Video: Pete Seeger Debuts New BP Protest Song

Pete Seeger may be 91 years old, but the iconic folk singer still has plenty to protest. On Friday night at New York's City Winery, Seeger debuted a new song he wrote about the disastrous BP oil spill as part of a fundraising concert for the Gulf Restoration Network and Global Green USA . "It's a strange, strange song," said Seeger about the new tune, which featured a simple finger-picked chord progression and gravelly ominous lyrics like, "When the drill baby drill turns to spill baby spill/God's counting on me/God's counting on you." Check out video of "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You" above.

After his set, Seeger told Rolling Stone he doesn't write many songs these days, but the oil spill inspired him to team up with folk singer Lorre Wyatt to write the track at his home in Beacon, New York. "I'm a fan of old songs that have a lot of repetition, spirituals," Seeger said. "Some of the greatest songs in the world only have one line, like 'This little light of mine.' "

It was a busy week for Seeger. On Wednesday, he traveled to Albany, New York, where he sang the new number outside the state senate chamber to protest hydraulic fracturing, a controversial natural gas drilling technique. "I performed for 40 newspaper and radio reporters," he said. "It made sense down there, too. When there's a great big problem lets get together and do something about it and not leave it up to the government, the rich the poor."

Read Seeger's thoughts on Obama and his new disc Tomorrow's Children.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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