Tag Archives: Woody Guthrie tributes

I Fully Aim to Get My Soul Known Again as the Maniac, the Saint, the Sinner, the Drinker, the Thinker, the Queer.

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 I don’t know why I didn’t tell them I had a guitar up yonder hanging on that tree. I just reared back and soaked in every note and every word of their singing. It was so clear and honest sounding, no Hollywood put-on, no fake wiggling. It was better to me than the loud squalling and bawling you’ve got to do to make yourself heard in the old mobbed saloons. And instead of getting you all riled up mentally, morally and sexually  - no, it done something a lot better, something that’s harder to do, something you need ten times more. It cleared your head up, that’s what it done, caused you to fall back and let your draggy bones rest and your muscles go limber like a cat’s. – “The Telegram that Never Came” – from “Bound for Glory”

 

My husband knows everything I do, and he doesn’t mind.

He doesn’t mind that I’ve run around the country, chasing Woody Guthrie.

If he traveled for his work, would you tell him what a good, patient, loving, generous wife he had for letting him do his job? Probably not.

I get told that all the time. I do agree that he’s all those things, but it bothers me that men with those traits are still considered “special” when they should be considered “normal.”

He doesn’t mind that I’m fat.

Do I get pitying looks for having a spouse he’s chubbier, grayer, and sleepier than he was in 1998 when we met? No. So why should he?

He doesn’t mind that I’m a social butterfly, gregarious, and tend to fall into flirtation without even realizing it. When he does the, he’s considered charming.

He doesn’t mind that I have parts of my life that have nothing to do with him or our daughter.

How lucky am I to have such an understanding husband?

That’s not luck; that’s the way it should be. From both sides.

He doesn’t mind that I took a Saturday to indulge in the offerings of the West Village.

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Got No Fear in Life. Got No Fear in Death.

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I walked along, the day just leaving out over the tops of the tall buildings, and sifting through the old scarred chimneys sticking up. Thank the good Lord, everybody, everything ain’t all afraid. Afraid in the skyscrapers, and afraid in the red tape offices, and afraid in the tick of the little machine that never explodes, stock market tickers, that scare how many to death, ticking off deaths, marriages and divorces, friends and enemies; tickers connected and plugged in like juke boxes, playing the false and corny lies that are sung in the wild canyons of Wall Street; songs wept by the families that lose, songs jingled on the silver spurs of the men that win. Here on the slummy edges, people are crammed down on the curbs, the sidewalks and the fireplugs, and cars and trucks and kids and rubber balls are bouncing through the streets. I was thinking, “This is what I call bein’ burned an’ a-livin’; I don’t know what I call that big high building back yonder that I left.” – “Crossroads” from “Bound for Glory”

 

New York City’s not nearly as intimidating the second time, especially when taking the same flight as before and staying in the same hotel, knowing how to go about getting a cab with a driver who knows how to get to said hotel. It lowers the adventure factor, but after seven months of traveling, I’m nearing my adventure quota.

It’s the last weekend in October, and this trip should be simple. Two concerts in the same location - Pace University on the Lower East Side – on two different nights. Plenty of time to travel, get lost, get found, explore, and sleep, when I’m not immersed in Justin Townes Earle and Joe Pug.

My mother wasn’t quite as convinced that I was going to be murdered to death this time in New York. I’d like to think it’s because I turned 40 a week earlier and in that time have kept myself and the person I made with my body alive and well.

No, that wasn’t it. This time, she was convinced I was going to be decimated by the hurricane slowly climbing the eastern seaboard in a grim race with the blizzard creeping east over Ohio.

“Please tell me you’re going to cancel this trip,” she sighed into the phone the day before I left.

I’m no fool, Mama,

I know the difference

Between tempting

And choosing my fate.

Of course I’m not canceling. Not even an option. I grew up in Tornado Alley. With my mother. Fleeing for cover with a few seconds notice? Second-nature. The hurricane and blizzard are days away and trackable.

