Tag Archives: Wilco

Happy Birthday Woody

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By Robin Wheeler

I’ve been thinking about what to write all day. Nothing will be enough. Or it’ll all be way too much. But today, on the 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie’s birth, I can’t not at least articulate why the arrival of an infant a century ago means so much to me.

Lately I feel like I have to tell people that I’m not obsessed with Woody. I’m not. And no one’s accused me as such. This project has taken me into a deeper focus than any writing project I’ve ever done. I’m not completely sure why. Maybe I’ll know by the time I finish. Even though my Guthrie travels and research mean that my friends and family have been neglected (I’m sorry), I haven’t picked up my knitting in over a month, I’ve only read five books so far in 2012 (I’m usually up to 15 by now), my house is a mess, I can’t remember the last time I cooked a meal for my family, and it’s been well over a month since I’ve taken on any paying freelance work … okay, in that perspective, maybe I am obsessed. But I think I need to be right now. Not just in a fangirl way, but because learning about Woody has taught me things about myself that I don’t think I would have learned otherwise.

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“The Scribbling Really Did Stay” – Billy Bragg on Songwriting

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By Robin Wheeler

I shook hands with the lumberjack and we went our opposite ways. I never did get a real close look at him in the clouds; and when he walked away, his head and shoulders just sort of swum away in the fog of the morning. I had made another friend I couldn’t see. And I walked along thinking, Well, now, I don’t know if I’ll ever see that man again or not, but I’ll see a lot of men a lot of places and I’ll wonder if that could be him. “The House on the Hill” from “Bound for Glory”

While strangers might not have been so friendly (or interesting) in the hotel bar on Friday night, my decision to do some time in there was a good one in the long run. The emotional prophylactic of that sterile environment prepped me for the heart-bursting level of emotion that was Saturday.

Saturday morning, none of the issues that plagued my travel attempts to Lincoln Square on Friday night reappeared. Pretty sure the universe really wanted me to stay put that night. Arrived at the Old Town School of Folk with plenty of time to stake out a good spot for Billy Bragg’s workshop: “Why Write a Song?: Protest Music in the Digital Age.” Not that there was a bad spot; the audience was kept at around 100 people, hosted in an acoustically-perfect room, going 90 minutes instead of the allotted 60.

All that for $35. And I never would have known about it had I not called the box office, begging for concert tickets two weeks ago. Sometimes it pays to be a pest.

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Watching “Man in the Sand” on the Eve of Billy Bragg’s Woody Guthrie Tributes

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There’s no reasonable excuse for me taking 11 years to watch “Man in the Sand,” the documentary about the making of “Mermaid Avenue.” It’s been on Netflix streaming for years. The 3-CD “Mermaid Avenue” re-release that I bought in April includes a DVD of the film.

I love music documentaries. Why haven’t I watched the one about the music I love the most? Because I’m avoidant. That’s the only excuse I can conjure. Fear that it’ll disappoint, or ruin the myth.

But today, I’m watching it, since I’m leaving for Chicago early in the morning. On Saturday I’ll be seeing Billy Bragg performing Woody Guthrie songs at the Old Town School of Folk. That morning? A songwriting workshop with Bragg.

I need to brush up.

In the first few minutes of the movie, Nora Guthrie narrates that she asked Bragg to do this project to “look for the man behind the myth with me.” And then she utters what has become my favorite words from Woody: “My dad would only say, ‘All you can write is what you see.”

Okay, I’m in.

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Billy Bragg Tours For Woody’s Birthday

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Billy Bragg‘s worked so hard to breathe life into Woody Guthrie’s unfinished songs, and kept his rebel spirit alive through his entire career. So of course he’s not letting Guthrie’s centennial go unnoticed. He announced earlier this year that he and Wilco will be re-releasing their “Mermaid Avenue” albums, along with a new collection of Woody Guthrie songs recorded during the sessions.

Last week I heard rumblings about two Billy Bragg tributes to Woody at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk in June.

Just the tip of the iceberg; Bragg’s doing a short summer U.S. tour featuring his take on Guthrie’s songs, including the second night of the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma on July 12, according to Bragg’s website and Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Appropriately, he’s calling it “The Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me Tour,” taking a line from Guthrie’s composition, “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key”. During our recent visit to Okemah, my friend Aimee and I entered the town singing the song’s first line: “I live in a place called Okfuskee,” a nod to Okemah’s county.

I’m planning to be at the Chicago and Okemah shows. Here’s the other places you can catch him:

Billy Bragg’s The Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me Tour:

June 22: Old Town School of Folk, Chicago, IL (According to Bragg’s site, he’ll also be playing the same venue on the next night.)
June 24: The Ark, Ann Arbor, MI
June 26: Birchmere, Alexandria, VA
June 28: Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MA
June 29: Stone Moutain Arts Center, Brownfield, ME
June 30: The Music Hall, Portsmouth, NH
July 1: Higher Ground, South Burlington, VT
July 10: Barrymore Theatre, Madison, WI
July 12: Okemah Festival, Okemah, OK
July 13: City Winery, New York, NY
July 15: Avalon Theatre, Easton, MD

“Walt Whitman’s Niece” and “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again”

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Mermaid Avenue

Lest you fall into the trap of thinking Woody Guthrie is all political seriousness and no fun, spend a little time with “Walt Whitman’s Niece” and Joe DiMaggio.

Guthrie wrote the lyrics, but never recorded the song. Organized by Woody’s daughter Nora, Billy Bragg and Wilco collaborated on “Mermaid Avenue” in 1998, the first of two albums of previously-unrecorded Guthrie compositions. It opened with the tale of a bawdy tale that may or may not have included the great poet’s niece.

Two years later, with a second volume, Guthrie wrote the second best baseball poem in American history – after “Casey at the Bat,” of course, with “Joe DiMaggio Done it Again”.