♪ I know for sure where I don't want to stay ♪ ♪ In an Old Folks Hoax or a Leisureville ♪ ♪ condo by the sea ♪ When my work's all done, the kids are grown ♪ ♪ My time at last is all my own ♪ ♪ I know just the life I want for me ♪ Why do you sing?

I mean, that's a tough question for a lot of musicians— -Oh, I don't know.

Why do I breathe?

Why do I go on living?

♪ Holes in the ozone the size of Brazil ♪ Well I'm a quite a political animal, and the songs I sing, a lot of it is social commentary.

[stage performance in background] -She was part of a long buried history of American resistance.

Are you now or have you ever been a communist?

- Many of the worlds that Faith touched would have made her suspect.

- Faith was right in the middle of this.

The FBI had come to her home.

- Our phone was tapped and I was very afraid growing up.

I was terrified.

[acoustic guitars] ♪ Have you been to jail for justice?

♪ ♪ I'd like to shake your hand ♪ ♪ Sitting in and lying down ♪ ♪ are ways to take a stand ♪ for that march from Selma to Montgomery.

-Faith Petric has been a mother, a political activist, and a social worker.

Above everything else, music runs in and out of Faith Petric's life as a constant theme.

[harmonious chorus sings and claps] ♪ Will the circle be unbroken ♪ ♪ by and by Lord ♪ by and by FAITH: People singing together is an experience that is... important.

The individual becomes stronger but you also become something else.

You become a part of something.

[strums guitar] FAITH: And I've sang songs of working people songs of union people, peace songs, radical songs that move people to action.

♪ Cause you ain't been doing nothing ♪ ♪ if you ain't been called a Red ♪ [laughter from the audience] - Faith believed in a better world.

And her experience with setbacks, with backlash, with living through the dark times represents this sense that we can keep fighting.

-It was important to Faith that we are here to do this.

You know, this is our responsibility.

If the world is gonna become a better place, it's gonna become better because we do something about it and not because it just happened.

♪...or love the word instead ♪ ♪ Cause you ain't been doing nothing ♪ ♪ if you ain't been called a Red ♪ Where did music start becoming important to you?

-Well, music started early in my life, practically, I guess, from the time I was born in that log cabin, which was on what is known as a homestead.

I won't stop to define that, people can look it up.

My father was a farmer, a carpenter, a schoolteacher, and he was also a Methodist minister.

So I was singing as soon as I could talk, or before because there were all these, these great hymns that I remember to this day.

There were things like "Bringing in the Sheaves," and "Work For the Night is Coming."

Yeah, there I'm the short one.

[hymnal piano music] People sang a lot more when I was little.

You made your own entertainment, you sang when you were doing the dishes, you sang when you were walking along the street, you sang in school, you sang in church.

And as I recall, singing was one of those things I could do and not have somebody tell me to stop doing it.

And I just purely loved it.

[bluegrass fiddle] [rushing water] -Faith was born outside of Orofino, Idaho.

They weren't close to town.

and they were able to cut down the woods and build something out of them and eat what they could farm and trade for.

FAITH: And it was very rural, very kind of pioneer stuff here in a log cabin that was made of trees that were cut on this property.

And I'm the youngest of four children.

All four of us kids were born in that cabin.

[bluegrass music] There were no telephones.

[chuckles] There was no electricity.

There were no roads.

There were no cars.

Food— if you didn't grow it, you didn't have it.

[music ends] [melancholy acoustic guitar] FAITH: See, I started in high school in 1928 and 1929 was when all of the brokers were jumping out of windows in New York when the thing really hit.

In the Depression in the United States, a lot of people starved to death.

I don't know if that's very very well known.

Schools closed.

They couldn't afford to hire teachers.

My mother and father were separated.

My mother had a lot of guts.

We rented a little, tiny house and rented the back porch, which was simply screened in, to two college students.

And they would buy a sack of flour and my mother would make bread and they'd get half the bread and we'd get half the bread.

The realization came to me during the Depression, that all that education I'd been getting through grade school and high school were lies.

They were lying to me.

'This was the best country in the world, we never did anything wrong, all our people that are in office are there only because they're great, wonderful people trying to do the best thing for every...' well— Fat chance.

So then I went off to college without a dime in my pocket, as a matter of fact I hitched a ride on a truck going down to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.

[banjo music] ["C" for Conscription sung by the Almanac Singers] ♪♪ My first action, political action, I can think of was when I was in college, my best friend and I organized a peace strike.

There was a national organization called the Student Union.

