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MIKE SEEGER
About the Artist
Mike Seeger has devoted his life to singing and playing Music from True Vine—the home music made by American southerners before the media age. Music from True Vine grows out of hundreds of years of British traditions that blended in our country with equally ancient African traditions to produce songs and sounds that are unique to the United States. For the peoples of the rural South, their great variety of music, song and story provided their Shakespeare, their dance music, their news, and the fabric of their daily lives. This music in time became the roots of today's country, bluegrass and popular music, and remains as ever, enduring and refreshing listening.
Fidelity to traditional sounds has set Mike Seeger apart from other performers since he began touring the United States and abroad in 1960. Mike's music conveys all the depth of feeling, the sheer energy and the infinite variety and texture of true rural music. Like earlier musicians, Mike seeks out his own vision of the music by creating within its traditions, making his music uniquely his own. As he sings the old songs, he plays in a wide variety of old-time styles, accompanying himself on an array of instruments, including banjo, fiddle, guitar, trump (jaw harp), mouth harp (harmonica), quills, lap dulcimer, mandolin and autoharp.
Mike Seeger has been honored with three Grammy nominations, most recently in 1991 for “Solo: Oldtime Country Music” and in 1994 for “Third Annual Farewell Reunion.” In 1995 Mike received the Rex Foundation's Ralph J. Gleason Lifetime Achievement Award, established by the Grateful Dead to recognize "those who exemplify the qualities of talent, vision, innovation that Ralph so tirelessly supported." In the word of the award citation, Mike Seeger "...remains one of our great musical and cultural resources. To see him perform is to experience the richness of our traditions."
Past Performances
April 14, 2003
Founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, Mike Seeger plays music from True Vine -- the home music made by American southerners before the media age.
