Music for hope and healing
Allentown native’s Appleseed Recordings folk label delivers commentary on social issues in massive 21st anniversary release
Woody Guthrie said, “It’s a folk singer’s job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people.”
Appleseed Recordings founder and president Jim Musselman has followed that concept with his label, Appleseed Recordings.
This indie label, which the Allentown native runs out of his West Chester home, has released music by influential artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco, Tim Robbins and Pete Seeger. He says he believes in the power of music to bring hope and healing, and delivers music about social issues.
Musselman is celebrating his label with a new three-CD release called “Appleseed’s 21st Anniversary: Roots and Branches.” It’s a 57-song overview of the label, which has released more than 160 albums and garnered Grammy Awards.
It features nine new or previously unreleased recordings with highlights from previous Appleseed records.
Many Appleseed songs have been heard after national tragedies such as the Columbine High School shooting and Hurricane Katrina to bring messages of reassurance.
The first disc on the anniversary collection is titled “Let the Truth be Told” and has songs that make a statement about the state of the world and of America, with songs about issues such as racism, gun violence, immigration, homelessness, war, poverty, corporate greed and political corruption.
Standouts on the first disc include a surprising politicized rewrite of AC/ DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” performed by guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Prophets of Rage.
Gangsta-folk singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding updated his song “Scared of Guns” with his new band Corporal Quorum, dedicating it to the students at Parkland High School in Florida, where a gunman killed 17 students and staff members in February. In the song, his 12-year-old daughter recites NRA donation figures.
Police violence against African Americans is addressed by Sweet Honey in the Rock’s “Second Line Blues”; immigration in Tom Russell’s version of Springsteen’s “Across the Border,” newly recorded on the New Mexico/ Mexico line, and the opioid crisis in Anne Hills’ “Needle of Death.”
Springsteen, who posted about the disc on his Facebook page, contributed his sixth exclusive song for the label, a version of Seeger’s classic protest song “If I Had a Hammer.” He also sings a previously recorded version of “We Shall Overcome.”
The second disc, “The Wisdom
Keepers,” takes its name from the Native American term for elders who gain more respect with age. Musselman says the recording industry is fickle about artists from the ’60s and ’70s he grew up listening to and one of the goals of Appleseed is preserving the music of important older artists.
The disc opens with a newly released recording by acclaimed songwriter Jesse Winchester, who died in 2014. The song “Get it Right One Day” was produced with the help of Winchester’s widow, Cindy, producer Mac McAnally and Jimmy Buffett, a longtime Winchester fan. The disc also includes a version of the late John Stewart’s “There is Love (The Wedding Song).”
Other notable numbers include Al Stewart’s “Katherine of Oregon” and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” by Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.
The final “Roots” disc, “Keeping Songs Alive,” revives and preserves traditional cultural music. Roger McGuinn of
The Byrds performs the traditional version of “John Riley” with Judy Collins. John Gorka opens the disc with “The Water is Wide,” with the last verse by Pete Seeger.
David Bromberg and the late Levon Helm sing “Bring it
Home with You When You Come” and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott presents a version of “Roving Gambler.”
The disc also includes Donovan’s previously unreleased “Wild Mountain Thyme” and the original version of the late’50s folk hit “Tom Dooley” by Frank Proffitt.
“The third disc is all about keeping traditional folk songs alive,” Musselman says. “Trying to pick and narrow down which songs to include on these discs was overwhelming,” he says. Some of the artists who were left off seems crazy, but I had a concept of the story that I wanted to be told with this release and I had to be true to the vision.”
Musselman says he fell in love with music as a teenager growing up in Allentown after hearing Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” on the radio. His parents ran an advertising company and his father also worked as an art teacher at Allen High School. He doesn’t play or read music, but he was always surrounded by the arts.
“My father always called art ‘creactivity,’ ” Musselman says. “His point was that an idea in the arts is nothing unless you act on it and do something with it. My father was a painter and my mother ran the business, so I grew up with the best of both worlds.”
Musselman is an attorney who became an activist and worked with consumer advocate Ralph Nader on safety and environmental issues, including the mandatory installation of airbags in motor vehicles.
“I always believed in the power of the arts to create positive social change,” he says. “I traveled with Ralph for eight years, and we would get celebrities to support social issues, everyone from Paul Newman to Bill Murray, and that’s how I got started working with people in entertainment.”
In the accompanying booklet to “Roots,” Musselman describes how the idea for the label took shape after a visit to Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the mid-’90s at the urging of Northern Irish folk singer, Tommy Sands.
“I witnessed a violent clash between the Catholic and the Protestant neighborhoods and I went home and contacted Pete Seeger about an idea to record a new version of ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ ”
That song was recorded with child singers from both churches, had airplay on both Catholic and Protestant radio stations, and was played during the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland. There have been numerous Appleseed recordings that have since become part of history.
“Pete was honored that songs of his that we did got a second life,” Musselman says of Seeger, who passed away in 2014 at age 94. “We recorded ‘We Shall Overcome’ with Bruce [Springsteen] and it was used in a video montage by Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams after 9/11.
“After the Iraq war broke out, we rewrote ‘Bring Them Home’ and we were called ‘unpatriotic’ but I felt that war was wrong and that history would show we were on the right side.”
Musselman says he attracted big stars to Appleseed through persistence.
“The first two times I approached Bruce and his manager [Jon Landau], he declined. I was working on a project and Bob Dylan had committed but didn’t come through, and I was terrified because I had a lot of money invested. I approached Bruce a third time and since then he has recorded seven songs for us. I call him the Guardian Angel of Appleseed because I’m not sure we’d still be around without his responsiveness to our ideas.”
Some of the folk stars Musselman signed to Appleseed are artists he saw perform early on in their careers at the legendary Main Point in Bryn Mawr, when he was a student at Villanova.
“That was my proving ground and I used to walk the two miles from the school to the Main Point and just hang out there,” he says.
He says that without his family, the project would have never seen the light of day — his sister helped with the artwork, his mom helped with the liner notes and his good friend, Mark Moss, editor of Bethlehem’s Sing Out!, helped with the website. “It’s like 80 percent of the project was created in Allentown.”
Musselman isn’t talking yet about his next project, but he has something in the works.
“This job is past full-time,” he says, laughing. “It’s like being a doctor on call. My whole life I’ve always climbed a mountain and then moved on to the next mountain instead of admiring the view. This time I’m taking it in before I move on to the next project.” Chris Cameron is a freelance writer.