All over the United States, students were keeping in touch with each other and doing — it was a time of radicalization for many of us.

And we organized this peace strike.

We called it "the Veterans of Future Wars."

And the idea was to give them money now to go to school, don't wait 'til they've been to war and gotten killed.

JUDITH SMITH The exact period in which Faith was in college was the exact period in which students were beginning to really think and talk and debate.

There was a very expansive questioning about official policy and how political decisions get made and what the cost is for everyday people.

[somber acoustic guitar] FAITH: I felt that the worl wasn't going the way it should.

The Spanish so-called civil war which is actually an invasion of Hitler and Mussolini had a tremendous effect on me.

JUDITH SMITH: The democratically-elected left-wing government of Spain was toppled by Franco.

United States' position was neutrality, which many people were very upset about because what's gonna happen to democracy?

[somber music continues] FAITH: A boy I knew in colleg went over there and was killed.

Then, I became very radicalized.

[Carl Sandburg recites] The People, yes the people pause for breath, for wounds and bruises to heal for food again, after war, after famine [faint acoustic guitar] He talked our language, I remember saying to a friend afterwards how wonderful it was because he talked our language.

-He had published The American Songbag which was a collection of folk songs.

He was in one way recognizing the fact that people had begun collecting folk music and he was inspiring other people to do more of the same.

♪ I have been a wanderin' ♪ early and late ♪ New York City ♪ to the Golden Gate ♪ An' it looks like ♪ I'm never gonna cease my wandering ♪ FAITH: This is a picture of me at college holding a guitar, which I did not know how to play.

[soft acoustic guitar] I don't know where I learned the three chords that I used for the first, [laughs] many years of my guitar playing.

I finally learned three more.

[Faith chuckles] Well after college, I went to Seattle for a year, worked in a bookstore, saved $100.

I took all this hard-earned money, and I got on a freighter and I came down by boat to San Francisco.

Which was like coming home.

[light-hearted folk guitar] I got to San Francisco and fell in love with it.

It was my kind of place.

In those days, one would go out almost every night.

You know, you bar hopped.

I used to sing a lot then around parties for good causes, people trying to raise money.

And I would be invited to these just to sing, lead some songs.

Yeah, I had a very good memory.

Well, I could hear a song once and it was mine, you know?

It was the great radical songs that came out of the Depression, came out of the union organization which was very strong in the United States during the 30s.

It's only working together that people can get their rights.

This has always come only from people who have fought and many have given their lives that this should be accomplished for themselves and others.

Without those, children would still be working in the mines.

and people would be working twelve-hour days, six days a week.

[ ♪ quiet, tense plucking ♪ ] FAITH: In 1934, before I came down to San Francisco, the tremendous strike strike changed this town completely.

ROBERT CHERNY: San Francisco was the crucial center of that strike.

It really shut down shipping through most of the Pacific Coast ports.

And by the end, hundreds of people had been injured, two men were killed, it was a very controversial strike.

And a Red Scare really swept the city.

All of this meant that when Faith arrived in the city, there were large and well-organized unions all up and down the waterfront.

FAITH: There was a Labor Day parade, and I can still, with my eyes wide open, I can see side to side, Market Street was full of these men in their Frisco jeans, those were black jeans, and a total silence.

One of the first union songs I learned actually was a song about Harry Bridges.

See if I can remember it.

♪ Let me tell you of a sailor ♪ ♪ Harry Bridges was his name ♪ ♪ an honest union leader ♪ ♪ that the bosses tried to frame ♪ ♪ He left home in Australia ♪ ♪ to sail the seas around ♪ ♪ He sailed across the ocean to land in Frisco town ♪ ♪ Oh, the FBI is worried ♪ the bosses they are scared ♪ They can't deport six million men, they know ♪ ♪ And we're not gonna let them send Harry over the sea ♪ ♪ We'll fight for Harry Bridges and build the C.I.O.

♪ There was only a company union ♪ [song fades out, tense music fades in] JUDITH SMITH: Capitalism seemed to be under collapse.

There really was a kind of discussion about what the system could and should be, how the nation should take care of people, what the government should, or shouldn't provide, and that's a totally turning point moment for anyone when they realize with these other people, together, we can really make change.

FAITH: I got a job at the Farm Security Administration working with the, with migrants as they came in.

I worked in that program, that was under Roosevelt, under a man named Taylor.

[fiddle and guitar] It was the first time that a government helped an enormous migration of people.

They were driven out by the dust storms.

We gave them money for gas, camps were built for them to stay in, food stamps that helped them survive.

