THE FOOLISH FROG - a Pete Seeger song/story performed by MARC NERENBERG with audience participation

It was Pete Seeger's 105th birthday, last Friday, on May 3, 2024. That evening, at Montreal's weekly Yellow Door Hootenanny (which I host), only a handful of people dropped by, So there was time during the evening to tell stories about him from time to time to this group of young people, most of whom had never heard of him. So I was celebrating his birthday with them in a kind of educational fashion. With so few people there, the evening was approaching an early end, when a couple of fellas in the room started fooling around, making animal noises, mostly dogs barking and howling. This brought to mind the Pete Seeger song story (originally made up by his own father as a bedtime story) "The Foolish Frog".
I first encountered this tale in the early 1950's, when I was of nursery school age, and I was captivated by it then. As a young man I sometimes told it as a participation story to groups of kids in that age group, at daycares and nursery schools, or little kid birthday parties, and it was always very popular, with a lot of high spirited participation. But I don't think I have performed it in 30 or 35 years - until now, that is.
So here I was in a room with only adults present - and only a few of them at that - and I thought "Well, I think I have time to do 'The Foolish Frog'. I wonder if I remember it well enough to perform it, and get these people to release their "inner child" into the room, and participate in this." And then I just spontaneously leapt into it and tried. And what do ya know - it worked, though it did take a little cajoling to get them to participate at first. In the end, I even added some guard dogs into the story to capitalize on their barking and howling, even though there are no dogs in the original.
This was recorded in Montreal on 3 May 2024, on my 1962 Pete Seeger long-neck banjo, using a mix of two-finger picking and clawhammer style banjo playing.

[@Folkfreak1]

Well done Marc. Great performance. Another masterpiece of yours! It's really a pitty that Montreal isn't just round the corner from Germany!

[@marcnerenberg1]

Aw gee, thanks so much, Deiter!

[@marclattoni1959]

Wonderful! So nicely done Marc. You seemed so happy. Nice to see playing your long neck - so fitting. Play on. (p.s. it was fun to play along)

[@marcnerenberg1]

Mucho thankos, Marco!

[@chuckjj5493]

That Seeger Family was Certainly Talented,Great Song for Kids,Well done.

[@marcnerenberg1]

Thanks very much! I’ve never performed this for an audience without kids in it before, nor have I performed it at all in about 35 years. Thus was a completely unprepared spur of the moment performance. I’m amazed I got through so smoothly. I guess the stuff you learned as a kid has a way of sticking with you all your life!

[@chuckjj5493]

@@marcnerenberg1 Cool