If you don't like the opening 45 seconds of the new Springsteen album (but how could you not?), then it's probably not for you.

Still not sure? Watch the music video of "Pay Me My Money Down":

It took exactly 26 seconds for Bruce Springsteen to replace my dread with pure exhilaration.

The rock superstar just released "We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions,"  a CD billed as a tribute to folk icon Pete Seeger. 

As a Seeger fan nearly all my life,  I could easily imagine the ways such a project  could go wrong:  With self-indulgent and self-referential re-interpretations;  with electronic instrumentation to modernize the sound; with sappy, sterile, scholarly renditions.

Seeger, now 87 and retired, has always embodied the joyful, community aspects of folk music --- the sing-loud, sing-together, pound-on-the-strings-so-hard-you-break-them spirit that first drew me to it when I was a little kid and my parents played his records on the turntable in our apartment.

He was more an evangelist than a performer; equal parts cheerleader, historian, teacher,  artist and political activist.  Hearing Pete Seeger play didn't make you want to sit and listen, it made you want to get up and join him. The only proper tribute to Seeger is a celebration of what he stood for, not a retrospective of his most famous work.

So the CD begins with Springsteen, a bit of laugh in his voice, counting into a song over a simple percussion line. A basic banjo lead-in follows. Then comes Springsteen, shout-singing the first verse of "Old Dan Tucker," a ditty you may have learned in grade school:

"Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man / Washed his face in a frying pan..."

Seeger didn't write it. In fact, he didn't write any of the songs on the disc, an omission  some critics have noted disapprovingly given that Seeger was a formidable composer ("Turn, Turn, Turn," "Where Have all the Flowers Gone," and others). 

"Old Dan Tucker" comes from the 1840s, but is a perfect example of those songs that seemed like museum pieces until Seeger and fellow members of the mid-century folk revival dusted them off to reveal their timeless energy and catchy melodies.

It's also a nonsense song - lyrical couplets designed to fit a square-dance tune - which  signals from the git-go that this is not a "message" album.

Fine so far. But it was the first line of the chorus, less than half a minute in, that got me: "Get out the way, Old Dan Tucker!" at full throat by a roomful of singers, most of them on the melody line, backed by a throbbing burst of acoustic instruments.

Listen to it yourself   It's not beautiful. It's not sweet. It's not technically astounding or musically sophisticated.  But it may just blow you away.

The CD is  "rollicking," wrote our music critic,  Greg Kot. "Rambunctious....exuberant.... infectious....music made for dancing and drinking."

"Unexpected and liberating," said Entertainment Weekly. Springsteen's "most jubilant disc since `Born in the U.S.A,'" said Rolling Stone.

The record-buying public made the album No. 3 on last week's pop charts.

Even the traditionalists and purists like it.  Rich Warren, host of  "Folkstage" and "The Midnight Special" on WFMT FM 98.7 told me that the folk deejay message board on the Web is vibrating with excitement and praise for "The Seeger Sessions," which he said "returns energy and spirit back to our roots music."

That energy and spirit has always been there - in late-night jam sessions,  impromptu kitchen hootenannies and organized song circles.  It's been hidden by the broad characterization of folk as the genre of  earnest singer songwriters, zither-playing anachronists, whale savers  and aspiring troubadours like that guy on the stairway in "Animal House" who was singing "The Riddle Song"  before Bluto smashed his guitar to bits.

Springsteen, in his ragged-but-right way,  destroys these stereotypes.  "Folk" in the hands of the crew he invited to his farmhouse for this live, lightly rehearsed production is  music as  social enterprise, a true collaboration, a party at which you'd have been welcome if you'd wandered by.

I said earlier that "The Seeger Sessions" isn't a "message album," but that's not quite true.

It carries Pete Seeger's message:  Playing and singing together is great fun.  This is your music,  people. Join in.

Eh. It's not bad, but I like Dan Zanes version of "Pay Me My Money Down" better. Dan's tempo is more along what you would expect a work song tempo to be.

At the tempo Bruce played it, they workers would have a heart attack.

Fantastic! I completely disagree with Jim, above. A Cajun two step is an inspired tempo for this tune. Sure is a party I want to go to!

I thought I would be the first to mention Dan Zanes! I liked him when he was with the Del Fuegos and like him even more now. He sings "kid" music that even parents can love. That being the good old fashioned sing-along folk music you mentioned in your article. And he makes it fun for the kids, encouraging them to come up in front of the stage to sing and dance along with him. That is easy because he never plays the Arenas that so many "Kid" performers do. His shows are imtamate like the Old Town school of Music or like this weekends at the Metroplois in Arlington Heights. I can't tell you how many kids I saw there who brought their own accoustic guitars to the show! He is really carrying the torch of Pete Seegar (who he always mentions at his show, BTW).

I guess the new Springsteen album is good . . . . I havent heard it, but Im going on the fact that in the several write ups Ive read about the "Seeger Sessions," many reviewers were able to come clean about how his two previous albums really sucked.

Criticizing an icon like Bruce is not an easy thing to do.

We also liked the album, and have playing it often. But the best part is the DVD showing performances of five (?) of the songs, along with some interviews. These performances are delightful and show musicians have a great time playing together. The horns in the hallway cracked me up every time. Watching Bruce sing these songs is way better than just listening to him sing, and changed the way I listen to the album. What a pleasure. And, I could buy it at Starbucks with my coffee. Between this and the Ray Charles album, I'm sold.

I saw Bruce and his new band at the New Orleans Jazz Fest last week. I told my wife (not a big Bruce fan) that we'd stay for a few songs. But after the first song I couldn't leave. It was a great show, his first with the Seeger Sessions Band. At one point I almost broke down and wept. Of course, a lot of the songs had special meaning in this wrecked city. Even so, I would encourage everyone to listen to the CD and see a show when the band returns from Europe later this summer.