I had by then myself begun to accumulate a lot of records.

Burl Ives and all kinds of records, so, I learned those songs and I learned a couple of songs that the migratory workers' — one is a parody of another folk song.

♪ From the east and west and north and south ♪ ♪ Like a swarm of bees we come ♪ ♪ The migratory workers are worse off than a bum ♪ ♪ We go to Mr. Farmer ♪ ♪ and we ask him what he pays ♪ ♪ He says, "You gypsy workers ♪ ♪ can live on a buck a day" ♪ [Lester Hunter recording fades into Faith Petric recording] ♪ Now if you will excuse me ♪ I'll bring my song to an end ♪ I got to go and check a crack ♪ ♪ where the howling wind comes in ♪ ♪ But the times are gonna be better ♪ ♪ I guess you'd like to know ♪ ♪ I'll tell you all about it ♪ I've joined the C.I.O.

[boat horn blows] FAITH: What did I do during the war?

I went back to the East, and I worked in the shipyard for a year.

[indistinct clanging] I trained and became a shipfitter, which was a good job, a very prestigious job because you were the person who read the blueprints and ordered whatever was needed.

[faint steam release and clanging] We were refitting ships and turning 'em into troop carriers and getting ready for D-Day.

And I just loved it.

["Round and Round Hitler's Grave"] [sung by the Almanac Singers] ♪ Yee hoo!

♪ Oww-hoo-hoo ♪ [banjo music] I was living in Greenwich Village right on the Avenue, and I met there, a lot of the folkie people who became the big folk revival.

Folk music was ver alive in New York in the early 40s.

♪Now I wish I had a bushel wished I had a peck ♪ ♪ Wished I had old Hitler with a rope around his neck ♪ ♪ HEY!

Round, round Hitler's grave ♪ ♪ Round, round we go ♪ Gonna lay that poor boy down he won't get up no more ♪ FAITH: There was a woman named Elizabeth Lomax and they had lots of parties.

And the parties in New York would start at one and two o'clock after the bars closed, because the people who would come to play at these parties were Lead Belly... Woody Guthrie and Josh White.

[banjo music continues] And I was still very shy because they were so real and so wonderful, but that kept me in my interest in the music and in learning the songs.

And you'd go— there were lots of benefits for various things.

The Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee was still having benefits then —- There would be that kind of party.

♪ Hey!

Round round Hitler's grave ♪ ♪ Round, round we go ♪ Gonna lay that poor boy down, he won't get up no more ♪ [song fades out, foreboding tonal music fades in] FAITH: To this day, I frequently introduce myself as an— I say 'I'm a radical, I'm an old Red.'

[laughs] That sort of thing.

It just means my orientatio is to a world of more equality, of more fairness.

[foreboding music continues] But I didn't stay— Everybody says everyone stays in New York, but not me.

I like San Francisco and I wanted to come home, so I did, and I discovered when I got here that I was just a little bit pregnant.

Well, you don't— you know, a little bit doesn't stay a little bit.

So, I did what I thought to me was the conventional thing, because got a lot of basic, very very conventional parts to myself.

They may not show to everyone clearly, but they're there.

And I thought, 'if you're going to have a child out of wedlock, you did it in Mexico.'

[tender acoustic guitar] Where I got this bit of folklore, I don't know, bu there it was in my little head.

I don't want my family to know, so, I'm going to Mexico to have the child.

Altogether I was down there quite a bit less than a year.

ALEX CRAIG: It was hard.

She just had this room.

It's just bare.

And you can see how she tried to make it nice for her baby.

Faith somehow just sort of set her shoulders and got on with things.

[tender music continues] FAITH: We got a lovely place on the roof.

That's me and her and that's me and her.

On returning from Mexico, I remember coming back to San Francisco.

The prejudice in those days of being an unwed mother, it wasn't easy, it wa very very difficult emotionally.

I didn't feel I could tell people.

On the other hand, I did have a child.

[laughs] ALEX CRAIG: It wasn't an easy thing to do in 1945, to be a single parent.

She would work all day and then she would come home and she does laundry and she washes diapers and she tries to spend time with her baby and she was balancing a huge number of things.

FAITH: And I just think I wasn't really a very good parent in many ways.

My daughter says I must have done something right because she's turned out pretty well, and that's true.

This is the man I married, finally, Lubin.

Lubin Petric.

And I did marry him for two reasons.

One, to get a Mrs. in front of my name, which I thought was important.

And two, to get a father for Carole.

