Legendary folk singer Peter Yarrow will make an appearance at the Jersey Shore on Saturday, March 9, 2019 when he performs with Lonesome Traveler at 8pm at the Pollack Center, located on the campus of Monmouth University in West Long Branch, NJ.
Peter Yarrow was born in New York City in 1938. After graduating from Cornell University, he joined Noel “Paul” Stookey and Mary Travers to form the folk group, Peter, Paul and Mary. The trio rose to the forefront of the folk-protest movement, performing songs of social justice at the historic March on Washington, D.C. — led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — as well as the Selma-Montgomery March of 1965.
The group toured together for nearly 10 years before breaking up in 1970 to pursue individual careers. Yarrow continued to write music, notably “Torn Between Two Lovers,” a #1 hit for Mary MacGregor.
In 1972, Peter, Paul and Mary reunited for a concert supporting George McGovern’s presidential campaign, and then again in 1978 at a concert protesting nuclear energy. Shortly after, they resumed touring, and played nearly 50 shows a year until Travers’ death in 2009.
These days, Yarrow continues to perform as a solo artist, with his long-time musical colleague Noel “Paul” Stookey, and with other musicians including the youthful singer/instrumentalists of Lonesome Traveler.
As a social activist, Yarrow produced and coordinated many events as a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement. In 1970, he organized concerts at Madison Square Garden and Shea Stadium, where he enlisted the talents of such legendary artists as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Miles Davis, and Paul Simon to perform.
In 2000, Yarrow formed Operation Respect, a non-profit organization that aims to reduce school violence by teaching children tolerance and respect for diversity. The organization developed the Don’t Laugh at Me program which uses music and video to teach conflict resolution to elementary and middle school students and is distributed at no cost to schools around the world.
Yarrow performed in Ho Chi Minh City in 2005 at a concert to benefit the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange, and in 2011, he made an appearance with his son and daughter during the Occupy Wall Street protests playing songs like “We Shall Not Be Moved” and a variation of his own composition, “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
Spotlight Central recently had an opportunity to chat with Mr. Yarrow and talk to him about some of his childhood musical recollections, the origins of his career in folk music, his early work with Peter, Paul and Mary, and about his upcoming March 9 appearance with Lonesome Traveler at Monmouth University.
Spotlight Central: We understand that at about the age of eight, you started your formal study of music after hearing Isaac Stern play the violin. What was it about his music that inspired you?
Peter Yarrow: [Laughs] That’s like asking, “What was it about Rita Hayworth — one of the world’s most beautiful women — that made you idolize her?” Well — he’s Isaac Stern! He played the violin with a kind of passion where you almost thought it was a human voice that was crying out for what a dream might be — it was like testifying before the court of public taste and opinion to advance a certain kind of humanity. And the music itself, of course, had that inherent in it, but it was the ability of Isaac Stern to convey all of that with his own personal sensitivities that moved me — I mean, I could have heard the same piece played by somebody else and it might not have affected me that way.
But, after hearing him perform, I said I wanted to play the violin, and it ended up where my mother got me an instrument and I took violin lessons with Hortense Mischakoff, the wife of Mischa Mischakoff, the string master of the New York Philharmonic — and, sometimes, he would give me lessons, too. And it was then that I began to develop the kinds of connections between my heart and what I could create that were enormously powerful and moving, and that was a very important beginning for me.
Spotlight Central: We’re told you first become interested in folk music after seeing a concert by Josh White. What was it about the genre of folk music that appealed to you so much?
Peter Yarrow: Well, it’s not necessarily just the genre — it is that, of course — but the music that he sang was certainly entertaining, and it was not just his desire to entertain that came through. It was the authenticity and the truthfulness of the traditional songs that he sang that just bowled me over — that I was hearing something that wasn’t frivolous or artificial. The traditional songs that he sang came from people who didn’t write for the bucks — they wrote to tell the stories.
Take a song like “Frankie and Johnny,” which is a blues song. Why is that different from writing a song about love today? It’s because the person didn’t write it for the bucks — the person is anonymous; we don’t even know who wrote it — but it was written to tell a story.
