Arlo Guthrie pays homage to Woody GUTHRIE FAMILY LEGACY TOUR:
~ In concert Arlo Guthrie and the Guthrie F•Hy LecJacy Tour Where: Chan Centre, 6265 .Crescent Rd. at UBC When: Tomorrow night at 8 nckets: $25 to $46 at Ticketmaster BY JOHN P. MCLAUGHLIN MUSIC REPORTER
Woody Guthrie was a walking, talking, flesh-and-blood materialization of Steinbeck's Tom Joad from the dust-bowl epic The Grapes of wrath. Except this Tom Joad fought his fight against oppressive boss men and governments with a song and a guitar with the legend "This Machine Kills Fascists" slashed across its top. The night he saw the movie version of Steinbeck's classic, Guthrie wrote his famous "The Ballad of Tom Joad." He even named his second son Joady. Woody Guthrie was a hobo's hobo, a rambling, freighthopping, working-man's organizer and general agitator when agitating could get you thrown in jail with your head busted wide open quick as you could say "Bolshevik." He was a hero, back when the word actually meant something. When his first-born son, Arlonamed after the protagonist in a series of Swiss books- emerged as a singer-songwriter in the latter 1960s, that last name of his carried a lot of weight in the left-leaning folk-music world.
Travelling for a year, it's all about the extended family
Young Arlo had grown up with his daddy's friends like Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston and Hamblin' Jack Elliot and had learned a thing or two. He was best-known for the 18minute, 20-second narrative ·~ce's Restaurant," which told the tale of a littering infraction's impact on his draft hearing. It was funny stuff but packed a solid punch to the establishment's solar plexus, a fine turn for the young Guthrie boy. Now, a full40 years later, a 60year-old Arlo is at the tail end of his year-long Guthrie Family Legacy tour that celebrates the roots that have nourished him so richly. Accompanied by, among others, his s_o n Abe, daughter Sarah Lee, her husband Johnny Irion and their four-year-old daughter Olivia on ukulele, they are indeed about the father's business. It's comforting to think Woody is looking down at it all and smiling but, truth be told, he's probably too busy being a pain in the butt wherever he i's. He always was. ·~solutely," says Arlo. "And not just politically, I mean personally. Arlo Guthrie says his dad, Woody, was a major pain in the butt politically and·personally. But he did have a few great friends. It might have been volatile but he their own family, of course") but he sinated in 1990), but he grew up "And a lot of the families who really had people who absolutely was about eight years old when his essentially fatherless. In fact, his would come to hear us are also were connected with him on all · dad first went to hospital suffering parents were divorced because, he family. kinds of levels, guys like Cisco from incurable Huntington's says, the veteran's department "There is a very large family of Houston, Sonny Terry & Brownie Chorea. He'd be among family and wouldn't pay for Woody's care if he people with connections to each McGhee, Leadbelly or Pete Seeger. friends visiting every week, sitting was married. Nevertheless, Arlo has other that come to our shows and They had a lifetime of experiences around the lounge or out under a a powerful and inclusive sense of it's nice to see that their kids and with him, the Second World War, tree with banjos and guitars, singing family. grandkids are coming and the songs the Depression, the struggle fqr reg- the old songs. "Our farnily is made up of biolog- that nurture that large family are ular working people. That's a whole· • Woody also managed to come to ical family but we also have a very still relevant, they're part of the hislot." Arlo's bar mitzvah-Arlo's mother large extended family," he says. tory of who we are and where we Arlo does remember the little, was Jewish (and his teacher was "Pete Seeger is family, you know came from. We wanted to show that wiry, tightly wound Woody of l~g- young rabbi Meir Kahane, later the what I mean? I worked 30 years most doing this family tour." jpmac@gmx.net end ("except nobody's a legend in ~ ultra-ultra-orthodox Zionist ass~!>- with Pete. That's a long time.
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