Pete Seeger's Latest is For the Children

The legendary Pete Seeger, whose recording career now spans 69 years, released his latest album in late-July at the age of 91.  Tomorrow's Children was recorded with students from an elementary school in his home town of Beacon, NY along with a number of guest musicians.

It all started in 2007 when Seeger was visiting the fourth-grade classroom of Tery Udell, performing and talking about the nearby Hudson River.  His one-time visit turned into a series lessons with students from throughout the school and, eventually, led to the idea for the new record.

Pete sings and plays guitar and banjo on the album and is joined by students from the classroom, given the name of "The Rivertown Kids," Clearwater educator and singer Dan Einbender, David Bernz (co-producer along with Einbender), a number of other adult musicians, high schoolers from the district and a 14-student percussion ensemble.   The assembled group recorded twenty songs with the themes of environmental stewardship and social justice, subjects that the children had been studying.  Among them were Seeger standards like Take It From Dr. King and Turn, Turn, Turn (with new verses written by Pete's wife, Toshi), songs written for the occasion by some of the gathered adult musicians and a number of tunes that the children wrote in the folk tradition of adapting and updating the lyrics of older songs to fit current situations. 

In describing the album, a press release said "It features 91-year-old Pete as a (global) village elder, assembling his neighbors to appreciate their past and present, to celebrate their triumphs against environmental threats, to swap old and new stories, to appreciate the natural glories surrounding them and to make sure that the following generations “carry it on."

Here's a video of the recording of one of the standout tracks from the album, Solartopia featuring guest Dar Williams.

Kindle users can view this video by pointing their browsers to http://ow.ly/2xITj.

The track list for Tomorrow's Children:

• Quite Early Morning (with spoken introduction)
• We Sing Out
• There'll Come a Day
• Solartopia
• Down by the River
• River
• Mastinchele Wachipi Olewan (The Rabbit Song)
• The River that Flows Both Ways
• I See Freedom
• Take It from Dr. King
• De Colores
• It Really Isn’t Garbage
• English is Cuh-ray-zee
• River Song (Back and Forth the Hudson Flows)
• It’s a Long Haul
• We Shall Not Be Moved
• Turn, Turn, Turn
• Tomorrow’s Children
• Quite Early Morning