A Great Ride
Bruce Springsteen’s latest album is nothing short of fun and challenging. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, is Bruce’s homage to Pete Seeger with thirteen tracks from Seeger’s repertoire. Not the songs Seeger wrote, but songs he made famous, the old- and getting old- folk-style songs.
To do the album, Springsteen collected a band unlike any he has used before. Fiddles and banjo, accordion and horns, bass and drums, and of course, Bruce's acoustic guitar. At times with a Zydeco sound (appropriate for his recent tour kick-off in New Orleans), other times a mournful folk-soul, and still others almost Klezmer. Yes, I did say Bruce Springsteen. Throughout the album Bruce’s voice never loses the New Jersey dialect, but it is augmented with the words and styles of the songs as much as he augments them.
There are the rousing, Mary Don’t You Weep and Jacob’s Ladder that get you to dancing; there’s the mournful, hymn-like Shenandoah; and the prayerful hope of We Shall Overcome. And that’s not quite a third of the album.
Let’s hope that a lot of new people will be introduced to some remarkable music that they might not have even known existed. It’s a great musical ride that you don’t want to end.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
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