Arlo Guthrie: Folk’s elder statesman
PREVIEW
What: Arlo Guthrie When: Friday, 7:30 p.m. Where: University Centre Farquhar Auditorium (3800 Finnerty Rd.), University of Victoria Tickets: $55-$75 Note: Guthrie also performs Saturday in Duncan at the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre
Music has been one long, strange adventure for Arlo Guthrie. The folk singer and songwriter has not made the journey alone, keeping in range at all times his family, with more than a dozen musical members.
“The older you get, the more stuff there is to celebrate,” Guthrie, 69, said in an email interview with the Times Colonist. “So, like most families, we get together to do just that, except in our family, we take it on the road.”
Guthrie celebrated what would have been the 100th birthday of his father, Woody Guthrie, with a 2012 tour featuring three generations of Guthries. In 2016, he marked the 50th anniversary of his debut album, Alice’s Restaurant, with another celebratory tour featuring some of his children.
The tour that brings the folk favourite to Victoria for a performance Friday has no anniversary attached, but it is equally meaningful, Guthrie said.
“The family tour [in 2012] was really fun for everyone, and looking back, it was the last time we were able to tour together with my wife, Jackie, who passed away some weeks after the tour ended. So of course, for me and the kids, there’s an emotional reaction to remembering it all. We continue celebrating as much as we can.”
Guthrie’s son, Abe, is on board as a keyboardist for the Running Down the Road tour, which began in October and runs through May. On Friday, at the University of Victoria’s Farquhar Auditorium, Guthrie will play original material along with covers of songs by his father, Bob Dylan and Steve Goodman.
“I like singing the songs and doing the kind of performances that create a perspective — a way of looking at things,” Guthrie said of his setlist. “After all, folk music is the original social media. In that sense, it continues to be what it always was. And I, as a performer, get to create that stuff each night by creating a show out of all these bits and pieces.”
Guthrie has been involved with folk music, in one way or another, for more than 60 years. His father — the iconic singer, songwriter and rabble-rouser — bought Arlo his first guitar when the younger Guthrie was six, and by the time he was 13, Arlo was on his way to becoming a full-fledged artist. His children have now become part of the “family business,” which is partially run out of Guthrie’s sprawling farm in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts.
Woody Guthrie was hospitalized in New York for the last 15 years of his life, and succumbed to Huntington’s disease in October 1967, a month after Alice’s Restaurant was released, when Arlo was 20. In his father’s absence, Arlo developed a strong bond with Pete Seeger, whose relationship with Woody dated back to 1940. Seeger and others imparted their musical traditions to Arlo, whose art became a blend of orchestral pop, protestleaning folk and comical talking blues.
Guthrie now occupies the role of folk music’s elder statesman, and makes every effort to pass along what he has learned. “Pete Seeger used to say he thought folk singers were like links in a long chain. I think he made the right analogy.”
Guthrie hasn’t necessarily had it easy. Not only does the shadow of his father loom large, Arlo’s first hit, 1967’s Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, remains by far his biggest and best-known. Guthrie handles it all remarkably well, and continues to follow his own path, highlighting his history without exploiting it.
In some ways, his critically acclaimed discography remains vastly underrated by newer generations (Rolling Stone magazine included Alice’s Restaurant on its 40 Albums Baby Boomers Loved That Millennials Don’t Know list). Guthrie remains unfazed by his place in the pantheon, however. He is focused on what he can control.
“Awareness has always been important to me, personally. But it’s a balancing act. If you’re only aware of yourself, and miss the sunrises, sunsets, stars and phases of the moon and tides, you’re probably paying too much attention to yourself. And if you’re neglecting yourself, and only being aware of these other things, you’re probably not going to be much fun to be around. I enjoying being with people who balance it all as best they can, and who have a sense of humour. My father used to say: ‘This world is your world! Take it easy — but take it.’ ”
Guthrie is somewhat of an accidental activist, with a laconic delivery and optimistic manner of writing that seems almost subversive. While he doesn’t shy away from political commentary, he takes it on with a light touch befitting his gentle nature. In Guthrie’s music, sides are chosen, but hard lines are rarely drawn.
“Music is and has always been about everything. Love, loss, good, bad — it is the soundtrack of our lives. When people act more politically, the music reflects that. The music in our family has always been pretty hopeful. My daughter, Sarah Lee, is heading to Washington, D.C., with a bus full of people calling themselves ‘The Hoping Machine.’ In that sense we, as a family, continue to do what we do best.”
Songs that are outright political are less prominent today than at other points in history, despite the U.S. being at its most combative. Guthrie offers no solution — he ponders the issue with the same even-keeled perspective he does most other things.
“Turbulence is a normal part of anyone’s life — political, emotional, medical — whatever. The time to get really nervous is when everything goes too well for too long.
“People are still creating songs that are outspoken, but they’re not the kinds of songs you would see on TV or hear on the radio, for the most part. But they’re there for those who need to find them.”
Asked about roads not taken or opportunities missed, Guthrie noted that he once wanted to be a forest ranger. He’s still a preservationist of sorts. Among his many philanthropic pursuits are The Guthrie Center and The Guthrie Foundation, two community-building, inter-faith organizations run out of the Massachusetts church referenced in Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.
“I look back on choices I made as reference material. I don’t dwell on it a lot. But yes, I really did want to go into forestry as a profession. Until I became me.”