I like Bruce Springsteen’s music. Or rather…I like some of his music. Some of it (particularly recently) gets to be a little high-brow political-concept for me. He sort of falls into the Dylan trap of talking in too esoteric of terms about his music. Which is odd considering the “working class hero” reputation that he forged for himself in the 80’s. In any case, I like a lot of his older music. “Born To Run” is easily on my Top 20 Rock Songs list, maybe even top 10. But his recent stuff hasn’t interested me. However, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” is a tribute to Pete Seeger. “That guy sucks,” you say “I hate that stupid Silver Bullet Band”. No…you are thinking of Bob Seger, and he does suck unless you are in a trashy bar two pitchers into their “$1 PBR pitcher night”.

The name may not ring a bell, but he wrote a lot of songs (”Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, “If I Had a Hammer” etc) that were recorded and turned into hits by many other bands. This is in addition to being fairly popular himself, from what I can gather. In general, he is thought of as a guy who sung a lot of American historical folk songs and civil rights/etc protest songs (Seeger Wikipedia page here). In any case, the new Springsteen album isn’t a cover album so much as it is a tribute album. The songs aren’t Seeger’s “hits” so much as they are folk songs that Seeger sung and appriciated. And in fact, songs that Seeger saved from obscurity in the face of the growth of rock & roll.

I’ll be honest and say that if I heard these songs sung by Seeger himself, I probably wouldn’t care so much. And it’s not that Springsteen is somehow a better musician or singer, but rather that he took all of these singer/guitar songs and turned them into the type of song that you would hear at a pub or family event where a bunch of musicians were gathered to play. The whole thing was recorded with very little multi-tracking (just backing vocals as far as I can tell). Essentially, it was just Bruce with his guitar, two fiddle players, a accordian, a banjo, another guitar, a percussionist, and a three piece brass section of trumpet/trombone/sax. They all crammed into a huge farmhouse and recorded the whole thing on a couple takes (spread out over a few years). The video below shows the recording session quite well, it is part of a 30 minute DVD that is on the flip side of the CD.

While I still don’t like listening to Bruce ramble on in his funny little hat, he makes a number of very good points during the DVD. These are great songs that are in danger of being lost, as all music is if it isn’t taken and “remade” every so often. And there is something very powerful and engaging about the idea of people getting together to play music where ever they might be. Not worrying about amps or effects processors or even playing for anyone other than themselves. It’s something that I hope to have in my life again someday.

Larger version HERE, though since it’s youtube, it won’t look much better. There is also another good video on Amazon’s page for this album.