Peggy Seeger on “Teleology”: Folk Album of the Year 2025 Nominee
Folk on Foot
Matthew Bannister
4.8 • 526 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"My first kiss with Irene was behind some wheelie bins in Penge." As she celebrates her ninetieth birthday, the legendary Peggy Seeger unpacks her current feelings about “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” - written for her by her late husband Ewan MacColl, but now also embracing her other passionate loving relationship. She revisits the song on her final album “Teleology”, nominated as one of the Folk Albums of 2025. In this special episode Peggy and her son, producer and musician Calum MacColl, tell the story behind the album as she reflects on a musical career lasting over seven decades.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So this special folk album award of the year episode of Folk on Foot is showcasing the extraordinary work of Peggy Seeger in the album Teleology. |
| 0:20.3 | And I'm delighted that I'm joined by Peggy and by her son, |
| 0:24.2 | Callum McColl. Welcome and congratulations on your nomination. Thank you very, very much. |
| 0:30.8 | I know Peggy, you wanted Callum to join us for a very particular reason. Can you explain that? |
| 0:35.7 | Well, I think too often the artist gets credit for things that |
| 0:40.7 | other people did, and there have been a number of comments in reviews of this album, where they |
| 0:47.4 | actually said the production was brilliant. One of the adjectives that was over and over, even by some people who don't |
| 0:56.6 | normally give those kind of reviews, like friends and things, they said that this album sounded |
| 1:02.4 | spacious. It gave you time and space in which to listen. You weren't rushing from one to the next, |
| 1:10.4 | and the ambience and the background, |
| 1:14.6 | a lot of it are, I mean, I probably shouldn't say this. Callan instigated independently, |
| 1:22.5 | knowing that I would like it. I mean... So he took it away and then did some work on it and then |
| 1:27.0 | brought it back to you. |
| 1:28.3 | Oh, yes, but I liked everything he did, going from Driftwood into no place like home, |
| 1:34.7 | where you go from a seascape with goals into a traffic that's all about people sitting on the road |
| 1:41.3 | and homeless and all that. |
| 1:43.8 | And I almost didn't realize that we were on the high street with the traffic. |
| 1:48.9 | I thought we were still at the seaside, Driftwood. |
| 1:52.3 | And Callum, he did that all on, but then his ability to do these things has always stunned |
| 2:00.3 | me. |
| 2:01.4 | Home, homeland, a place where we belong. |
| 2:11.5 | We had life there, now it's gone. |
... |
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