guy with a guitar out there on the highway willing to come along and give them a ride.

"The songwriting was what struck me, how alive the songs were," he adds. "You have all those lost voices floating in there. And that's something I pursue in my own work all the time. I'm interested in lost voices. I don't know if I'm chasing that or if it's chasing me."

Though one might expect sparse, haunting acoustic ballads in the vein of The Ghost of Tom Joad, The Seeger Sessions is more of an old-timey party album, with influences reaching into jazz, zydeco, bluegrass and, in the newest songs, gospel, which has been Springsteen's kick lately.

"What's great about gospel is that combination where transcendence is in view and you can see the light, you can smell the light and you can hear the light, but the apocalypse is at your heels," he says, slipping into the preacher dialect he occasionally uses to heighten the energy onstage. "Those are the two elements I wanted in my songs. That's why I always say in my music -- the verses are the blues and the choruses are the gospel, the promised land."

It was these thematic reasons, rather than the current political climate, that drew Springsteen to release The Seeger Sessions -- less a political protest record than a celebration of American life, struggle and hope in the face of adversity. "I guess my take on some of the last experiences we've had," Springsteen says, "is that a small group of men with a very particular ideology found their way into power and pressed themselves on an immature president. They were able to literally get what they wanted: They got their tax cuts, they got their war, they got their money going to the places they wanted it to go to. I don't think that's being cynical. That's just what happened."

When asked why he doesn't try to meet with politicians to influence them directly, like U2's Bono, Springsteen responds, "I probably don't have that confidence or the flat-out social ability to pull it off. It's the Irish in Bono that gets him in and to where he can survive anywhere if there are ears around." Big, nervous laugh. "I'm only about twenty-five or thirty percent Irish.

"But when you sit back and see that everyone feels incredibly frustrated and flummoxed, that means..." He pauses to find the right words, then falls back on what he knows best: "...there's music to be played, my friend. And there are songs to be sung. Right now. If ever, right now!"

NEIL STRAUSS

Posted Apr 21, 2006 4:29 PM
===================

and another article

By LARRY McSHANE
of The Associated Press

ASBURY PARK, N.J. (AP) — Bruce Springsteen, rock ’n’ roll icon, stands on a cramped Jersey shore stage surrounded by 16 musicians. There’s a fiddle, a banjo, a tuba, an accordion — and not a single electric guitar.
The music swells, a glorious noise, as Springsteen leans into the microphone and sings a familiar song: “He floats through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze.â€

[Otis Westinghouse]

There was a BBC4 session of Bruce performing this at the, er, St Luke's (I think) Church. Lovely venue where they've had Gillian Welch and others. It was repeated on BBC2, but I only caught a few minutes. It sounded great. Really warm and together and listenable. Can see why the Observer raved about it and why Chrille was thrilled.

[BlueChair]

Finally scored a copy of this one... although I hate Dualdiscs (my CD-ROM drive won't read 'em), this is a terrific album... I particularly like "O Mary Don't You Weep" and "Pay Me My Money Down"

In other news, apparently Springsteen is releasing a studio version of Seeger's Vietnam rally song "Bring Them Home."

[johnfoyle]

http://www.shorefire.com/index.php?a=pressrelease&o=899

April 3, 2007

Columbia Records To Release 'Bruce Springsteen With The Sessions Band Live In Dublin' June 5 On DVD And In 2-CD Set

Concert Features 23 Songs From November, 2006

Columbia Records will release 'Bruce Springsteen With The Sessions Band Live
in Dublin' June 5, a concert DVD, and separate two-CD set release. The
two-CD set and DVD both feature 23 songs drawn from the band's performances
in Dublin, Ireland at The Point on November 17, 18 and 19, 2006. Songs
include fan favorites from 'The Seeger Sessions,' radical interpretations
from the Springsteen songbook and rare songs appearing for the first time on
any Springsteen release.

Springsteen's longtime manager Jon Landau said, "'Live in Dublin' charts the
development of a band from an informal gathering in Bruce's living room to
an onstage powerhouse. It also documents the growth in Bruce's vision of
American music; it includes folk music, blues, Dixieland, country, swing,
gospel, rock, down to and including his own writing. It's all performed with
Bruce's classic energy and focus. I think it's some of the finest music he's
ever made."

The DVD and CD captures the band during the finale of its multi-leg 2006
tour. The Word Magazine (UK) said of a concert on this tour, "I have never,
make that NEVER, seen a show better than the one mounted by Bruce
Springsteen and his band at Wembley Arena on Saturday, November 11, 2006."
The Sunday Business Post Agenda (UK), in a 5 star review, said, "During the
concert's numerous high points, the crowd was ecstatic and Springsteen was
the preacher, spreading a welcome message: We're open all night."

Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band's tour last year prompted other
incredible reviews. "Sometime, somewhere, a more dramatic and exhilarating
confluence of music with moment may have existed... But in nearly 40 years
of concert-going, I haven't witnessed one," said LA Times. The Washington
Post declared, "It was the best live show I've seen in at least five years.
(And I've seen a few.)" Meanwhile, The Independent (UK), said, "It's been an
astonishingly rich evening." The Observer (UK) proclaimed, "Springsteen and
the Seeger Session band were an inspiring triumph."

'Bruce Springsteen With The Sessions Band Live in Dublin' was produced by
George Travis and produced and edited by Emmy Award winner Thom Zimny, who
recently took home a Grammy Award for directing "Wings For Wheels: The
Making Of Born To Run," a DVD in the acclaimed 'Born To Run' box set.
Legendary mixer Bob Clearmountain mixed the DVD in both stereo and 5.1
surround sound. Bob Ludwig mastered the DVD and CD at Gateway Studios.
Documented with nine cameras, the concert was filmed in High Definition
(HD).

Bruce Springsteen With The Sessions Band Live In Dublin' Tracklisting

1. Atlantic City
2. Old Dan Tucker
3. Eyes on the Prize
4. Jesse James
5. Further on Up the Road
6. O Mary Don’t You Weep
7. Erie Canal
8. If I Should Fall Behind
9. My Oklahoma Home
10. Highway Patrolman
11. Mrs. McGrath
12. How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live
13. Jacob’s Ladder
14. Long Time Comin’
15. Open All Night
16. Pay Me My Money Down
17. Growin’ Up
18. When the Saints Go Marching In
19. This Little Light of Mine
20. American Land
21. Blinded By the Light (Credits)

Bonus Songs:
Love of the Common People
We Shall Overcome

The Sessions Band From November 17. 18 and 19, 2006:

Bruce Springsteen - Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica
Sam Bardfeld - Violin, Vocals
Art Baron - Sousaphone, Trombone, Mandolin, Penny Whistle, Euphonium
Frank Bruno - Acoustic Guitar, Vocals, Field Drum
Jeremy Chatzky - Bass
Larry Eagle - Drums, Percussion
Clark Gayton - Trombone, Vocals, Percussion
Charlie Giordano - Accordian, Piano, Organ, Vocals
Curtis King Jr. - Vocals, Percussion
Greg Liszt - Banjo, Vocals
Lisa Lowell - Vocals, Percussion
Ed Manion - Saxophone, Vocals, Percussion
Cindy Mizelle - Vocals, Percussion
Curt Ramm - Trumpet, Vocals, Percussion
Marty Rifkin - Steel Guitar, Dobro, Mandolin
Patti Scialfa - Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
Marc Anthony Thompson - Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
Soozie Tyrell - Violin, Vocals