After performing with Pete the first time at the Pumpkin Festival in 2003, and then a second time at the same festival in 2004, I gradually started playing with him more often. Sometime around 2005 or 2006, we played at a benefit concert for David Eberle who was running for city council in Cold Spring, NY. Pete sang a few songs, then invited me up. We played a couple of songs together and then Pete handed the stage over to me.
Among the songs Pete sang solo was Woody Guthrie’s classic, “This Land is Your Land.” I was just beginning to realize this song wasn’t just a children’s song I had learned in kindergarten. It is a profound, simple, and, believe it or not, subversive, song. Pete told an incredible story about the song. And he did it in a way I had never thought possible.
Blown Away!
When I tell people I knew almost nothing about folk music before I met Pete, I am not joking. Here’s a piece of evidence to support that claim. Pete told a story about the song IN THE MIDDLE of the song - while picking away at his banjo! This was a common practice in folk music. But I had never seen it done before. I was blown away! I immediately decided that I needed to learn to do this myself.
My appreciation of Pete’s genius grew with every encounter. Before we met, I would have thought of him just as I would have thought of any new person I’d met. I would have assumed he was intelligent and worthy of respect. And just as I do with anybody else, I would keep my eyes and ears open to learn what makes him tick. What does he have to share? What makes him unique?
Growing Appreciation
After our first encounter, I knew there was something uniquely special about him, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Gradually, over time, I learned more about who he was and my appreciation grew. But hearing Pete tell this story, my estimation of him jumped several levels higher. I witnessed a facet of his talent I had not seen before. I heard his reverence for the power and meaning of words. And, as Pete had done for millions before me, he put Woody Guthrie on my radar for the first time.
Pete sang the three verses I learned in school – verses about the diamond desert, the wheat fields waving, and the ribbon of highway. Then, he told a story about the fourth verse before singing it. I quickly wrote down every word I remembered him saying. But I also called him on the phone later that week and Pete expanded on the story. If I may paraphrase what Pete said on stage and in the nearly hour-long telephone discussion, it went something like this:
On stage, Pete said: Woody wanted to sing about private property, so he looked high and low to find a word that rhymed with property. Instead of finding one word that rhymed, he found two. Woody realized that “stop me” rhymes with “property.” Isn’t that a wonderful discovery?
On the phone, Pete expanded: A powerful tool we have to shape our destiny is the proper use of the work of people who have come before us. But we don’t just copy the work.
Pete said in a different conversation about Founder’s Disease: We “learn the old” ways, but we “change the words (or the “practices”) to keep them up to date…” (more on that some other time.)
Back to the phone conversation, Pete said: When Thomas Jefferson wrote the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, he used this tool to plant a seed he hoped would help end slavery in America. Jefferson drew inspiration from a number of sources including the Enlightenment and Greek philosophy. He discovered what boiled down to FOUR unalienable rights: Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, and Property.
Pete continued: But Jefferson was not happy that slaves were considered “property.” He didn’t want to support the idea that one person could own another. So, Jefferson left “property” out of the text and declared that there were THREE unalienable rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Wikipedia adds: “Benjamin Franklin was in agreement … in playing down the protection of "property" as a goal of government. … Franklin found property to be a ‘creature of society’ and thus, he believed that it should be taxed as a way to finance civil society.”
From what I have learned, I might say: Woody went a step further seeing the perverted practice of ownership as a “monster of society.”
(This is a good time to re-state that the words above are my paraphrases of what was actually said. Pete did not use a lot of the words I am using here.)
Back to the phone conversation, Pete continued: Woody felt that too many people were taking ownership of open space and that our culture was becoming too consumer-oriented. In other words, the lust for owning things had become a bane in our society.
Back to Pete singing on stage – after telling that short story related a few paragraphs above, Pete sang:
Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
Was a big sign painted – said private property
But on the backside, the sign said nothing
That side was made for you and me
~ Keep the Flame Alive!