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Friday, October 17, 2003
Arlo Guthrie Has New Following
By Mark Oswald
Of the Journal
Arlo Guthrie, the folk music legend who's the son of the folk music legend, says more young people are paying attention to his kind of music these days.
Now 56, Guthrie is best known for his '60s and '70s heyday, when you could argue about whether Arlo Guthrie or Bob Dylan sounded more like Guthrie's father.
That would be the late American icon and rambling troubadour Woody Guthrie, composer of "This Land is Your Land," "Do Re Mi" and numerous other highlights of the nation's folk music canon.
On his own, Arlo first succeeded with his hippie-era, 18-minute-long, draft-dodger talking blues anthem "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," which was turned into a major Hollywood movie (with Guthrie himself in a starring role).
There was also an appearance at Woodstock and a series of wonderful '70s albums— and even a hit single or two— with contributions from the best pickers and songwriters of the decade.
"When I first started singing, a lot of my audience was people in their 40s and 50s who were my dad's peers," Guthrie said in a recent phone interview from his home in Massachusetts. "They really came out just to see what Woody Guthrie's kid was doing. Then my own age crowd started to show up, along about 'Alice's Restaurant.' ''
"And that's pretty much been my audience, my own age group, the baby-boomer generation types. But in the last five or six years, there's a whole flock of younger people discovering the kind of stuff that we do for the first time."
Musical interaction
Guthrie said there was "a certain interaction among musicians and musicianship" that was characteristic of music from 30 or 40 years ago— even by rockers like the Rolling Stones— that young people are responding to again.
"It doesn't really exist in a lot of the stage shows today, which are more visual with a lot of pre-recorded stuff and dancing," he said.
"But I think there's a lot of young people who are now getting interested in the feeling of how musicians play with each other and interact with the audience," he said. "That was the whole thing with my dad or some of the new bands like Phish. It's not as interesting visually, but it's more about being real and playing in the moment.
"People love to hear someone sort of making it up as they go, not just jamming all the time but playing songs that they love."
"There really does seem to be a lot of young people interested in that feeling of, I don't know, how the musicians play with each other and have a relationship with the audience. You don't get that a lot in the techno-pop world."
Guthrie now performs with various configurations of musicians, usually including one or more of his own children. And unlike the often-standoffish Dylan, Guthrie's shows are definitely about making contact with the audience— not only through his music, but with between-song tales, warmly told with a stand-up comic's sense of timing.
A recording of a Guthrie show from Oklahoma City late last year reveals him alternately getting laughs and cheers with stories of being stunned and stoned at Woodstock, of parenthood, the Nixon resignation, Dylan, his father's legacy (including Woody's theft of a tune or lyric here and there) and songwriter Hoyt Axton's barroom brawling skills.
And that's in addition to the great songs— "City of New Orleans," "Coming Into Los Angeles" and "This Land is Your Land" (with verses his father couldn't get on record), delivered with skill and heart.
Still recording
He's still making the recordings, now on his own Rising Son label. The latest is a collection called "Banjoman," a tribute to Derroll Adams, a American folkie who went to Europe with Ramblin' Jack Elliott in the 1950s and became a permanent expatriate.
Guthrie describes Adams, who influenced performers on both sides of the Atlantic, as "a wild man, Zen Buddhist singer and songwriter, and a drunk." A diverse group including Donovan and Dolly Parton joined Guthrie for the CD project.
Dad's spirit
Guthrie said he always runs into a few of his father's old friends whenever he plays New Mexico or other parts of the Southwest, in part from acquaintances made while the Guthries lived in the Texas Panhandle. "Some of those folks come with their kids and grandkids," he said.
In addition to the new group of younger fans, Guthrie said, he plays "to folks who maybe haven't seen each other for awhile and who have a lot in common."
"It's nice to rekindle some memories about you and me and who we are as a country and where we're going, but not with a lot of doom and gloom, and coming away feeling life is good."
"I love continuing the spirit of my dad's work," he said, "which was dedicated to making people feel good about who they are and what they think and what they do."
Arlo Guthrie
TAOS: 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Taos Community Auditorium
SANTA FE: 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, with opening act Michelle Shocked
HOW MUCH: $25 in Taos, $21-$31 in Santa Fe; call (505) 737-2411 in Taos; 988-1234 in Santa Fe