America is full of individuals who went into the family business, be it a law firm, construction company, bank, plumbing contractor, newspaper or even political office. George W. Bush and his father both know a little something about following the path that daddy trod before.
Mike Seeger laughed a couple of weeks ago when I noted that he, too, had gone into the family business.
"I didn’t think I’d be doing it for a living when I started," he said. "But then I began experimenting with singing on my own and the possibility occurred about 1960. That’s when I started playing full-time with the New Lost City Ramblers and doing my own solo music."
Seeger, who will perform at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts on Saturday night, comes from one of the first families of folk music. His father, Charles Seeger, was a musician and scholar whose pioneering work in ethnomusicology was crucial in the preservation and promotion of folk music. His mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a serious composer who became a collector and transcriber of folk songs after she married Charles. His sister is folksinger Peggy Seeger, and his half-brother is folk music icon Pete Seeger.
But Mike shies away from putting the "folk" label on his music.
"Call it old-time country music or old-time mountain music," he said. "That will help define it a little better if it needs to be defined quickly.
"To a lot of people, folk music means a contemporary song singer with a guitar. That’s not what I do. I don’t use the word ‘folk music’ any more as a result. Some people might even call my music bluegrass, but it isn’t. It’s the predecessor to bluegrass."
Ironically, the Seeger household had no radio in Mike’s younger days. But it was a home filled with music.
"That was the way it was until I was about 12 or 13," he recalled, "when my uncle gave me a radio. My folks sang with us and had these field recordings that were in our family collection—recordings by such people as Skip Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, and Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons; I’ll never forget those boogie-woogie 12-inch records that they had. Fantastic! That just thrilled me when I heard it."
Pete, who is 14 years older, also had a major musical impact on his younger brother.
"Pete didn’t live with us," Mike explained. "He was of my father’s first marriage. By the time I was seven I heard him on the radio. My father brought a radio home from work in 1940 or ’41, and we were familiar with him—he’d come visit us. We had his early records with the Almanac Singers and I listened to them until I broke some of them. I loved what he was doing.
"I’ll never forget he came to visit us when I was 16. He was getting ready to record one of his early recordings, I think it was ‘Darling Corey.’ He was practicing up on the third floor of the house we lived in, and it was just a real thrill to hear him play. He was a fantastic banjo picker and singer at that time."
Mike Seeger first made his own mark during the folk music boom of the late ’50s and early ’60s with the New Lost City Ramblers, a group known for playing string band music from the 1920s and ’30s. He has continued to explore that fertile terrain through the years. I asked him what constitutes "old-time" music.
"There are no rules," he replied, "but in general it means that you’re singing older songs in an older style. Of course, I may add a line or two to a song, especially if I can’t understand the original. Some people will actually write an old-time tune, but that’s pretty rare. There are so many good old-time songs that I really like to sing the old ones.
"Mostly, old-time music is string music, but it’s also the Jews Harp, harmonica tunes, the quill or panpipes. It’s quiet music that I play. Some of the pieces are breakdowns, and quite often there’s humor. I always bring at least eight instruments, so there’s a variety of sounds."
His repertoire comes from the pre-show biz, pre-recording industry, pre-television era when neighbors gathered on porches and in living rooms to share stories and songs.
"It was meant to be home-style music," he said, "for self-entertainment and entertaining friends and family. That’s where it lived for hundreds of years until recording and radio started in the 1920s. Industrialization and urbanization really changed everything, and radio and records were part of the revolution."
Seeger, who has lived near Lexington in Rockbridge County for the last 26 years, sees a hunger for something more organic and more relaxed in the fast-paced rush-rush of modern life:
"A friend of mine said once, ‘It’s not that you know what you like; it’s that you like what you know.’ If you hear mostly electric instruments and drum sets, then that’s what most people go with. But I think quite a few people like to have the relief of less in-your-face music, a more homey kind of music. I consider that I’m just part of this revival of acoustic, homemade music. There are thousands of people who are playing fiddles and banjos and singing with their friends. It’s a movement of players and musicians.
"There are some occasional gatherings where nearly everybody plays something. The best known is Galax [Old Fiddlers Convention]. They get together and just have a big music party."
Mike Seeger thinks that’s something we all need to do more of.
"You feel good," he said enthusiastically, "when you can make some music for yourself!"
copyright © 2007 Jim Newsom. All Rights Reserved.
