Orel Family

When The Songs of The Seeger Sessions launched a couple of weeks ago, it included 1567 recordings, and I had 69 audio or video links. Today, we're up to 1625 recordings, including 93 audio or video links, including 34 audio/video just for "John Henry." The scariest moment was realizing that there might be lots of audio out at The Prairie Home Companion website . No, the scariest moment was finding them. But it did lead to finding several good recordings, and also a fiendishly funny take on "Shenandoah" from 1998, in which Garrison Keillor proposes that the song be outlawed, and invents phrases such as being arrested for "committing Shenandoah" and having a "Shenandependency." Best moments? The feedback. From people remembering albums they had as kids, to artists finding (or sometimes not finding) their own recordings. For some artists, a google of their name plus the song(s) they recorded pops up the site as the first item. Hopefully ...

My website has generally been a relatively quiet place. My personal pages get a few hits a day, and the Bruce stuff a few more. The discography got more hits, due to it really being the first major Springsteen discography on the web, and still among the more complete (and without those annoying pop-ups). When the last tour ended, traffic dropped off, and it really hadn't come back at all. A typical day might include 2000 or so total hits, with 50-60 of them being for the discography. But that all changed last week. For about a month, I put together a project called The Seeger Sessions. This was a totally self-contained sub-site documenting the various songs of the new album. Dave Marsh, who was writing verbose liner notes for the new album, loved it. The folks at brucespringsteen.net were agreeable to the idea of linking it -- site unseen, even. Most of my work was doing the research and putting together the data; the site itself didn't escape from my imagination ...

Me, to Aaron: How did you do on your spelling test? Aaron: I got them all right, and I almost got the bonus word. Me: What was the bonus word? Aaron: "Commandment." I left out the first m. Aaron had a recent school project on the Titanic. So happens, we have the movie, it was a $5 laserdisc closeout. Lori let him see it. They got to the car scene. He's 9; Lori let him watch... Aaron: What are they doing in there? Are they naked ? Aaron and Elianna, arguing after I'd done something mean to him (probably telling him to stop shredding his napkin at the table): Aaron: Daddy is mean. Elianna: No, he's not! He's a nice daddy. Aaron: Yes he is. I should know, I spend more time with him. Elianna: No you don't. I jump on him more. Aaron: No you don't. Elianna: Yes I do. I jumped on him this morning.

How many artists have recorded "John Henry"? Which song from Bruce Springsteen's upcoming release "The Seeger Sessions" was once recorded by Bob Seger? Which song did Elvis Presley do? How about Judy Garland? What song had a new wave of popularity after Enya recorded it, and would you like to see her video for it? What singing group included 4 of these songs in their 1940 concert at The Library of Congess? Get the answers to these questions and others at The Songs of The Seeger Sessions , a new section of my site.