I'm surprised at how much I like listening to this music. Watching the man sing has some very painful moments, but the music is good. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I would have passed this one over. Gotta go, Itunes is calling....

Close. The video makes a nice attempt to show us where the music is coming from and how the instrument is being played. But there is far too much editing. While Bruce is trying to salute the musicianship, the director/editor is paying homage to the times. This shows a lack of respect for the musician and the viewer. It's as if the director/editor doesn't believe we can watch anything for more than 2 seconds before we get bored. That's unfortunate.

The music itself is pure magic.

Sorry, Eric, but in my opinion the "true" American folk/roots/whatever music is the collected ouevre of Porter, Gershwin, Berlin et al. When Bruce decides to tackle the Great American Songbook I might give a listen.

I know some Bruce fans have been waiting a long while for a new E Street album, as am I, but this is a great record! I will happily keep on waiting while listning to the Seeger Sessions.

Eric, if you have a chance to catch the show when it comes to town 6/13, my friends in NJ (who saw several of the rehearsal shows) and NO (at the jazzfest) say it's the most amazing tour of Bruce's career. Which is saying a lot.

Thought you might enjoy this as well:

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=8788

Why Springsteen is right to revisit Pete Seeger’s folk music

The Almanac Singers in 1941 with Woody Guthrie (left) and Pete Seeger (right)
Alistair Hulett looks at Seeger’s legacy as US rock musician Bruce Springsteen’s releases a tribute album to him

When the folk boom of the 1960s brought a new crop of young, politicised singer/songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Buffy Sainte-Marie to the forefront of popular awareness, an influential critic famously referred to them as “Pete’s children”.

The Pete in question was the lanky banjo player, folk singer, civil rights and anti-war activist, Pete Seeger. Throughout the preceding two decades, Seeger had been synonymous with political folk music in the US and was, for a long time, the road buddy of the great Woody Guthrie.

The two met in 1940 at a “Grapes of Wrath” benefit concert for migrant workers – a date which the folklorist Allan Lomax described as the beginning of modern folk music.

While Guthrie’s guitar was emblazoned with the words “this machine kills fascists”, Pete’s banjo bore the legend “this machine surrounds hatred with love and forces it to surrender”.

Both were members of the Communist Party and collaborated in the famous Almanac Singers during the years up to and after the outbreak of the Second World War.

Seeger’s musical career suffered greatly during the post war years when he was identified by the McCarthy witch-hunt and hauled before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He was sentenced to a year in jail on ten counts of contempt – although that was later quashed on a technicality.

By the early 1960s, when he was finally able to resume his touring engagements unhindered, he was regarded by many of the young people who flocked to hear him as a modern American hero.

The black civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Vietnam were the burning issues of the day, and Seeger was the singing voice of the movement in the US.

Now the songs he championed alongside the compositions of old friends such as Guthrie and Leadbelly were the new anthems of struggle from the young blades they were calling Pete’s children.

Dylan’s apocalyptic song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” became a standard in the Seeger songbook and he used it to close his triumphant We Shall Overcome comeback concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1963.

Bruce Springsteen’s latest album is a musical tribute to Pete Seeger, also bearing the title We Shall Overcome.

In the current climate of new anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles, and widespread opposition to George Bush and Tony Blair’s wars, the ­relevance of Seeger has not been lost on Springsteen. Nor should it be lost on us.

Pete’s own compositions “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy” and “Bring ‘Em Home” were timely broadsides against the US’s war on the people of Vietnam.

It’s great to be reminded by an album like Springsteen’s just how influential popular culture can be in shaping history.

The life of Seeger has been one of fearless commitment to the struggle for liberty and peace.

But Pete is a humanist as well as an activist, and many of Bruce Springsteen’s song choices on this new album reflect this. Pete didn’t only sing for social change.

He also had a vast repertoire of traditional folk songs and songs for children, songs like “Froggy Went A’Courtin" and “The Ballad Of Jesse James”.

Seeger is one of the great entertainers, communicators and justice-fighters. We shall overcome. Indeed we shall.

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ZORN--No active links in comments, so if that's a problem let me know and I'll remove this posting. Otherwise this comment is as-is.

I was ecstatic to see your column in the news section-

I have been listening to this CD every day since I got it and it's impact has shocked me. I'm a Springsteen fan for a long time, and his latest releases in the solo, fokier style are OK, but seemed to lack something - and now he's found it! I'm a sucker for tons of instruments, but there is also the energy - the singing energy, the singalong energy that you wrote about - that is here in such force that it just makes you smile. Unless you're as cold as can be.

And for you to write about it and bring it out of the regular music sections is great, because this is about life - enjoying it, living it. News to world: slow down and enjoy a little! When everyone seems more cynical and rude than ever before (maybe we're just pushed up against each other more), music like this cuts through it all. I hope Pete Seeger likes it.

I'll be getting some of his music next - we used to sing this stuff in grade school for god's sake. Do they even sing in school anymore?

I love the album. As a fan of Bruce and an old 60's folk fanatic, it's a must buy. You might be interested in the New Yorker article on Pete Seeger that was published a few weeks ago.

The review of Seeger Sessions by the Socialist paper describes my problem with the CD; Bruce makes a paltry few references to current conditions, distorts melodies, and provides an often inappropriate dixieland, jugband arrangement that is at odds with tle lyrics. Perhaps this may revive the Hootnany spirit, but I will take Neil Youngs passion as a Seeger legacy over Springsteens' anytime. Jay Karant