Woody Guthrie arrived in New York City during one of the worst blizzards in the city’s history. He did just fine.

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Maybe We’ll Have All the Fascists Out of the Way by Then. Maybe So.

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“I’m not personally in the money-lending business. It would be against the law for me to lend you money without letting the governor know.”

 

“Th’ gov’ner? Shucks, me ‘n’ th’ gov’ner’s always goin’ aroun’ with our hands in each other’s pockits. Big friends.” – from “A Fast-Running Train Whistles Down” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Among other things you can’t do in the Kennedy Center: you can’t take pictures.

I wasn’t even trying to take a picture during the show. I’d arrived at my seat, after finally meeting Andie, my contact at the Grammy Museum who helped get me into so many events for this project. So many that upon meeting, we hugged like old pals.

But even that connection didn’t spare me from getting a tap on the shoulder as I raised my phone to take a photo of the auditorium as people filed in.

“No photography in the Kennedy Center,” the usher sneered.

I hate arbitrary rules.

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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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This Dusty Old Dust is Blowing Me Home

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Dust didn’t blow me home. It was the threat of tidal waves that did it.

I split on one of the last flights from La Guardia Sunday night, a hurried and frightened end to seven months of chasing Woody Guthrie’s legacy around the country. It ended just as  haphazard and wild as everything else on this trip. More so, even, if that’s possible.

A request: I don’t know how many people got this URL from scribbled pieces of paper ripped from my notepad through the course of my travels, since I never got around to getting real business cards. I’m thrilled to have forged friendships with some of you already. Others, I miss.

The guy who talked to me before Saturday’s Justin Townes Earle show – I want to hear about the Dylan concert, and find out how a native New Yorker has such a heartland soul. You left so fast after the show, and I chased after you – chased! I never chase people. Maybe you left so fast to get away from the motormouth writer. But I want to hear your stories.

Heather in Washington, DC, who brokered a more-than-fair Craigslist ticket deal: I want to hear your Old Crow Medicine Show stories, and find out what brought a couple my age into the AARP Meeting at the Kennedy Center.

The ladies who sat with me at that night’s hootenanny – I want to sing folk songs with you and conduct covert ticket deals in stairwells any day of the week.

Foofie and Rebecca, I want to know you’re safe from the storm.

My table mates at the Old Town School of Folk Billy Bragg show: my dog is still out of control. Please teach me.

The great-grandparents from Oklahoma City I met at Woodyfest who bought me beers – I want to know if your great-grandbaby made it. You have weighed on my heart since I met you.

People who came here via Kickstarter, I owe you everything.

Everyone. If you met me in my travels and you’re reading this because we crossed paths, please email me. robindawn@gmail.com. Or leave a comment. Not because I want to suck what I can from you for this project, but because I’m starting to grieve.

Starting to realize that maybe not every day will find me stranded in an airport, waiting for the storm of the century, sitting beside a pediatrician who just happens to work at a free clinic for the children of migrant workers in Michigan, willing to talk about what she sees every day, and how it all fits into this picture. Continue reading →

If an Atom Bomb Hits New York It’ll be New York No More

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“What will be your first selection, Mr. Guthrie?”

“Little tune, I guess, call’d New York City.” And so I forked the announcer out of the way with the wiry end of my guitar handle and made up these words as I sung:

 

This Rainbow Room she’s mighty fine

You can spit from here to th’ Texas line!

In New York City

Lord, New York City

This is New York City, an’ I really gotta know my line! – “Crossroads” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Although the good folks at the Grammy Museum had set me up with a free ticket for Saturday night’s Woody at 100 tribute concert, I was a bit panicked about the first-come, first-served nature of the day’s symposium at Brooklyn. Even more panicked about the transportation issue.

