Doug Mishkin Teaches “Songs of Woody’s Children” ~ Folk Music that Comforts and Afflicts

Computers and other devices will be alive with the sound of music on Tuesdays this spring via OLLI’s online courses when Doug Mishkin of Egremont, a lawyer by profession and singer-songwriter by avocation, will teach “The Songs of Woody’s Children.” This accomplished musician’s class encapsulates the folk tradition post-Woody Guthrie.

Mishkin inherited his love of folk music naturally, imprinted by a mother who took the fourth grader to his first Pete Seeger concert, and a father who called folksingers the nation’s conscience.

A summer spent at a camp in Great Barrington when he was 14 galvanized the young Mishkin’s interest. He heard new songs that spoke to him: works by Tom Paxton, Peter, Paul and Mary, Phil Ochs and a young fellow with a familiar name, Arlo Guthrie. “There were 500 kids at Camp Eisner; probably 250 were guitarists,” said Mishkin, eventually a camp song leader himself.

The Eisner summers left the downstate New York teen with a desire to return one day to the Berkshires. He and his wife Wendy Jennis visited often during his 37-year career as an employment attorney in Washington, DC. They eventually purchased a home in Egremont. Mishkin, who now practices poverty law in the Berkshires, saw OLLI as an outlet for his desire to teach. His first course was on the Scopes “Monkey Trial.”

“Folk music is an organic tradition,” he said. “It’s not static, but grows and changes with time. It’s entertaining, but not escapist; makes a point, often a socially conscious one; comforts and sometimes afflicts.”

The course title is derived from Seeger’s comment that all folk singers who followed Guthrie were Woody’s children. Mishkin considers Seeger underrated as a banjo player and underappreciated as a songwriter, despite acclaim late in his life, and puts him at the center of the first class. Others of the lineage are Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton (“at 82 he’s writing some of his best songs.”) There are many other artists whom Mishkin loves and in his opinion, deserve to be better known. The course will examine songs generated by protest movements, such as those against the Vietnam War, civil rights abuses and in favor of environmental protection. The final class will focus on 10 great songs.

As a college freshman, Mishkin penned a folk song of his own called “Woody’s Children” (www.woodyschildren.com), and sent a homemade tape to a popular radio show of the same name in New York City. The song aired on future anniversary shows, and for its 50th in 2019, Mishkin appeared with folk luminaries in a concert that aired on PBS. They all sang his song.

Expect to hear it in class. Maybe sing along.

- Katherine S. Zdeb