12. Grit LaskinA Few Simple Words
Grit Laskin is Canadian and I would say he’s probably the Canadian Tom Paxton, he has that very comforting voice and I like that. I like somebody who pays attention to words and melody, because words and melody are my strong point. My Turn… is a strange song, one I can listen to over and over. It lasts seven minutes and 45 seconds. It’s a story of a man’s life, he makes a deal with the devil that if he lives for eighty years, he’ll have no regrets. Well, the Second World War comes along, and he refuses to be conscripted because he can’t kill so they send him to an internment camp. That immediately makes me think of my family as my brother Pete Seeger has his half-Japanese wife and all of her family were interned during the Second World War – they only let her father out because he was brilliant at decoding. So, in the song, in the internment camp the man meets a Japanese woman, he falls in love with the Japanese woman, but they were shunned by his family. It’s a philosophical song about how at every turn, he is thankful. No regrets, no regrets, no regrets, no regrets, then at the end… No regrets.
