Intro to “John Henry”
´´Oh yes, good evening….ah….(asks in Dutch how the crowd is doing)(crowd cheers) gut (chuckles)…it´s nice, uh, oh, I know one more thing (chuckles)(says is Dutch that it´s nice to be in Amsterdam)….(chuckles) this is, uh, it´s nice to be playing back in Amsterdam…. alright, let´s do it….´´
Intro to “Old Dan Tucker”
´´Yes, yes, yes….Art Baron, Ed Manion….Clark Gayton, Curt Ramm in the horn section….woo! …Soozie Tyrell on the violin with Sam Barfeld….oh yes….there´s nothing new under the sun, as they say, here´s a 150-year-old Bob Dylan song (?)….(crowd starts clapping) oh, you´re screwing us up now (chuckles)….´´
Intro to “Eyes on the Prize”
´´(crowd keeps singing ´Old Dan Tucker´)….Yes, now we, now we go to the next one (chuckles)….this originally started out as a gospel hymn, uh, called, uh, ´Hands on the Plow,´ was rewritten in the mid-50s, uh, as a Civil Rights´ song during the Civil Rights struggle in the United States, this is called ´Eyes on the Prize´…(?)….´´
Intro to “Jesse James”
´´Marc Anthony Thompson….on guitar and vocals….Curtis King….Cindy Mizelle and Lisa Lowell on vocals….oh yeah….alright….this is a song that, uh, half of it is a lie and half of it is true but all of it is fun (chuckles) so….´´
Intro to “Long Black Veil”
´´Woo!…that´s good now….(chuckles) woo!….alright, alright, that´s a work-in-progress every night (chuckles)….gonna send this one out to Pats tonight, she sends her best….been home with the kids ´cause they´re gonna kill me otherwise so I can be here (chuckles) ´When´s Mom coming home?´ but, hey, what about Dad? (chuckles) alright, here we go….´´
Intro to “Erie Canal”
´´Marc Anthony Thompson….yes, yes, yes….alright….this is a work song….this is a, uh, probably one of the few love songs ever written to a mule….but mules were really, really important just a little while before this song was written, this was, uh, when they carted freight up and down the Erie Canal in upstate New York….and, uh, it was the main, main route, main way of getting goods to market….was written in 1905, which is about sixty years after….I guess, after this would have taken place, by a guy named Thomas Allen, was originally called ´Low Bridge, Everybody Down,´ ´Erie Canal´….´´
Intro to “My Oklahoma Home”
´´Thank you, this next song, this was, uh….written during the time of a great natural disaster in the United States, was, uh….it sort of scattered families all across the country and drove people from their homes and took away people´s livelihoods and changed their lives forever, changed the shape of the country forever, it was the first, uh, the Oklahoma dustbowl….and in the United States we never thought we´d see anything like that again but we did and, uh…. this is called ´My Oklahoma Home´….´´
Intro to “Mrs MgGrath”
´´Here´s a great old Irish anti-war song….´´
Intro to “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?”
´´We, uh….our first show was in New Orleans at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival ….and it´s hard to explain what New Orleans is like now, half, half of the population of the city is gone….80 percent of the city was, had terrible destruction, there´s, you go and you´ll see thousands of wrecked cars, houses on top of cars, cars on top of houses for miles and miles and miles, waterline on all the buildings this high and uh….for any musician, it´s a sacred city, it´s the mother city of American music, all the music came from here, landed in a big pot, melted and got stirred up and turned into jazz and blues and rock and roll music, if you´re….every musician owes a debt to the city of New Orleans in the States so, uh….this was a song by a fellow named Blind Alfred Reed, he, he wrote this at the beginning of the Great Depression in America and I kept the first verse and I wrote three more in honor of, uh, uh, our President´s trip to New Orleans where he managed to gut the only agency that would help American citizens in times of extreme distress, through political cronyism and playing politics with people´s lives….so….but right now that´s just all in a day´s work in the United States (chuckles) this is ´How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?´….´´
Intro to “Jacob´s Ladder”
´´Alright, we are all climbing Jacob´s ladder….I guess that meant we´re, in theory, getting to heaven the hard way, a rung by a rung (chuckles) if we´re getting there at all….Jacob was a guy who was always, uh….he was always fucking up in the eyes of God, you see (chuckles) so God kept giving him tasks to do over and over again until he got it right so he was climbing that ladder a rung by a rung by a rung….alright (starts strumming the guitar, forgetting that the horn section is supposed to start the song)(someone in the crowd yells) ah! (chuckles) was that the, uh, the house atheist, I guess? (chuckles) let´s go, a-one, two three ….´´
Intro to “We Shall Overcome”
´´Oh yeah….ooh, thank you, thank you very much….this is, uh, let´s see, uh, this is, I guess one of the most important political protest songs of all-time, it´s still sung all over the world wherever people are struggling in a fight….´´
Intro to “My City of Ruins”
´´(crowd keeps singing ´´Pay Me My Money Down´´)….Well done….yes, yes, they´re, they´re, they´re just learning the ropes there (chuckles) oh, that´s a-good singing, yes…..we thank you….´´
Intro to “Ramrod”
´´Thank you….alright, alright, alright, oh yes….(strums his guitar) oh, a little loud, wait a minute, hold on, it might be close enough for folk music (chuckles) oh yeah, that´s way, that´s easy (chuckles) alright, I´ll need a little help (chuckles)….´´
Intro to “When the Saints Go Marching In”
´´Thank you….thank you, Nederlands….thank you….I, uh, I wanna thank everyone for coming out to the show tonight, thank you so much….we´ve been, uh, I always say we´ve been coming here a very long time, here in Amsterdam in ´75 at the RAI, the RAI (crowd goes ´Yeah´) yes, you were all there, I´m sure (chuckles) I myself hadn´t been born yet, it was an incredible show, I did it before I was born, it was unbelievable how I did that (chuckles) but uh, once again we thank you, I thank you for your support of my music and, uh, and for also, you´re adventurous, you come out and see wherever the, uh, the, uh, the path is taking me so I thank you for that, for your support….this was, uh, music that I stumbled into, stumbled into, almost this entire evening sort of by accident, many, quite a few years ago when I recorded a song for a Pete Seeger tribute album, but I think what drew me to this music was, uh, I heard in it the raw, the raw voice of, of real American democracy, real democracy and, uh….which it is, it´s a good time for us in the States to try and remember (chuckles) what that was like, but, uh….also, uh….so bad times come and they go but, uh, these were songs that´ve been around for some hundreds of years and these are voices and characters that will live on and on and on for ever and ever and uh….so I thank Pete Seeger for the inspiration tonight and for, I thank this lovely band of musicians (?)…. Marty Rifkin on the steel….Charles Giordano on the keyboards….Cindy Mizelle, Curtis King, Lisa Lowell on the vocals….Larry Eagle on the drums….Art Baron on the rock and roll tuba….Clark Gayton on the trombone….Curt Ramm on the trumpet, Eddie Manion on the sax ….Frank Bruno on guitar…Sam Barfeld on fiddle….Soozie Tyrell on the fiddle….yes, yes, yes, yes, Greg Liszt on the banjo….Jeremy Chatzky on bass…..Marc Thompson on vocals and guitar…and Miss Patti….this is a song we learned for New Orleans, it´s kind of the theme song of the city but I stumbled on a couple of verses in an old folk book that I hadn´t heard before and it sort of explains what we´re doing up here tonight and, uh, it´s a prayer for the city of New Orleans and for you….´´
Intro to “Buffalo Gals”
´´Alright, you want one more, you´re gonna have to sing for your supper….´´
| Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi. |
