Bruce Springsteen's "The Pete Seeger Sessions"

Billy C, Princess Canary, and I recently took an expedition to the Folk Center to check out ukes and just hob-nob about the lovely town of Claremont a couple of weeks ago. While there, I bought the latest open mike DVD and some nifty wound soprano uke strings. I thought I would transfer my Nyl-guts to my Oscar Schmidt and put these new honeys on my Harmony.

After our visit, we went the eatery next door and got some fine grub. Then, we adventured over to the Rhino Records store across the street. Billy wanted me to test-drive the new Springsteen CD, "The Pete Seeger Sessions," which has the Boss and a band of musicians jamming to tunes associated with Pete Seeger, the folksinger/shaman of the USA. He had this one song in particular that he wanted me to hear.

The nice tattooed girl at the check-out counter gave me the preview CD and I sauntered over to the listening station, placed the CD in the player, and put on a headset. I got no sound, so I adjusted the nob. Still no sound. I adjusted the nob again. Nothing.

Billy C went over and got a young lady with multiple piercings to come help me. She pointed out that I had the wrong headset on. Someone had put the headsets for my machine on top of the neighboring machine and had put that machine's headset on my machine. So I un-switched them, made a couple of self-deprecating jokes, and put the new headset on.

I couldn't figure out why the Princess and Billy would laugh every time I made a comment about the CD as I was listening to it. Apparently I was doing that thing where you talk loudly when wearing a headset because you forget that you're the only one for whom the music is loud. So, apparently, I was shouting at them and I guess people were staring at me.

But, what the hey, this CD is worth shouting about. It has a snazzy informal, jazzy feel to it. Springsteen pulled a folk music thingy by not just singing the songs, but re-interpreting them, making them contemporary. Heck, he showed how timeless these songs are.

I remember singing songs like "Ol' Dan Tucker" in elementary school, having no idea what it was about. Springsteen takes these and other songs and gives them the feel of news-worthy immediacy they must have had when our folk-fathers first created them. You could imagine Dan Tucker sitting there, clapping his hands and stomping his feet, laughing at what someone had been written about him.

Each rendition is a gem, but the ones that stand out to me are the gospel tune "Mary Don't You Weep" and "The Eerie Canal." Also, the Seeger staple "We Shall Overcome." Every time I hear that song, I get misty-eyed.