Search - Peggy Seeger :: Love Call Me Home

After a half century as a musician and approaching her 70th birthday, Peggy Seeger understands that a good song of any era will survive as long as long there?s someone with the knowledge and understanding to sing it. On "Love Call Me Home," Peggy?s 21st solo album and the second volume in her "Home Trilogy," she presents ten traditional North American songs and two new original songs. Volume 1, "Heading for Home" (Appleseed, 2003), had the same mix of old and new songs, and Volume 3, provisionally entitled "She?s Coming Home," is already in the pipeline. "I love new songs, yet I still find myself returning to the old ones," Peggy explains. "Songs handed down to us by singers who loved and tended to them, as I love and tend to them for those who come after me." It is these songs that shape Peggy?s "Home Trilogy." It is not an idyllic world that Peggy presents here. There are murder ballads, stories of fidelity beyond the call of duty, journeys into the supernatural, tales of romantic betrayal, laments of the incarcerated, and historical mysteries. The two originals that bookend the CD are as topical but traditional-sounding as any she has written in her prolific career. "Sing About the Hard Times," in which "Life gets harder every year / Those with the least have the most to fear," could be a 19th Century lament before referencing jobs outsourced to Mexico while workers get drawn into an unpopular war. The title song, written for a friend of Peggy?s who died of cancer, closes the CD with a tender and philosophical glimpse of a life winding down and then out. Peggy?s clear, ageless vocals and crystalline performances on banjo, dulcimer, autoharp, guitar and piano are enhanced by the participation of her two sons by her late husband, England?s revered songwriter/activist Ewan MacColl. Calum and Neill MacColl are not only co-producing the "Home Trilogy" but also act as directors, chorus members and instrumentalists; daughter Kitty MacColl joins in on backing vocals.