Let me repeat: don’t be fooled by the TV and movies. Cabs aren’t ever-present. Turns out, they’re illegal in all the boroughs except Manhattan. I learned this late Friday night while trying to figure out how to get myself to Brooklyn College the next morning. Not confident in my ability to not flub public transportation, I arranged a car service. Which I hate. It’s a plain car that costs twice as much as a cab. Basically paying to not be seen in a bright yellow vehicle that exclaims, “Hey! I don’t have a car of my own!”

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Where the Beer Flows to the Ocean

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(Don’t forget – still fundraising to finish my research. I’m a smidge over halfway to my goal. Pledge if you can! Spread the word!)

“I been needin’ a little drink ta ease me on down ta Chicago.” I wiped my hand across my face and smiled around at everybody. “I shore thank ya fer thinkin’ ’bout me.” I took the bottle and smelled of the gasoline. Then I sailed the bottle over a dozen men’s heads and out the door.” – “Soldiers in the Dust” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Obviously, this blog ceased being chronological a long time ago. Events this summer came faster than I could write about them. Not a bad problem for a writer to have, although I’m not thrilled to have things so disjointed.

But sometimes, waiting works. I’ve been trying to write about my trip to Chicago to see Tom Morello on May 19, the night before the NATO convention and ensuing protests for three months, but have been in too much of a dead run capturing other events to do so.

Lucky me – I procrastinated long enough to make my Morello post relevant.

Gen X music nerds (hello) and guitar geeks know Morello as lead guitarist of politically-charged Rage Against the Machine. Here they are in 1999:

Current union supporters and people protesting on behalf of the 99% know him as The Nightwatchman – the personae he uses for his acoustic protest music. He’s been a fixture at Occupy camps and protests and union events.

When I interviewed Sarah Lee Guthrie last April, and saw her aunt, Nora, speak in early May, they both said the same thing about Morello: he’s the current embodiment of Woody Guthrie’s spirit.

Here he is two days before the NATO convention at the National Nurses United Rally in Chicago, after Chicago city and NATO officials almost denied the union their protest permit if Morello attended :

This one-man revolution? Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan claims Morello’s former band is his favorite. Last week, Morello said, “I don’t think so, Paul.”

I missed the nurses, but I still got a taste of the fervor. It was delicious.

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Hard Travelin’, Hard Ramblin’, Hard Gamblin’

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I never did make up many songs about the cow trails or the moon skipping through the sky, but at first it was funny songs of what all’s wrong, and how it turned out good or bad. Then I got a little braver and made up songs telling what I thought was wrong and how to make it right, songs that said what everybody in that country was thinking.

 

And this has held me ever since. - “Boy in Search of Something” from “Bound for Glory”

It all boils down to those songs, which continue to inspire and, unfortunately, are often still relevant. In all the Guthrie tributes I’ve attended, not one sounded like a throw-back, nostalgic hootenanny. It’s all here and now.

Let’s review:

July 11 – Drove from Belleville, Illinois, to Salpulpa, Oklahoma.

July 12 – Drove the long way to Okemah. Met Woody Guthrie’s sister. Hung out with my busker pal, Peter. Stole stuff (and have since been busted. Thanks, Internet!). Drank beer with my elders. Had another Billy Bragg encounter. Drove back to Salpulpa. When I was back at my hotel, I had to do the math to understand that no, I hadn’t met Woody’s sister three days earlier; it just felt like it because so much had happened.

July 13 – Yelled at a reporter, drove the seven hours to St. Louis, went straight to Corey Woodruff’s “New Years Rulin’s” Woody Guthrie photo exhibit opening. Was a social butterfly until my exhausted husband, who was falling asleep at our table despite having led a normal, rational day, drug my ass home at midnight because honestly Robin, you have got to get some sleep because you’re delirious and can’t shut up.

July 14 – I should sleep in. Take it easy. Maybe entertain the notion of a really, really long shower to wash all those miles, 100+ degree heat, and Oklahoma dirt off me. Not that I hadn’t bathed in that time, but when you run at that rate, it all just digs in deeper.