[light hearted acoustic guitar] Because I'd been moved around so much when I was little, I decided that we would stay right in one place so we stayed in San Francisco.

Carole had her grade school and high school and— all right here.

Then I got a job with the Housing Department of the federal government after the war and people were coming back and needed places to live.

FAITH: People would have parties, and I sang songs of working people, songs of union people, peace songs, radical songs, you know, songs that you hope will move people to action.

Let's talk a little bit about the McCarthy years.

Where were you, how did it affect you, who did you know?

What were some name names surrounding you?

-Oh dear, you wouldn't want me to name names to McCarthy!

[laughter] Oh no, can't do that.

[melancholy banjo tune] Are you now or have you ever been a communist?

ROBERT CHERNY: J Edgar Hoover and the FBI had a view of Communism as being part of a vast, highly disciplined conspiracy to overthrow democratic governments, and especially within the United States.

And if they could connec someone to being a member of the party that meant they were part of the Communist conspiracy.

The FBI had files on thousands and thousands of people.

["Which Side Are You On" sung by the Almanac Singers] - Many of the worlds that Faith touched would have made her suspect.

♪ Which side are you on ♪ ♪ Which side are you on FAITH: There was unionization, anti-lynching, and I worked for the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, which is really number one on McCarthy's list.

JUDITH SMITH: Labor, civil rights, anti-lynching, anti-fascism, those all became signs of un-Americanism.

If you had a Black friend, that made you suspect.

If you supported a civil rights organization, feminist organizations, these are all signs of disloyalty.

And it was a scary time, scary time.

The possibility of losing your job for sure.

My father lost his job.

Faith was right in the middle of this, herself.

The FBI had come to her home.

Raising Carole in that climate.

it was difficult for her.

CAROLE CRAIG: I was raised with this sense that — that you could all be hauled off to camps, and I was very afraid growing up.

I was terrified.

Having the FBI come to your door, which they did, or come to me when I came home by myself and said, "We'd like to come in and ask you questions about your mother," or hearing the clicks on the telephone.

Our phone was tapped.

I had a babysitter, I was very young.

She said, "Do what I say or I'll send your mother to prison."

I went to my mother thinking I'm gonna get rid of this babysitter cause I don't like her very much, and my mother saying, "Oh yes she could do that."

FAITH: My loyalty and my love for my country is that I want to make it even better.

We can do a lot better.

CAROLE: The kind of courage it took to hold onto your political principles in the 50s, which she did, to great financial cost to herself and to me, that's where I see the continuum of courage in my mother.

She didn't give up.

♪ It's blowing in the wind again ♪ in the rain ♪ In selecting music, the songs I sing, a lot of it is social commentary.

And music allows me to express where I'm coming from.

When I went to Selma, for that March from Selma to Montgomery, and the music that I heard that night before that march starts, that big church in Selma... [people sing and clap in rhythm] [laughs] one of the most tremendous things I ever heard.

[singing and clapping continue] ♪ Oh freedom ♪ over me, over me ♪ And before I'd be a slave ♪ I'll be buried in my grave I'd never heard anything like it.

And I— it was there that I realized that one of the uses of music, which now seems so obvious, to give people courage.

[rhythmic clapping continues] ROBERT CHERNY: This was television.

We had television news.

We could see what happened on the Selma Bridge.

People from all over the country, on their own, decided to go.

And unions organized groups to go.

Other kinds of voluntary organizations that were committed to civil rights organized people to go.

FAITH: So we did a benefit and raised some money for ourselves and a group of us went from San Francisco.

Here we were, marching on, hand in hand, Black and white people, hand in hand.

We marched out of Selma between two rows of military with their guns on their shoulders.

Dr. King was there.

I was told that they needed someone to answer the phone over at the church in Montgomery.

So I stayed another week and I stayed in this church and the Southern Leadership Conference, all those preachers were there, I would answer the phone and direct the calls to the right place.

What I would do at night, would just stretch out on one of the pews and sleep.

And I kept thinking to myself, here it was, hot in Montgomery, the windows were wide open, here was this march going on, and I was thinking it would be so easy for someone to throw a bomb in that window and blow up this church.

But I felt I had no— I had no choice.

I had to— [laughs] I had to be there.

I had to do that.

[tense music] The last night, and the woman was killed.

REPORTER: This is where it happened on Route 80.

The shooting took place just over the top of that hill up there last night.

FAITH: The woman was one of the white volunteers who had been using her car to transport people.

And on one of these errands, she was shot and killed.

