Category Archives: Pete Seeger

There Once Was a Union Maid Who Never Was Afraid

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“Then more settlers trickled West, they said in search of elbow room on the ground, room to farm the rich topsoil; but, hushed and quiet, they dug into the private heart of the earth to find the lead, the soft coal, the good zinc. While the town of people only seventeen miles east of us danced on their roped-off streets and held solid weeks of loud celebrating called the King Koal Karnival, only the early roadrunners, the smart oil men, knew that in a year or two King Koal would die and his body would be burned to ashes and his long twisting grave would be left dank and dark and empty under the ground – that a new King would be dancing into the sky, gushing and spraying the entire country around with the slick black blood of the industry’s veins, the oil – King Oil – a hundred times more powerful and wild and rich and fiery than King Timber, King Steel, King Cotton, or even King Koal. – “Empty Snuff Cans” from “Bound for Glory”

(Since this week marks the 100th anniversary of Mother Jones being hauled to jail at age 86 for protesting mining conditions in West Virginia, seems like a good time to finally write about visiting her grave in Mt. Olive, Illinois, last July.)

July 3, 2012 On the eve of our nation’s birthday, I did the most American thing I could find: I drove by myself through rural Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, in search of Woody Guthrie at a Wilco concert with my friends Sam, Brianne, and Paul. I’ve made lots of drives north on I-55 through the sprawl of crops and wind farms. It’s necessary to get to Chicago, and to my in-laws in Michigan, friends in Peoria. And this time, a town on the Illinois-Iowa border. In nearly 15 years of making these drives, I’ve never followed the signs near Mt. Olive, indicating the Mother Jones memorial. Mostly because I had no idea what it meant or who she was beyond the brief biographies in my feminism books – badass old lady who gave what-for to people who needed it. Which, really, should be enough for me. Hell, Congress called her “the grandmother of all agitators,” so I have no excuse for slacking on my Mother Jones learning.

By this point in the Guthrie project, I knew enough to realize that Mother Jones was the original union maid, fighting for the same workers rights years before Woody was even born. Without Mother Jones, there might not have been a Woody Guthrie. And there would have been fewer miners and workers; her fight for safer, humane working conditions saved more lives than we can begin to fathom.  Continue reading →

I Stand Alone in My Back Door and That’s Something I Never Did Before.

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“She’d come to the office where Papa was, and she’d set down and turn through the magazines and papers, looking at all of the pictures. She liked to look at pictures of the mountains. Sometimes she’d look at a picture for two or three minutes. And then she’d say, “I’d like to be there.” – “Boy in Search of Something” from “Bound for Glory”

I have no idea how to be alone.

This is a relatively new development. Growing up without siblings, I never felt like I was missing anything, content to spend my time alone in my room with my books and records. The characters I met in songs and books, or concocted in my head, interested me far more than anyone I’d ever met. I was an unshy introvert – personable and friendly, but requiring my solo time, which people didn’t seem to understand.

Now, I consider myself a forced extrovert – an introvert by nature who contorted to extrovertism long enough to perfect it. It’s worked well for me. No doubt by ability to talk to anyone about damn near anything has served me well in this project, and in my life in general. But after all these months of crowds and events, coupled with having lived with my family since 1999, I’m ready for some alone time.

My friend Kate’s mother splits her time between St. Louis and a cottage in the Catskills a few miles from Woodstock, New York. When she’s in St. Louis, she lets artists and writers use her Woodstock house as a retreat. Months ago Kate brokered the details for a week-long stay for me at her mother’s. By myself. In the dead of winter.

It sounded like the most wonderful and terrible thing, being alone on a mountain for a week, finishing this project. So of course, I did it.

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Seen a Billion, Jillion Faces That are New York Town to Me

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Brooklyn. Saturday, September 22.

“Walk out on ‘em?”

“Goddammit! I jes’ had ta walk out, Will! Couldn’t take that stuff!”

“Goin’ ta keep pullin’ them one-man walkouts till you’ve ruined all of y’r chances here in New York. Better watch y’r step.”

“Will, you know me. You know dam good an’ well I’d play fer my beans an’ cornbread, an’ drink branch water, ‘er anything else ta play an’ sing fer folks that likes it, folks that knows it, an’ lives what I’m a singin’ ’bout. I’m all screwed up in my head. They try ta tell me if I wanta eat an’ stay alive, I gotta sing their dam old phony junk!”

“You’d just naturally explode up in that high society, wouldn’t you, But, money’s what it takes, Woody.”

- “Crossroads” from “Bound for Glory”

Brooklyn College, September 22. Another Woody at 100 tribute concert, formatted much like the first show in Tulsa last March: a pack of artists of all levels of success and ages, playing a couple of Guthrie’s songs, collaborating. Judy Collins opened on acoustic guitar with her classic take on “Pastures of Plenty,” much like we’d heard it that afternoon.