I did sleep. But with it being Woody’s actual birthday, I had to write. So I wrote. A great big dump of my brain and my soul, trying to articulate why I’m doing this project. And I’m glad I did. That little bit of groggy afternoon writing has landed in some pretty amazing hands.

That wasn’t all I had to do. For months I’d had Woody’s birthday marked on my calender for “Just One Big Soul: Woody Guthrie’s 100th Birthday Party.”

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I Remember a Big Blue Rug, But I Can’t Say Which Rug

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I remember one little girl that come in from the country. She blowed into town one day from some thriving little church community, and she wasn’t what you’d call a good-looking girl, but she wasn’t ugly. Sort of plump, but she wasn’t a bit fat. She’d worked hard at washing milk buckets, doing housework, washing the family’s clothes. She could milk an old Jersey cow. Her face and her hands looked like work. Her room in the rooming house wasn’t big enough to spank a cat in. She moved in, straightened it up, and gave it a sweeping and a dusting that is headline news in an oil boom town. “Boy in Search of Something” from “Bound for Glory”

In processing my Oklahoma trip, one thing keeps coming to me: the importance of memory. Not as in remembering where I parked my car, or remembering that my daughter’s day camp ends at 3, not 3:30 (although that one was pretty important on Tuesday). Memory in bigger terms.

Being remembered by Billy Bragg made me feel more important than I care to admit. But it’s the truth. I don’t know why he remembered me. Could have been for positive or negative reasons.

What matters is I was remembered. Something about me was unique enough to merit a spot in the brain of this person I admire who has absolutely no obligation or reason to remember me.

I also spent a lot of time, especially while cooped up in the driver’s seat by myself, wondering why this project is important to me. Why is it important to – here’s that word again – remember Woody Guthrie a hundred years after his birth?

No, I don’t have an answer. I have a lot of answers, all right and wrong and everywhere in between. They all boil down to one stupidly simple thing:

It’s important to be remembered.

Not just for our egos, either. If you’re remembered, you’ve done something or been someone who has left a mark. Hopefully a positive one. We all leave marks, trails made of bits other people pick up along the way, tuck into their pockets. Lots of those bits get lost in the wash. Except for the important ones we care to protect.

It’s not special to be remembered. It’s special to leave bits that are worthy of the time, space, and energy required to remember.

This is probably some of the reason why I was so pissed off at a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the morning after the Billy Bragg concert.

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Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me

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“I’m with yuh, brother!” A lady walked up with a big black purse and a gallon jug of wine, ready to be broke over somebody’s head.

 

“I ain’t a-movin’, neither!” A little old skinny man was flipping his belt buckle. “Let ‘em come!”

 

“As the last two or three flat cars of men rolled down the street and kept the wild mob back for a minute, I grabbed my guitar up and started singing:

 

“We will fight together

We shall not be moved

We will fight together

We shall not be moved

Just like a tree

That’s planted by the water

We

Shall not

Be moved.

 

“Everybody sing!” Cisco grabbed his guitar and hollered out. “Stormy Night” from “Bound for Glory”

Even though I haven’t written about the Billy Bragg concert in Chicago last month, I covered his songwriting workshop. And I’ll get around to writing about the Chicago concert, because I have a lot to say about that night.

I’ll refrain from posting the photo of me in full-on jackass bray from my Billy Bragg meeting in Chiago. But I’ll continue to post this one all over the internet until I’m at 93 years old, because I love it.

My cousin-in-law commented that I look like a little girl on Christmas. I had some pretty great holidays as a kid, but I never got a five minute conversation with one of my favorite musicians. So this was Christmas morning times a thousand in terms of excitement.

I was most impressed that Bragg had taken the time to have actual conversations with the fans who hung out after the workshop that day, asking what brought each of us to see him. I told him a little bit about my project and he asked if he’d see me in Okemah. I was still trying to pull together the details of the trip at the time.

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