CAROLE: I was in the television room at college and they announced for the news that a white woman had been killed.

There were about two and a half to three hours when I thought it was my mother.

I think they described the woman finally, and I think on the nin o'clock news they gave her name.

So, I knew it wasn't my mother.

And I was scared.

I mean, I really was scared for her, but I certainly wouldn't have wanted her not to go.

[audience clapping over instrumental flare] Faith Petric has been a mother, a political activist, and social worker, among other things, and she feels there are still so many things that she would like to do, that she says she'd have to be five people to get around to doing them all.

As a result of living on a small budget, she shares her San Francisco house with four tenants.

She also runs the San Francisco Folk Music Club in her home every Friday night.

A hundred people singing in the basement, in the attic, everywhere.

[banjo and fiddle tune] FAITH: I wish I could remember how I found the folk club club and got involved, but I actually don't, I remember being involved.

The club has had a continuous life since 1948.

I used to go fairly regularly and the person kind of running it was Herb Jaeger.

He decided to go back east for a while and he came and asked me if I would take over that job for the three months that he was gone.

Well, he was gone for three years and he wouldn't take it back when he came back.

(laughing) So here I was, I became the person kind of keeping the folk club glued together.

I got the newsletter started and I edited that for about 17 years.

Also, I got tired of calling up people and asking them to meet at their houses, so I got very brilliant, why don't we just have it at this house?

And that's what's been happening ever since.

There would be a hundred and fifty, a hundrd seventy-five five people here on a Friday night.

It is said that no folk singer hadn't slept at night at 885 Clayton on the floor.

It was a stopping place.

I visited and stayed at her house on Clayton Street.

I pulled up in front of her house as she was walking down the street with another woman.

The other woman turned out to be Ronnie Gilbert, a member of the Weavers.

[proud chuckle] [banjo music] San Francisco Folk Music Club was just sort of like another resident and another family member in this weird way.

And she cared about it so much that I remember as a child feeling jealous.

If the Folk Music Club was coming in that night, I had to do x, y, and z, wasn't allowed in the kitchen at this time.

I couldn't have a brownie unless I put a dollar in the kitty.

This is Folk Music Club stuff.

She even had a closet in her house that was totally built to accommodate 50 guitar cases on shelves.

There's a difference between being involved and being committed.

Faith was committed to folk music.

[group singing] ♪ Rain or shine ♪ ♪ sleet or snow ♪ ♪ me and my Donny gal ♪ are bound to go - This club has really been the ultimate classroom for all of us to practice tolerance and acceptance and find our sense of humor in this kind of crazy world.

I've been coming over 30 years now.

-The first time I went, I went with Malvina Reynolds, who needed a ride.

So the topic might be 'rivers.'

It was like a treasure hunt.

Everyone would go out and try to find the greatest song that nobody had ever heard about rivers.

[fiddle music] - There was the big room where there was a big song circle going on, but then there was the basement and the living room and people could have sub-groups and do different kinds of music.

- I didn't know which room to go into first.

Faith was in the center of it learning and teaching songs to us all.

[music from folk jam] ALEX: She was so protective of the Folk Music Club.

But that said the folkies and the experience was like really positive.

Then as I got older I just realized how happy it made Faith.

[group singing] ♪ Ha ha ha, you and me ♪ ♪ Little brown jug, how I love thee ♪ ♪ Ha ha ha, you and me ♪ ♪ Little brown jug, how I love thee ♪ [whoops and chatter] We have several hundred members.

People go camping together and then we put on the Free Folk Festival every year.

[faint banjo music] The club sponsors the hootenanny night.

-The Folk Music Club, to me, was about people getting together and taking control of their lives and their relationship with music and deciding that they were going to be creators of music rather than consumers.

-In a way what made it last was not the music but the community.

And I think that's what Faith did so well.

You know, she came from a small town in Idaho and I feel like she created a small town in San Francisco.

♪ Oh you can't scare me, I'm sticking with the union ♪ ♪ I'm sticking with the union ♪ ♪ I'm sticking with the union ♪ ♪ Oh you can't scare me, I'm sticking with the union ♪ ♪ I'm sticking with the union ♪ ♪ 'til the day I die [audience applause] The Fort Knox of Folk Music, Faith Petric.

-I remember Faith and Utah Phillips and I sitting around a picnic table at some festival, talking about our approaches to performance.

And Utah talked about a two-set concert being a two-act play.

It told a story, it had an arc.

And Faith said, "Well...

I understand that, but it's really about what we can all create together."

