Scott Cook got in touch with us to share the news of how a folksinger on Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada, named Bob Bossin made a video of his song “Pass It Along” for Earth Day this year and got a bunch of folk heavyweights including Scott, Peggy Seeger, Leon Rosselson, Pharis & Jason Romero to sing on it.
Scott Cook:
This has been one of the unexpected gifts of the pandemic for me. Earlier this year, a presenter in BC named Ted Crouch told me that Bob Bossin had included “Pass It Along” on a year-end list of songs he’d sent around, and I contacted Bob to say thanks. About a month ago, he wrote to tell me he had a crazy idea to get a bunch of folks to sing it for Earth Day. As I’ve come to find out, Bob’s old band Stringband was a pretty big deal in Canada in the 70s, and they really blazed the trail that so many independent artists follow today, with DIY touring, independent releases and crowd-funding. Their songs got covered by Pete Seeger, Ian Tyson, and Emmylou Harris, and since I connected with Bob I’ve been continually surprised at how connected he is all over the folk world.
I wrote the song back in December 2012, on a month off from touring, holed up in a rainy little town called Fulong on the northeast coast of Taiwan. It was inspired by a conversation with Australian songwriter David Ross MacDonald, backstage at the South Country Fair the year before. Dave plays an 80-something-year-old guitar that he found in a pawn and gun shop in the southern States somewhere. He’d just had some restoration work done on it, and sadly confessed that he felt like it had lost something in the process of getting fixed up. But he shrugged it off by saying, “I’m just borrowing it from the next guy who’s gonna play it anyhow,” and I immediately knew there was the kernel of a song in there.
The song’s been a lot of places, many of them without me. A few folks have recorded it on their albums. A singer in Germany translated it into German, and a fan in Germany tattooed the title encircling the Earth on her arm. It’s become the closing song at the Wild Mountain Music Festival in Hinton, Alberta and the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival in BC. But this collaboration breathed new life into it in a way I never expected, at a time when the message––that the earth isn’t ours to use up, but rather on loan from future generations––is more relevant than ever.
And here’s what Bob Bossin had to say:
In various ways the pandemic enabled making the video, though it isn’t about Covid. I suppose, like a lot of musicians, thanks to Covid, I’ve gotten comfortable with listening to music and performing it on line. And I knew there was a good chance that, for once, my musician friends would be at home.
I do think the pandemic has played a part in the incredible reaction – Saturday at 8:45 pm, 7889 people have watched it. . I think part of why people are taking it so much to heart is how positive it is in the midst of a lot of real bad news.
Though it is positive, it is a protest song. For me, in its own gentle way, it voices my chagrin at the NDP, continuing to issue permits to fell the last stands of old growth forest when they promised to do the opposite. The lungs of the fucking planet! And don’t get me started on Canada increasing its carbon emissions every year; we did better under Harper, for god sake, than under Trudeau for all his crocodile tears.
But, as I think about it, that isn’t it either
The fact is I just love the song: the tune, the clever lyrics and the thought it presents: that “we don’t own it” whether it’s a guitar, the land we call Canada, or the earth itself. We just “borrow it” from the next bunch.
So I thought it would be a nice thing to sing the song to my own small audience. As an Earthday present. Then I thought, why not ask some friends – show them the song anyway. It just grew from there.
All that said, the truth is, I didn’t really undertake it for a reason, for a result. I’m with Daniel Berrigan. “I know of no sure way of predicting where things will go,” he said once, “whether others will hear and respond… Or whether the act will come to a grinding halt then and there, its actors stigmatized or dismissed as fools. One swallows dry and takes a chance.”
I swallowed and said, “What the hell, let’s try it and see what happens.
Here it is..Bob:
Bob: “The 24 singers and musicians are listed at the beginning of the video. The rest of the credits are at the end. Something like 90 people made this project happen. Thank you all.”
Photo Credit: Steven Teeuwsen