Across the years he’s been carrying his music around the world, one of the things you could count on at a Pete Seeger concert was that he’d get people singing along, whether he was playing in his home turf of New York state or in Australia or Africa or Japan, whether he was playing a famous concert hall or a small gathering or teaching kids in a classroom. That is still true,, and it is likely to happen again as Seeger joins his oldest grandson, Tao Seeger, on stage at the Clearwater FestivalvClearwater Festival at Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, on June 18th and 19th.

One of Pete Seeger’s ideas has long been that to get people to make changes, you first have to inspire them to care. Some forty years ago, he decided to use that focus and the power of music to benefit the Hudson River, a place which holds much beauty along its course and much pollution in its waters. As Seeger sings in one of his songs “She’s getting cleaner now.” That is thanks in part to his efforts, and those of people he has inspired.

Seeger had an idea to build a boat, a sloop like those which plied the Hudson’s water in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and use it as a base for educating people — children especially, adults as well — about ecology and nature and the need to clean up the river and treat it responsibly for future generations. In 1966, he began giving concerts in towns along the river to raise money to build such a sloop, and in 1969, the sloop Clearwater was launched. The sloop, and the non profit Clearwater Foundation which runs it, have become respected environmental education centers.

The Clearwater Festival, also known as The Great Hudson River Revival, is one of the ways they celebrate and continue that educational role, and also a way they raise money to keep things going. The sloop Clearwater will be at the festival, there will be a working waterfront with tall ships to see, a crafts fair, ecology exhibits and vendors, food on offer as well. At the heart of things, though, will be the river, and the music.

The festival this year is called Clearwater Generations. The closing concert each evening will be called Generations, too, celebrating the mission of passing on care for the land and waters and the passing on of music, as well. Pete Seeger and Tao will take part in the evening concerts, as will Jay Ungar and his daughter Ruthy Ungar Merenda. You may remember Jay’s music, if not his name, from the haunting tune Ashokan Farewell which he composed and which became a centerpiece for the score of Ken Burns’ television series on the Civil War. Peter Yarrow will play along with his daughter Bethany Yarrow, and civil rights activist and Sweet Honey in the Rock member Bernice Johnson Reagon will be there with her daughter Toshi Reagon. Jen Chapin will be there — her dad Harry wrote Cat’s in the Cradle — along with her uncle, Tom Chapin. These family connections will anchor the closing sets each evening, and there will be other artists on the schedule as well. Songwroter Martin Sexton, legendary Hot Tuna founder Jorma Kaukonen, high energy group The Klezmatics the trio Red Horse, whose members are singers and songwriters Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka , and Eliza Gilkyson, and The Clayfoot Strutters contra dance band are several of the acts set to appear.

Pete Seeger has been spending quite a bit of his time in the classroom these days, teaching school kids about music and the environment, and how to care for both of those and he’s recorded songs with some of those kids on the album Tomorrow’s Children. He does not tour as often as he used to, as he turned 93 earlier this year. But you can be sure he’ll be on stage and at home to celebrate with those who come to the Clearwater Festival and to help nourish his beloved Hudson River.

photograph by Anthony Pepitone

like what we’re doing here? consider
subscribing to Perceptive Travel’s RSS feed.

This summer, travelers will descend on U.S. landmarks historical, natural, and generally edifying. That’s all to the good, of course, but bear in mind that ours is not a country built exclusively on the high-minded and serious. In fact — ask around — some of the best known landmarks in the United States have achieved their notoriety because of events that never actually happened.

I’m speaking of movie settings, of course, places made immortal in movies by screenwriters, actors, actresses, the Hollywood machine. These are among the places that Pop Pilgrims will visit.

Pop Pilgrims is an online travel video series run by the A.V. Club, a sister publication to the The Onion.  They’ll visit 12 cities, tracking down 36  pop culture landmarks. Not all are movie-related — pop culture includes television, books, music, after all –  but of the nine that have aired so far, I think the movie-related videos are the most fun. Check out this San Francisco episode, which explores a key landmark in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo: Jimmy Stewart’s apartment on Lombard Street.