I’d never heard of Mike + Ruthy from Woodstock, New York, before the show. A darling young couple with a newborn at home, they channel Guthrie’s spririt and Carter Family stylings on “Union Maid,” “Vigilante Man,” and “Dust Bowl Blues” before presenting their reworking of his little-known “My New York City.”

It’s Guthrie’s love song to his adopted hometown, the town that has so often been neglected in the glossy version of his biography. We know Woody in Oklahoma. Woody in California. But this was Woody’s life for many years, the place he chose to be. The place he stayed. His train was a subway, not a westbound freighter.

Among the audience and performers, the love for their adopted son bleeds strong. The audience shared Dave Marsch’s sentiment from earlier in the day with a surprising number of tears. Is this New York City? Brooklyn? Toughest city in the country, brought to tears over a death too soon nearly a half-century ago?

If so, I really do want to stay.

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The Forward From the Top Floor Corner

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My dear friend Kim Gutschmidt, who’s been in my life since 2000, is one of the most well-read people I know. She devours books, and processes them better than just about anyone. This is a woman who’s been known to hold a book with one hand while scrubbing her bathroom floor with the other. I’ve been so excited to read her take on “Bound for Glory.” You’ll hopefully have the opportunity to read lots from her, as she’s planning to write about each chapter on her blog, Top Floor Corner.

Kim’s a Mississippi native, but has lived in Magdeburg, Germany, for … what? Fifteen years? She shares her life with her husband. And it’s an interesting life full of love, spread across continents. Every few years, when she visits her family in Mississippi, I try to make the trip to Memphis to spend some time with her. It’s always a riot of barbecue and laughter when I’m with Kim. And knitting. Lots of knitting.

Kim and I have a running joke that we’re identical cousins: We laugh alike, we walk alike, at times we even talk about. You could lose your mind. Really.

Here we are at Corky’s in Memphis in 2007. Kim’s on the left, and I’m just happy to be there. On the road to spend time with an amazing person: best thing ever.

Here’s Kim’s take on Pete Seeger’s “Bound for Glory” foreward. You can read what she said about it on her blog, too. - Robin

The edition of Bound for Glory that I have has a foreword written by the great singer/songwriter Pete Seeger.  I don’t know when he wrote it but I assume it was shortly after Woody’s death in October, 1967.  I was also made aware that after the film, Bound for Glory, was released in 1976 the book, Bound for Glory, was re-released and Studs Terkel also wrote a foreword for the book.  I’d be interested in Stud’s take on Woody and his book as he was another champion of working people.

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“All You Can Write is What You Can See”

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By Robin Wheeler

My friend and Oklahoma travel partner Aimee Levitt published some excellent Woody Guthrie coverage culled from our trip for St. Louis’ Riverfront Times. Makes for an excellent primer for those wanting to learn more about Guthrie. And it’s just damn good writing.

I’ve already written my professional and somewhat unbiased takes from the University of Tulsa’s Woody 100 symposium and the first This Land is Your Land tribute concert. I’m still trying to process and convey the emotional impact of the weekend in Oklahoma.

Right. Who comes away from an academic symposium all emotional? I do. It’s a powerful thing, being in a room with so many people who care about the exact same minutia you do. We’re all conductors of energy, and by the end of the day it felt like we could stage a populist revolution, Okie-style. And I wish we had. But we were pretty tired. The will was there, though.

With our brains full, Aimee and I skipped the final panel – an artists’ roundtable – and made a last-ditch trip to the Gilcrease Museum, which was hosting a Guthrie-related exhibit. I hadn’t done much research on it. Not that it would have been difficult, since the museum has the collection online.

I had no idea what to expect, which made it all the more amazing.

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Pete Seeger’s Tribute to Woody Guthrie

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So, everyone’s busy reading, right?

I usually knock out at least two books a month, but I’m snail-slogging along through “Bound for Glory”. Not because of any flaws in the book itself; blame my time management and my incessant note-making. This project makes me feel like I’m back in my undergraduate days, trying to suck the details from every word I read.

This is why I didn’t finish my undergraduate degree.

I’m reading the book in a most ironic way – on a Kindle. I know, I know …. bad for small bookstores, probably bad for authors, and right now, more difficult than I anticipated when it comes to finding the notes I’ve made. Lesson learned: can’t beat a highlighter and paper.

It’s been nearly a month since I read Pete Seeger‘s eulogy to Woody that opens the book.
Which reminds me: why don’t we treat Seeger like the living legend he is? That’s probably a subject broad enough for another project.
Anyway, Seeger’s words about Guthrie warm me and remind me why we’re doing this project: Continue reading →