FAITH: Because I know so many songs, they want women's songs or lullabies or love songs or work songs, to me, almost every song is a political song It's telling us of the work that the people did and also the fragility of life.

♪ I went down the street, to the grocery store ♪ ♪ It was crowded with people both rich and both poor ♪ ♪ I asked the man how his butter was sold ♪ ♪ He said one pound of butter for two pounds of gold ♪ ♪ I said so long, it's been good to know ya ♪ - I think it was Pete Seeger who called it the 'folk scare.'

It started in the 40s.

People were coming home from the war like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and getting together and starting People's Songs, and starting the People's Songs bulletin in New York, but it was also very active in California.

That's when the Weavers started singing.

But then they got blacklisted and disappeared.

And it wasn't then until the 60s that it got to be out in public again the way it was when The Weavers were singing.

♪ If I had a hammer ♪ I'd hammer in the morning ♪ I'd hammer in the evening ♪ ♪ All over this land ♪ I'd hammer out danger ♪ ♪ I'd hammer out a warning ♪ ♪ I'd hammer out love between ♪ ♪ My brothers and my sisters ♪ ♪ All over this land ♪ -Folk music had become big business.

But there was a graphi difference than being in a crowd with a huge stage.

Well, the people were doing folk music because they enjoyed it, not because they were making money.

JUDITH SMITH: I think the way the music travels is both commercial and non-commercial.

The older left folk tradition and folk musicians didn't disappear, they recommitted themselves to continuing to circulate songs.

JOE HICKERSON: There was a type of person who still sat around and sang in informal settings.

I think I'm pretty well-known for not being a singer-songwriter, because it seems to me that the course of the things that I wanted to have a particular song about, somebody had already written a pretty good one, and I just didn't have to do it.

However, [laughter from Faith and the audience] I did find one topic that is uncovered and because of my age, I guess, people talk to me about it a lot.

I don't think this song is gonna become one of the top 40 but— [chuckles] but I wrote it and here it is.

[laughter and applause] ♪ Life begins when you retire ♪ ♪ you're free to do as you desire ♪ ♪ you've paid your dues ♪ ♪ now claim what's due ♪ ♪ your life, at last ♪ ♪ belongs to you ♪ [audience applause] FAITH: What happened was that I got my daughter through college when I was working for the state, and you could retire at 55, which I did without any idea about what I was going to do next.

It's just that I figured something would come along.

[guitar tuning] For some time, a number of us sort of talked about the idea of going across the country and singing and getting to know other folkies and other clubs and the like.

And this came to a fruition at one meeting here at my house, as a matter of fact it was in my kitchen.

We were standing and talking about the possibility of going in an old school bus.

Three of us agreed we would each put up $300.

So, it was a 'let's do it' decision being made right then and there.

[folk tune being strummed on a guitar] It was 15 people and 2 dogs who started out.

We came back with 18 people and three dogs.

We were out three months, which seemed terribly long for some people, but for me I didn't want to stop, I wanted to keep going.

I was, as I've frequently said, bit by the bug, especially at the Fox Hollow Festival.

It was a festival with lots of workshops and lots of concerts and it was a natural amphitheater where the stage was down at the base and the audience was in a big circle on a hill.

-There was a whole area where the performers and their families could put up their tents and invariably, spend the night singing.

And up top of the hill there was a gazebo, and we would gather there on Saturday night, in the dark sometimes, we couldn't even see who was singing.

One night, when we were playing there, I sang Bruce Phillips' song The Goodnight Loving Trail [harmonica playing] and I felt very very happy about singing this song because it was new, they hadn't heard it in the East, and as far as I knew I wa introducing this wonderful song that everybody would love.

And I remember standing on that stage in the absolute darkness, I couldn't see the audience, but I knew that they were there and their total stillness as they listened to this song and that was the moment, that was the moment I became a traveling folkie.

Changed my life.

Moments are able to do that sometimes.

[Utah Phillips singing] ♪ On the goodnight trail ♪ ♪ on the loving trail ♪ ♪ Our old woman's lonesome tonight ♪ ♪ Your French harp blows like a lone bawling calf ♪ ♪ It's a wonder the wind don't tear off your skin ♪ ♪ Get in there and blow out the light ♪ [harmonica plays over a folk band] FAITH: Being on stage met a tremendous amount of my emotional needs.

I could relate to people.

I could love them and they could love me, but it was safe They couldn't really get at you.

I would drive across the United States, I did it several times year after year.

I gave myself this job of taking songs that were well known here, and taking to the east where they hadn't heard them.