Or take the English ballad, “Lord Randall” — now Josh didn’t sing that — but that’s a love song which goes, “Where have you been all the day, Randall, my son?” “I’ve been to my sweetheart, Mother.” “And what did your sweetheart feed you, Randall, my son?” “Eels and eel broth, Mother.” Well that, of course, became the model for Dylan’s “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall.” And that’s what a lot of Bobby’s impulses and genius had their roots in — this kind of music.
And I had heard Josh White, along with Burl Ives, on those black ’78s — those records made of acetate and not vinyl, which were very breakable! And I was inspired by that music because if somebody is talking from the heart about something they feel impassioned about — whether it’s a teacher in a classroom talking about Chinese snuff bottles, or the Civil War, or the Civil Rights Movement — you know that what you’re seeing and hearing is their heart speaking. They’re not telling you something because there’s some kind of ritual of education there but, rather, because they are really engaged deeply in the subject. So it’s moving to you, and it educates you not just in terms of information but, also, with regards to your perspective on what humanity is all about, what life can be about, what real contact with people can be, and what strength is all about. And when you have that, you are awakened as a human being, and if you have the kind of desire that says, “I don’t just want to be inspired by that, but I want to do that!” and then you try it, that’s how those experiences can affect you, and that’s the way they affected me.
Spotlight Central: You started playing the guitar on a small Martin instrument that your mom purchased which she told you was “for her” — and not for you. Why do you think she approached your playing the guitar that way with you?
Peter Yarrow: Because I had stopped playing the violin, and she saw how much pleasure playing it had been for me. To get to my violin teacher, we’d go out near Yankee Stadium on the 3rd Avenue “el” — which was an elevated subway — but this teacher was of the school where he would make me cry! I mean, he didn’t have the kind of perspective or tools to encourage me, and I just felt, at a certain point, really humiliated. And that was because I am who I am — it might not have affected others in the same way. And I guess there were other teachers who did that, as well — it was kind of expected in the old school; you know, the “spare the rod, spoil the child” mentality — but I just said, “This is not for me.”
And so my mother got the guitar and she said, “I’m playing this — this is mine,” and of course, I said, “But please, Mother, can you show me this or that?” and she’d say, “Oh, well, all right.” And of course the whole thing was part of her teaching technique — she was a high school English, speech, and drama teacher — and she knew her son, and how to encourage the spirit within me so that I could find my voice. We all want to find our voices in our different ways; we all want to find our identities. And what’s what the ’60s was all about — it was about celebrating the fact that each of us is a unique human being and we don’t have to be defined by what contemporary culture says is meaningful.
Spotlight Central: And speaking of finding yourself in the ’60s, after college, you went to Greenwich Village where Peter, Paul and Mary came about. And we have to say — for the first time ever — we were at Cafe Wha? in the Village just this week, and we saw a sign posted on the front of the building which reveals that people like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and, of course, Peter, Paul, and Mary got their start there. So what was it like for you being a part of that burgeoning music scene in the Village in the ‘60s?
Peter Yarrow: The music scene in the ’60s was kind of a utopian crucible of spirit, creativity, and dreams. We realized that we were surrounded by a sense that the conventions that had stifled the spirit of so many in our country — you know, the subservience of women, the acceptance of the continuation and legacy of slavery, the definitions of what is meaningful in life — were soon to be revised. And we considered all of those things — like what does equality mean? You know, you pledge allegiance, but were we really a society with liberty and justice for all? No, we weren’t — it was hypocritical to say that. People were blind to that reality — that’s just the way it was; you know, where people would say, “That’s ok, those people don’t have to vote,” or “That’s ok, those people are inferior — they don’t have to take jobs that are meaningful.”
And so we were in the midst of something that all of us sensed was a changing tide in the essence of what life was about. And, in America, a lot of that was expressed musically, and that’s what we were involved in, so it really was an exciting time.
And when I was in the Village, I did play at the Cafe Wha? You’d go in there at, you know, 6 or 7 p.m and you’d sing until 2 a.m., along with another four performers. And then at the end of the night, you’d wait to see what the audience had given, and you’d split it, and you didn’t care how much it was! You were in heaven — it was beyond happiness!
At the time, I was living with my mother. I had just come from Cornell with a degree in psychology, but with a passion to do this — not just to get on the stage and entertain, but to bring people together with music in a way that I had learned through Pete Seeger and The Weavers, and, also, through Josh White.
