FOLK music legend Peggy Seeger has announced a 14 Irish date tour in Ireland as part of her ‘First Farewell’ 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 ‘First Farewell’ (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 Peggy’s remarkable career with anecdotes and plenty of family chat when the duo perform at Lime Tree Theatre on Wednesday June 8.
Peggy says: “First 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 ….”
Peggy is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Association of Independent Music (AIM) Women in Music ‘Most Inspirational Artist’, Folk Alliance International’s ‘Lifetime Achievement’ and BBC Radio 2’s Folk Awards ‘Song of the Year’.
Now in her mid-80s, Peggy Seegar’s 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 ‘First Farewell’ is a collection of 11 new songs written and recorded with family members.
As Ewan MacColl’s partner and muse, she was the inspiration for MacColl’s classic ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ (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, ’Singing the Fishing’ won the 1959 Prix Italia for documentaries. Their work was halted by Ewan’s death in 1989.
Following Ewan’s death, she formed a personal and professional partnership with Irish traditional singer Irene Pyper-Scott, with whom she is in a civil partnership. After 35 years in England, Peggy returned to the USA with Irene in 1994, taking up a lectureship at North Eastern University and getting reacquainted with the country of her birth. After 15 years back in the US, she relocated back to England again, making her home in Oxford to be nearer her children and grandchildren. Irene chose to settle in New Zealand, but she and Peggy remain committed to one another and divide their time between the UK and New Zealand.