Other cities they’re visiting include New York, Chicago, Austin, New Orleans, Portland, Seattle, Washington DC, and Philadelphia — and they’re throwing it open to fans to nominate and vote on Pilgrim’s last stop. Check it out here, some of the suggestions are pretty funny. (“The pothole Bill Murry steps in over and over in “Groundhog Day”?!?) Since mine is a darker nature, I’m rooting for Mansfield Reformatory, Mansfield, OH, where the Shawshank Redemption was filmed.

I never planned on looking for the earthquake capital of the world. In fact, when I got on the plane to California last month, it was to get away from the shakes and quakes of my hometown.

But I should have known, given California’s own shaky history, that I wouldn’t be able to escape it altogether.

So when, by chance, I came across Susan Elizabeth Hough’s book Finding Fault in California (An Earthquake Tourist’s Guide) while in Temecula, I figured it was an omen – that I couldn’t go to California and simply ignore California’s earthquake history.

Reading the book, I soon realized that everywhere I planned to go had had the shakes at one time or another.

That being the case, I figured I might as well go with the flow and head to straight for the source – Parkfield, California, the so-called ‘Earthquake Capital of the World’.

Located in the Cholame Valley of Central California, this small town with 37 residents sits astride the San Andreas fautline, where the Pacific Tectonic Plate meets the North American Tectonic Plate.

Heading there seemed like a good idea at the time.  As I drove further and further into the hills, with the road getting narrower and narrower, I started wondering if really was all that wise.

But I’d come to far to turn back, so I just kept on going, wondering all the while if, when I got to Parkfield, there would be any sign of life or any coffee, and more importantly, praying that this wouldn’t be the day that Parkfield lived up to it’s name.

Happily, it didn’t.

And there were a few hardy souls around.

But sadly, the infamous Parkfield Café was closed.

Timing, as they say, is everything.

The locals told me if I had shown up a couple of days later, I’d have found a much different Parkfield, one overrun by bluegrass music fans attending the annual Parkfield Bluegrass Festival.

I can’t help but wonder, though, if any would choose to sleep at the Parkfield Inn…

The Canadian province of Québec has its own style of music in just about every genre from jazz to classical to pop. The traditional music of the province holds a distinctive sound which has evolved from the intertwining of musics carried by settlers from several parts of France, especially Brittany and Normandy, with music from settlers from Ireland, Scotland, and England

Like parts of the musics played in its ancestral countries, Québécois music often comes with rhythms appropriate for dancing, and is often played for just that purpose. Though often times there are light hearted lyrics to go along with that sort of feeling, the music of Québec has lent itself to storytelling and history, too. Those are just the sort of songs the men of Le Vent du Nord decided to choose as the focus for their album La Part Du Feu.

Not that the music is not lively: there’s more than one piece that’s just fine for spirited dancing or at least a bit of stamping feet and clapping hands. You would hardly expect otherwise from a groups which has rocked out audiences from the after hours festival club at the Celtic Colours Festival on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in Scotland, and whose albums have ben recognized by Canadian Folk Music and Juno awards. Nicolas Boulerice. Olivier Demers, Simon Beaudry, and Réjean Brunet form a tight knit band of friends whose work is as adventurous as it is traditional. Both aspects come in to play on La Part du Feu.

“Through traditional songs we discover pieces of our history,” says Boulerice, a founding member of the band who plays accordion, piano, and hurdy gurdy. The song Octubre 1837 talks of an uprising in French Canada that changed the way the French and British thought of each other in the province, he points out. It was inspired by a personal connection to the history: the house where Boulerice lives now was a place where soldiers from one of the battles of this times stayed for a while. La Mine is a traditional song, a sorrowful one about a mine disaster which has been handed down across the years. Band members learned it from a recording of a singer in New Brunswick. A traditional song called Lanlaire, from the nineteenth century, is paired with a newly composed reel derived from it music by Olivier Demers. Montcalm, one of Canada’s oldest songs, was written by that general after the battle of Carillon in 1758. Mamzelle Kennedy carries on another Quebec and Celtic tradition of writing tunes to honor friends: it is a newly composed piece in honor of irish flutist and composer Nuala Kennedy.

