In addition to the Woody Guthrie songs included on your new album, I believe you will also be playing a few songs by some rather famous musicians who created new material from lost Woody Guthrie lyrics. I imagine Wilco and Billy Braggs’ Mermaid Avenue sessions will be represented in that batch of songs?
Sarah: Yeah, I think those are some of the best examples. I love those two albums Wilco and Billy Bragg did together—I think they put 40 songs to music. So we are going to be playing some of those songs and one that Janis Ian did. We will also play some songs by The Klezmatics off their [Woody Guthrie-driven] Wonder Wheel album, which won a Grammy Award, as well as our own music and children’s songs. Me and Johnny, we just did a project called Folksong, it’s a new live DVD and CD that we just put out. It features these old Woody lyrics that [Arlo’s sister and family historian] Nora sent us via email one day as she was going through the archives. There’s one—one of my favorites of the night—which my dad actually put lyrics to that’s one of the last songs that Woody ever wrote. When you look at the piece of paper that Woody wrote it on, you can hardly read it. My dad got a hold of that one, I’m not even sure how long ago, but it’s one of the most beautiful songs of the evening—it is called “My Peace.”
One of the other songs is from Hans Eckardt Wenzel. He has a German cabaret style of singing. We never would have come up with a melody so very cool and intricate like he has on a song that we do in a hundred years. It is kind of a kids song actually but it’s a really beautiful little melody and that’s what I love about it—it’s not just the American folk melodies coming out because all these projects are getting a very worldly aspect, like The Klezmatics. That song is just amazing, it is something I think [Woody] just felt in his heart but could have never imagined that these words could be sounding the way that they do.
What was the process like of reinterpreting someone else’s version of your grandfather’s song? Did you try to stay true to the original re-interpretations or put your own spin on these songs?
Sarah: Well, I think in some cases [Woody] encouraged people to change the songs up. It’s really cute ‘cause he’ll put little suggestions on the bottom of the lyrics. So I’ll took at a lyric and he’ll put on the bottom “Now you can put your own words in this song, here is a good example,” and he’ll actually kind of try to encourage making it your own or something. We did that a couple times and we were like “Okay, we’ll go with this,” and we put our own words in the verses or something to make them more like something we would say. But for the most part, so far I’ve found that the melodies that I have in my head are very similar to the melodies he had in his head. Maybe it’s genetic or an instinct or the way I grew up, but I think I have a lot of Woody-esque melodies. So it seems like a very natural process to take these lyrics and put them to music. Not only that but I can almost hear his voice in my head. I feel like I’m sitting down having tea with him when I open up this folder of lyrics. It seems like, you know, we’re together so I can’t help but put a little bit of him in these songs. But then, of course, I can’t help being myself as well.
Moving back to this weekend’s show, when did Arlo start playing Thanksgiving at Carnegie Hall?
Johnny: I think Arlo’s been doing Carnegie since ‘76. It started before with the Weavers, before they were taken off the blacklist. They were blacklisted when someone found out that Pete had ties to communism or whatever, lefty-ism so Harold Leventhal, who manages Pete and everybody, decided to do a show at Carnegie Hall during that blacklist just to see what would happen, and they sold it out. So and then it stemmed in to Arlo and Pete and, Arlo has taken that and kept it going ever since.
Will Pete Seeger be participating in this year’s Carnegie Hall event?
Sarah: He won’t be, I don’t think so, although there’s been other years where he’s showed up and we didn’t know it! So you never know, but I don’t think so. This is mostly sticking to the family. The whole entire family will be up there, with the exception of my mom who refuses to take the stage. The rest of us will be up there and that will be it. Our kids are also going to join us on tour this spring.
Sarah, when was the first time you remember going to see one of your dad’s shows at Carnegie Hall?
Sarah: Well, I was born in ’79 and we’ve been there I think almost every year. I was there when I was a baby. Of course, I don’t remember that but my first memory of it…wow…the first major impact it had on me was the first time I stood on the stage. I was 12 years old, and we had just did an album called Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs and that was a collection of kids songs that Nora, my dad’s sister, and Jody, their brother, all produced and put together, and we had all my brothers and sisters on it. It was the first time we all did something as a family together, and he invited us to come and play Carnegie Hall with him. I think that is really the first time the show made such an impression on me—before that I was just a kid running around. I’ll never forget walking off the stage and dad turning to us kids and going, “Alright it’s all downhill from here guys.” It was great and I was terrified, but it was a great experience, one of my first shows ever.
And this year you have your own kids performing for the first time?
Sarah: Olivia joined us when we did the tour 3 years ago. She had specific songs that she wanted to sing and she came out and joined us the last time so this will be her second time. And then it is also been sort of a tradition for a few years where the kids have been coming out for the end of the show singing “This Land is Your Land.” We started that tradition a few years ago, so hopefully they won’t be as terrified as I was the first time I sang just ‘cause they have been on stage there. It is an amazing room—it is overwhelming sometimes and you’re just this little person. But I think they’re going to do great this year. This will be the first time they really come out and have parts where they come and sing their own verses and their own solos.
Finally, can we expect a version of your dad’s Thanksgiving epic the “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre?”
Sarah: It is an every 10 year escapade so no he’s not going to play it this year. He said he doesn’t have to learn it until 2015, so he is giving it a break. [laughter]
The Guthrie Family Rides Again tour will arrive at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, November 28.
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