Taking songs from the east and bringing them back here, nobody else was doing that so I assigned myself to that.

The best part of my life has been those years since I was fifty-five years old.

Before that, I had jobs.

But to find a career in something as creative as singing.

Well it's been a lovely life.

I got more completely involved with folk music, and I've oh I do a column in Sing Ou— -That's right.

Your column for Sing Out, you've given a lot of young songwriters and a lot of songwriters a chance to be seen in print.

JOE HICKERSON: Well if you were involved with folk music, invariably, you would know about Sing Out.

Sing Out was a continuation, really, of what they had been calling The People's Artists, People's Songs.

It was THE magazine.

NANCY SCHIMMEL: She had a column of parodies that people all over the country who would send in.

And I heard songs from her that I didn't hear from anybody else.

-Any particular parodies that you want to share with us today?

- Well... gosh I'm still thinking Wobblies songs.

Why not a Joe Hill one?

♪ I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night ♪ ♪ alive as you and me But speaking of parodies'...

HOST: Mm-hm... [singing the same melody] ♪ I never lied, says she ♪ -Part of her charm was that people would say, 'Well, if she can sing I guess I can too.'

She didn't ever set herself up above other people and I'm the hoity toity performer and you guys are the in audience, it was 'let's do these things together.'

-Faith Petric!

[audience applause] NANCY LEVIDOW: She would create a magic in the audience, solidify everybody together and have the whole group acting like a big group with usually a funny or amusing, some kind of singalong song.

♪ We sit down to have a chat ♪ ♪ it's f-word this and f-word that ♪ ♪ I can't control how you young people ♪ ♪ talk to one another ♪ ♪ But I don't want to hear you use ♪ ♪ that f-word with your mother ♪ BOB REID: Well, Faith could be tactless.

She could be quite blunt.

I loved that about her, because she'd say, 'No!'

Or she'd tell somebody, 'You know what, that is not true.'

(laughing) Or... she'd say it using more graphic language.

♪ Now you may love the Lord as well as anybody can ♪ ♪ You may know the scriptures just as well as any man ♪ ♪ but you can't wear the cleric collar ♪ ♪ you can't hold the holy chalice ♪ ♪ you cannot serve communion all because you lack a phallus ♪ One, two, three, ♪ If you haven't got a penis then you cannot be a priest ♪ ♪This archaic stipulation should have long ago been ceased ♪ ♪Of God and faith and scriptures men and women♪ ♪both can talk ♪ What's more you serve communion with your hands ♪ ♪ and not your [beep] ♪ [whistles, applause and cheers from audience] Well that's certainly a revolutionary type of song.

The most interesting thing about my mother is that she kind of created herself.

This is a person who goes off and creates a reality, which is very very different than anything that she has been raised with.

[cheering and chatter as marching band plays] -When I really got to know her was through her touring with the New Old Time Chautauqua.

FAITH: For many years, see, I travele with a group called Chautauqua.

And we go usually out for a month in the Northwest and Canada.

I got brought into it because my mother wanted my daughter to go and I wouldn't have left my four year old with my mother for a month.

Not that she wasn't a great grandmother and, you know, they had an exquisite relationship, but just in terms of making sure that she hasn't gone down to the river and drowned.

My mom was not great on that.

And so, I started going.

-Chautauqua is a group of crazy performing hippies.

And a modern take on a movement that was aroun around the turn of the century.

She was introduced to the Chautauqua tour by Utah Phillips.

Please welcome our folk diva, the great Faith Petric.

[cheering and applause] ALEX: We'd go into nursing homes or jails or juvenile detention centers and do shows and also workshops.

So you might go to the local park and give juggling workshops.

But there might also be a— a workshop on birth control.

[circus music playing] FAITH: The idea was to take live theater into towns that otherwise might not have any.

I can remember someone, when we were in Salmon, Idaho, saying, 'What are you doing in Salmon, Idaho?

Nobody ever comes to Salmon, Idaho,' yeah that's the point.

-In every culture there's usually someone who like holds onto the songs, sings them, keeps them in their memory, kind of an elder, and in our case what we call a crone, someone, our crone, our favorite crone, her name's Faith Petric and she's from Idaho.

AUDUENCE MEMBER: YEAH!

I'm gonna be joined by my granddaughter who's from Ireland.

She flew over here all by herself just to come on Chautauqua and...

FAITH AND AUDIENCE: Boy are her arms tired!

[cheering and laughter] ALEX: She started bringing me onstage when I was still young enough that I wasn't really singing but I was really cute.