Fiddle, guitar, mandolin, accordion, bouzouki, bass, violin, and even not so traditional saxophone, sousaphone, and trombone show up on the pieces, along with several types of percussion, played mainly by band members, with a few special guests along including André Brunet and Patrick Graham. The songs are from Québec, Acadia, and the Maritimes, going back long centuries through the tradition and reaching up until the present with music recently written. “On this album, we wanted to show that this music
can tell us about who we are as Québécois,” says Réjean Brunet. Indeed, it does that, and sheds new light of Québec’s history to those beyond the borders of the province as well.

One of the first things that jumps out at friends and family who visit Bangkok for the first time is all the food. It’s true, there’s a ton, something like three vendors and five restaurants for every one of the city’s 9 million residents. The other thing? They can’t believe how modern it is.

Traditional Bangkok is, obviously, an essential part of the city and one that’s more immediately fascinating and foreign for travelers who’ve never been to Thailand or Asia before. Old Town is so fun to explore. Still, writing off the glitzy malls, the trendy nightlife, and the other hyper-modern parts of the city is just cheating yourself. (You’re also cheating yourself if you linger at Khao San, but that’s another story for another post.)

I live in Pratunam, the eye of the city’s commercial center. Right around the corner is CentralWorld Plaza, the largest lifestyle complex in Southeast Asia. Since extensive renovations were finished in 2006, CentralWorld has endured as one of the most spectacular showpieces of modern Bangkok. What exactly makes it a “lifestyle complex”, and not just another megamall?

Because it’s so much more than a mall. First and foremost, with somewhere around 100 restaurants, including a new branch of Taiwan’s Michelin-starred Din Tai Fung, it’s a foodie’s heaven (or nightmare, if you’re on a diet). I eat here more than I’d care to admit, but hey, you would too if it were only a few minutes walk away. At CentralWorld, you can also…

Stock up on groceries, baked goods, fresh seafood/fruit/vegetables, and liquor at the high-end Central Food Hall, which has become increasingly obsessed with Japanese products (perhaps because of the profit margin?). It also has a few street-food style stalls, a handful of small restaurants, and of course a fantastic food court. Right next door on the seventh floor, you can also…

See a movie in style at SF World Cinema. The “regular” theaters here are amazing in their own right and make the overpriced cinemas back in the States look like hell holes, but for a little bit extra moviegoers can upgrade themselves into silly territory. The Happiness cinema offers seating on cushy recliners, day beds, or bean bags, while the First Class Cinema ups the ante with a welcome mocktail, pre-show buffet of light bites and drinks, unlimited flavored popcorn and drinks during the movie, and service at the touch of a button from a plush recliner. It gets chilly in there, so blankets are provided too. It’s like having your own personal movie theater.

During the cool season (November – December) and for occasional special events from January to June, you can also head to CentralWorld to…

Get drunk and listen to live music at one of four outdoor beer gardens. Singha, Chang (my favorite), Tiger, and Federbrau all set up their own dining areas and performance stages on the massive plaza in front of CentralWorld’s main entrances on Ratchadamri. Each one has its own vibe and its own theme, and though Singha and Chang tend to be the busiest since, well, they have the best beer, all four do brisk business on a nightly basis. Food is reliably good and affordable, and the three-liter towers pictured here, which have an ingenius enclosed tube of ice down the middle to keep the beer cold, are very popular with the communal-oriented locals.

Back inside the building, you can strap on some skates and…

Shred some ice at The Rink. Located on the first floor, the ice rink opened in September 2010 and provides some great people-watching opportunities; something about Thais twirling around on ice skates is absolutely mesmerizing. It costs 250 baht for 30 minutes, and yes, hockey sticks are available to accommodate the Thais’ feverish obsession with the sport. Seriously though, there are hockey instructors available for hire, including Thor, the Challenge Cup U.A.E. MVP, and Nui, who won Hardest Shot, Woman Division, in the 2008 Hong Kong Tournamet.

There are also super-cute plastic penguins (on skis!) for beginners to skate around with and hold onto. Not that, er, anybody I know, uh, needs to use one. Finally, it wouldn’t be a real lifestyle complex if you couldn’t…

Address balding patterns, zap skin blemishes, or, at the Slim Up Center, “care and solve body shape problems for those who get weight and body proportion problems, by using advanced technology to help one who wish to lose weight and firm up bodies.” Oh, CentralWorld: you’ve thought of everything!

_{All photos copyright Brian Spencer}