Woody Guthrie’s approach to music wasn’t much different from that of the bluesmen, mountain musicians, and cowboy singers who came before him. He wrote and sang about life as he saw it. But thanks to the widespread exposure his music received through his traveling, radio performances, and recordings — as well as his no-frills guitar and harmonica playing — it became the foundation for American folk music as a popular style.
As an iconic musician and champion of the underdog, Guthrie hardly ever goes out of style — a few years ago, Billy Bragg and Wilco set two albums’ worth of Guthrie’s unrecorded lyrics to new music, to great critical acclaim. And now Guthrie is being honored by a group of singer-songwriters with "Ribbon of Highway/Endless Skyway: A Concert in the Spirit of Woody Guthrie," a tour that stops at the Somerville Theatre this Saturday. The line-up includes New England favorite Ellis Paul, as well as Jimmy LaFave, Slaid Cleves, Eliza Gilkyson, Johnny Irion, and Guthrie’s granddaughter Sara Lee Guthrie. They’ll be singing songs from Guthrie’s rich catalogue, interspersed with readings from his non-musical writings, and telling stories that spin a narrative about his life.
It’s perfect that Guthrie should be honored by a group of traveling troubadours at this particular time. He spent his 55 years telling stories of ordinary people and the trials imposed on them by government, industry, and nature. And his parables of the early Cold War, fascism-fueled conflicts, and the torments caused by corporate robber barons are as appropriate to our times as they were to the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s.
Born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma, he led a colorful life right from the start. His father was a prizefighter, guitarist, and banjo picker who settled into a trading-post and real-estate business during Oklahoma’s first oil boom. Guthrie began singing at age four and was surrounded by the music of his parents, of local Native Americans, and of immigrants who worked the oil fields. By the time he was 14, his father’s business had failed, his sister had died in a coal-stove explosion, and this mother was in an asylum. So young Guthrie hit the road.
He learned songs and wrote one or two a day of his own as he passed through labor camps and union meetings, across the dustbowl, and through the heart of the Great Depression. He joined the Merchant Marine during World War II, hearing songs from other nations as he sailed. He also wrote for communist newspapers and recorded and performed as often as possible. When he died in 1967 of Huntington’s chorea, an incurable disease of the central nervous system, he left more than 1000 published songs, and notebooks containing many more. Among his most famous titles are "This Land Is Your Land," "Pastures of Plenty," "Tom Joad," "Philadelphia Lawyer," "Do Re Mi," and "Roll On Columbia."
But the performances in "Ribbon of Highway" are reminders that Guthrie’s legacy is a living one, breathing with every singer who wraps his or her voice around his lyrics. "This is a way of showing people that Woody was a much bigger figure than people think, and that his music goes well beyond ‘This Land Is Your Land,’" says Paul. Indeed, Guthrie’s music has left a permanent mark on Paul, who bears a tattoo of the folk king on his right shoulder. "It’s sort of a reminder of what my mission is, a reminder to keep on the path," Paul says. On his latest album, The Speed of Trees (Philo), Paul also had the pleasure of setting one of Guthrie’s unrecorded tunes, the uplifting "God’s Promise," to music for the first time.
Oddly enough, the tour’s latecomer to Guthrie’s music is the artist’s own granddaughter, who, at 23, has been playing guitar and performing for just five years. "Like most people, I explored my granddad’s music through Bob Dylan before I heard his own records," Sarah Lee Guthrie says. And even then, those albums were borrowed from her father, folk performer Arlo Guthrie. "I was living in Los Angeles and mostly listening to punk music," she continues, "and I realized as I was listening to Woody that he had the punk spirit. Punk music has an attitude and is about questioning authority and being feisty, and that’s what Woody was about, too."
The "Ribbon of Highway/Endless Skyway" tour comes to the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, in Somerville, this Saturday at 8 p.m. Call (617) 628-3390.