♪ Raggy bears, shaggy bears, baggy bears too ♪ And it was this great badge of pride that I would get to sing with her.

[cheering and applause] Life with my grandmother was always interesting, like oh I'm going to my grandmother's, we're gonna be traveling around and camping, we're gonna go to festivals and we're gonna go to some jails, we're gonna do some performances, then we're gonna help build some community gardens and maybe do some low-income housing and, we're also gonna go to some political protests and sing some songs.

Faith was so alive.

Faith just lived every moment.

-Well, I don't know— if you ask a woman her age, but I was just amazed... -I'm at the age you're proud of it, you brag about it.

I'm 92 years old!

[cheers and applause] [laughter] -I think she got kind of fed up with all this adulation for old age and she would be really disdainful of phrases like 'Oh, she's 80 years young.'

You know, she just thought that was full of it.

She said, 'well, if I can't celebrate being old now, when can I?'

So back in 1975, [strums guitar] Faith recruited me to form a band with her to go tour folk clubs in the British Isles that summer and, at that point, I was 24 and she was 60.

And I remember thinking she's 60 years old and she's still going around singing and playing for people.

[laughter from audience] Not thinking that she would be doing the same thing for most of the next 40 years after that.

-We are well met, my friends.

[laughs] [someone strums a guitar, Faith clears her throat] ♪ We are well met ♪ my friends ♪ in this place tonight ♪ though some of us are strangers ♪ ♪ to each other ♪ ♪ The many paths that led us here ♪ ♪ will mingle and unite ♪ ♪ as we walk down the same road together ♪ ♪ And so when the music starts ♪ ♪ open up your heart ♪ ♪ let it soar like a lark in early morning ♪ ♪ Sorrow, care, or fear ♪ ♪ tonight have no place here ♪ ♪ they will all soon disappear ♪ ♪ in the sound of singing ♪ Every time I've played here at the Freight and Salvage, she was always there.

And I remember the last time she didn't come to one of my shows.

She had broken her hip.

So I showed up there the next day.

She asks me to sing Solidarity Forever.

And she gets to the chorus and she raises her fist and she's singing at the top of her lungs.

(Faith and John singing) ♪ Solidarity Forever ♪ ♪ for the union makes us strong ♪ And someone comes in and tells us to be quiet.

She says, "Are you organized?"

Here she is, from her hospital bed making sure that the orderlies and the nurses are in a union.

That's Faith.

[women singing outside] [chatter of festival goers] [singing continues] -Hi Faith, How are you?

-Pretty good, thanks.

Now she was Faith, and as a result she challenged me to do that, you know, to be me.

[cheers and applause] BOB (cont.

): That life is our greatest creative act.

- There were singers with better voices than my mother.

I mean, you know, voices that you would cry hearing, not that she didn't have a good voice, she did.

But she didn't work on it tremendously and she didn't practice her guitar every day but she didn't have to because like people who have presence, she would get up there on the stage and she would both inhabit the song and bring that song to the people she was singing to.

[group singing] She was singing up to 6 weeks before she died.

It couldn't get better than that.

[group sings] ♪...study war no more...♪ -Faith's legacy is still alive.

Faith's legacy lives on in the connections she made between people and also connecting people to songs that they wouldn't have otherwise heard and then may go off and sing themselves.

The community of the Folk Music Club, I think because of Faith, it had a resilience that keeps it going.

[people chatting and singing] [people singing together] ♪...good night ♪ Irene goodnight ♪ ♪ Goodnight Irene ♪ ♪ goodnight Irene ♪ ♪ I'll see you in my dreams ♪ [singing fades] FAITH: Once I became a radical, I thought, well, by the time I'm thirty, everything will be done.

It'll all be taken care of.

There won't be anything more to do.

I just thought, once you explain it to people, how much better it would be if everybody had medical care, food, housing, a place to live.

There weren't any prejudices against people.

It's just a continuum.

I say the fact that we keep i alive is in itself our triumph.

[sings a capella] ♪ For all of life ♪ plays like a tune ♪ ♪ It sounds so sweet ♪ ♪ and ends too soon ♪ ♪ You'd better rosin up your bow ♪ ♪ before it's time to go ♪ ♪ If the fiddle strings felt no bow-stroke ♪ ♪ if the concertina bellows broke ♪ ♪ if no one sang or cracked a joke ♪ ♪ then where's the good in living?

♪ [applause] (Faith singing) ["Ain't Done Nothing If You Ain't Been Called a Red"] [musical flare]