There Is A Season: The Pete Seeger Podcast

In this episode, we investigate the history and the making of Pete and Toshi Seeger’s television program, Rainbow Quest. We discuss Pete’s reasons and visions for creating this television program, which was produced from late 1965 through spring 1966. As this is an often under-researched topic in the story of Pete Seeger, we sample music from several different episodes, and conclude with some analysis of what Pete was attempting to accomplish here, both culturally and politically, by experimenting with the television medium.

In this month’s episode we chat with folk musician, singer-songwriter and actor Andrea Von Kampen. Based in Lincoln, Nebraska, Andrea Von Kampen writes a variety of songs, and as a follower of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and especially Bob Dylan, Andrea has forayed into the writings of political music, which she says will be featured more prominently on her next record. In our conversation, Andrea discusses her folk music influences, her songwriting process and objectives, her experience acting in the film A Chance Encounter, and what the challenges in presenting political folk music is today in our current era.

In this episode, we dive into the history and the making of the Newport Folk Festival. We’ll discuss how the folk festival grew out of the jazz festival in the 1950s, and Pete Seeger’s integral role in helping to give birth to the event, and the successes Pete and the board of directors had in establishing an incredibly eclectic festival between 1959 and 1965. We also briefly touch on Dylan’s presence at Newport and how this impact led to the festival changing after 1965. We conclude by discussing how and why it disappeared for many years after its original run ceased after 1969.

Join us as we speak to long-time folk musician and songwriter, Tom Paxton. In this conversation Tom speaks about his early musical influences and the role Pete played in impacting his musical philosophy, as well as Tom’s relationship with political music and what the purpose of folk music is. We also speak about the 1968 Woody Guthrie tribute concert, Phil Ochs, Broadside Magazine, and what Seeger’s legacy is in contemporary times.

In this first episode of season 3 we go into depth in discussing the Seeger family’s trip around the world, lasting from August, 1963 to early June 1964. We’ll examine several of the performances Pete makes as he and the Seeger family make their geographical traverse through a dozen and a half countries, and will also discuss the wide variety of music and dance that the Seegers documented along the way. Get ready to hear about an often unspoken piece of Pete Seeger’s musical and cultural work in the family’s travels from Western Samoa, Australia and India to East Africa and West Africa, the Levant, western and central Europe, and eventually the USSR. We’ll discuss the greater meaning of the work Pete and the Seeger family were doing, and in doing so, hopefully have a most holistic understanding of this under-researched period of Pete’s Seeger work.