And, of course, Noel — Noel “Paul” Stookey — was across the street at The Gaslight! He ran the entertainment there and he was a comedian mainly, who also sang songs. He didn’t know the folk music literature at all, and once he was exposed to it, he was thrilled by it — it was something new to him. And Mary was already a kind of a prominent denizen of the Village; she lived there and went to The Little Red School House — the city’s first progressive school — and she was a dynamic force who had been a part of a group called The Song Swappers, a group of teenagers Pete Seeger had put together to sing some very amazing songs.
That time was so filled with hopefulness and an assured sense that we were going to a place that was better. You can even see that spirit manifested in Peter, Paul and Mary if you look at the new PBS special, which is a series of our performances at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, 1964, and 1965. That spirit was exactly what we continued to convey —and, of course, at that point, we were also deeply involved in the Civil Rights movement, and you can hear that in the songs of Bob Dylan that we were singing. One of them is “When the Ship Comes In,” and before we sing it, I say, “There will come a time when hate will disappear, and that will be the hour when the ship comes in.” And if you look at my face, you might say, “Holy Moly! These kids” — and we were very young — “they really believe that this extraordinary metamorphosis is taking place — that we are going to be a fair, caring, loving world.” And to me, our job was to provide training in thinking, believing, and singing that way.
Spotlight Central: On March 9, you’re going to be appearing as a special guest with Lonesome Traveler, the concert version of the Off-Broadway show in which a cast of young singer/instrumentalists take their audiences on a journey though American folk music and pay homage to such legendary folk artists as Lead Belly, The Weavers, Joan Baez, and, of course, Peter, Paul and Mary. What can you tell us about your involvement with this production?
Peter Yarrow: I saw the Off-Broadway production, and at the time it was just as you described — but it now even goes into the later music that evolved, so it will also include artists like Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie, and Leonard Cohen — so it’s an even broader palette. But I was so thrilled by the show, that I came back the next night and brought my daughter and some of my friends and associates. It was the cast’s last performance, and at the end, I got on the stage and jammed with them and it was a singular moment — it was just thrilling — and it was the closest thing to being back in the Village in the ’60s hearing the cast’s young musicians sing those songs, because of the way they were able to channel that reality.
So then, at a certain point, the cast decided to go out on tour, but in a concert format — which means they wouldn’t be wearing any costumes — and they developed the show in a theater out in Ventura, California. But because they were all unknown musicians, to draw a crowd, they said, “Let’s have some artists who are known join us,” and they asked me if I would come out from time to time as a guest performer. And it’s absolutely been an extraordinary experience because the audience sees the heart and the roots and the essence of what Peter, Paul and Mary sang about, and what The Limeliters and The Kingston Trio and all the later singers I mentioned sang about — and these young people do these songs with absolute authority and skill and heart! They’ve translated these songs into an energy that relates to now — where the songs are an assertion of what’s good in us as human beings and contradict the very frightening evolution of a point of view which can be described as the inverse of idealism. So, instead, they advance the hopefulness and justice and equity that inspired the songs and brought the central theme of the Civil Rights Movement and beyond into the arena.
When audiences see the show — and when they see and hear the juxtaposition of one of the people who was there doing what they’re singing about — they say, “You know, something? This makes the music so clear! This is where we want to go today!” And at that point, we’re not reminiscing about it — it’s being lived by young people who are gifted and beautiful and sincere and authentic — and it’s an extraordinary experience!
When I am singing with Lonesome Traveler, it’s just amazing; their chops — their musical abilities — are just extraordinary! And their hearts are so connected to what this music is about and what it says, it’s a kind of explosive response that is very reminiscent of the kind of music that Peter, Paul and Mary performed — and I adore it! And at the end of the show, I get to sing a couple of songs, and one of them is a recent song I wrote, “The Children are Listening,” and that’s where you say, “Wow, we’ve gone through all that history and now, here we are, taking it into the present.”
Showtime for Peter Yarrow’s Saturday, March 9, 2019 performance with Lonesome Traveler is 8pm at the Pollack Center, located on the campus of Monmouth University, in West Long Branch, NJ. Tickets are $39, $49, and $60 and may be purchased online by going to monmouth.edu.
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