
FOLK music legend Peggy Seegar has announced a 14 Irish date tour in Ireland as part of her โFirst Farewellโ album promotion.
Peggy Seeger will be performing with her son Calum MacColl, a gifted professional musician and songwriter in his own right and producer of many of her albums, including her most recent album โFirst Farewellโ (selected by Mojo Magazine as their No 1 Folk Album of 2021).
Expect an evening of warmth, humour and exceptional musicianship, mixing traditional and original songs from across Peggyโs remarkable career with anecdotes and plenty of family chat when the duo perform at Lime Tree Theatre on Wednesday June 8.
Peggy says: โFirst Farewell is an odd title for a CD or a tour, but it looks both forward and back as I have tried to do in my life. I have toured all over the globe since I was twenty and it is always a delight, a new adventure. I am an activist, an advocate, a left-winger, an eco-feminist, a singer of traditional and topical songs, trying to speak in my own way for my own time. This may be the last time, but then again it may not โฆ.โ
Peggy is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Association of Independent Music (AIM) Women in Music โMost Inspirational Artistโ, Folk Alliance Internationalโs โLifetime Achievementโ and BBC Radio 2โs Folk Awards โSong of the Yearโ.
Now in her mid-80s, Peggy Seegarโs light burns as brightly as ever, still touring her legendary live performances that might include an unaccompanied traditional ballad, followed by an anecdote from her remarkable life, before launching into a topical song about drugs, war, hormones, politicians, unions, women, love or ecology.
A multi-instrumentalist (piano, guitar, 5-string banjo, autoharp, English concertina and Appalachian dulcimer), she is lauded for her feminist and political songs. She has made 25 solo recordings and participated in over a hundred more. Her 2021 album โFirst Farewellโ is a collection of 11 new songs written and recorded with family members.
As Ewan MacCollโs partner and muse, she was the inspiration for MacCollโs classic โThe First Time Ever I Saw Your Faceโ (the title of her much-praised recent memoir) yet this is a woman who has consistently followed her own path with passion and vigour.
The MacColl-Seeger work was seminal. From 1959 onward, Peggy and Ewan encouraged and set standards for the burgeoning UK folk revival; they trawled the USA & UK field recordings and anthologies for little-known traditional songs; they trained other singers and involved them in political-musical documentary theatre and instigated the revolutionary Radio Ballads that invented the modern radio documentary. One of the Radio Ballads, โSinging the Fishingโ won the 1959 Prix Italia for documentaries. Their work was halted by Ewanโs death in 1989.