Search - Peggy Seeger :: Heading for Home

As acclaimed for her socio-political compositions as for her bottomless repertoire of Anglo-American folk music, Peggy Seeger revisits her traditional roots on "Heading for Home," her 20th solo album. Aside from the opening, self-penned title track, a meditation on mortality, the other songs on this CD are revived from America?s past, including a handful never previously recorded by Peggy. Among those accompanying Peggy?s vocals, banjo, dulcimer and guitar are her sons, multi-instrumentalists Neill (formerly of The Bible) and Calum (a Van Morrison sideman), who co-produced the CD, her daughter Kitty on backing vocals, and brother Mike, solo artist and founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers. The spare instrumentation highlights Peggy?s ageless, unaffected vocals on an assortment of songs about love, lust, war, murder, friendship, poverty, class inequality ? the compositions may date from the past but are still alive and relevant today. Peggy?s prominent, rippling banjo gives many of the songs a tinge of bluegrass and "mountain music," closing the circle between their oft-British origins and subsequent American adaptations. Like her half-brother Pete and brother Mike, Peggy Seeger simultaneously preserves and extends the situations and plainsung emotions of traditional folk music while emphasizing the undying connections between roots music and modern-day life. "In my head, I try to be constantly involved with the people who made the songs, and to understand why they made them," Peggy told Dirty Linen magazine recently. "Folk music is its own person. It doesn?t need us to bring along our individual egos to do something with it."