In many ways, Arlo Guthrie’s music is synonymous with Thanksgiving. Not only does the holiday provide the backdrop for his famous 1967 satirical anti-war hippie anthem the “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre,” but the holiday feels inline with the singer/songwriter’s commitment to his family and the entire American folk tradition. Each Thanksgiving Weekend since the 1970s, Guthrie has also performed at New York’s famed Carnegie Hall—a tradition the Guthrie family inherited from Pete Seeger. This year’s Carnegie Hall show will be part of the traveling The Guthrie Family Rides Again revue, which brings the entire Guthrie family together onto one stage. Shortly before thanksgiving, Arlo’s daughter Sarah Lee and her husband Johnny Irion caught up with Relix/Jambands.com to discuss this weekend’s Carnegie Hall show, their new family album Go Waggaloo and why you won’t be hearing “Alice’s Restaurant” this November.
This year’s Carnegie Hall show is part of The Guthrie Family Rides Again tour. Can you start by giving us some background on how that package came together?
Johnny: The whole family tour started about three of four years ago. Arlo decided to take Sarah Lee and I out and do some of [Sarah Lee’s grandfather] Woody’s song with my Sarah’s brother Abe [who tours regularly as part of his father’s band], and we had a really good time doing that. This time he decided to add on and bring our kids, as well as Sarah Lee’s other siblings Kathy and Annie. It kind of harkens back to a tour that they did in ‘83 or ’84 when Sarah was 5, but now everybody’s singing and playing. Sarah Lee and I are doing songs off a kid’s album we just put out with Smithsonian called Go Waggaloo, songs off a record we just made [with Shins associates Vetiver], and a lot of Woody songs. It is just a fun evening of passing the songs around. There will be four generations of our family represented since our daughter, who is 7, is actually singing with us as well.
Will this be the first time the entire family has shared the stage?
Johnny:: This is the first time ever. I think Arlo’s pretty amazed about the whole thing. I mean there are 17 of us, I think, and there are two busses and a sprinter van, and we still don’t have enough room [laughter]. And a lot of the kids are under 10, so the backstage area is just absolutely mayhem. After Carnegie Hall we are playing [Newark, NJ’s NJPAC] and then we will be doing this tour until May. Hopefully, we all last that long [laughter]. Arlo is the ring leader—he’s the main cat herder and then we come out and do some songs off of Go Waggaloo. It’s kind of a kids record, so it’s a really great show that anyone from 4-90 can enjoy. Actually, Pete Seeger is over 90 so if he comes he can enjoy it too.
Speaking of Go Waggaloo, can you give us some background on that project?
Sarah: We have two kids so it was great timing when Smithsonian Folkways actually gave us a call last summer, and they asked Johnny if we’d be interested in making a children’s record that doesn’t make you want to jump out of a minivan [laughter]. I loved that idea, and I thought, “Well, that’s just a great inspiration, and I think that we could do that.” It was also great timing since we had just moved back to the Berkshires where most of my family lives after having lived in South Carolina for 7 years.
Our two kids inspire most of our daily singing to begin with so we had all these ideas in our heads when Smithsonian called. We just built a house up here, and we recorded [the album] in the house, which was really great because you can’t just tell the kids to go, “1-2-3 sing.” So we had a really nice, relaxed atmosphere. When the kids were into it and were having fun we could press play and record and capture them. All our cousins and everyone were also around so we could just called them up and had them come over to record with us and that’s what we did for about two weeks last summer. We just kind of invited people over and got everybody to sing, including my dad.
Also, when we went down to meet with Smithsonian, they handed me a folder of my grandfather Woody’s lyrics that had never been recorded, and they picked out about a dozen or so that were kids-themed songs. We included three of those on the album and put some music to them, which was a great part of the project. We just really loved including his songs and, of course, we called Pete Seeger who was really wonderful. He agreed to playing on the record right away, and we went down to New York and recorded with him. So we just had all these things kind of fall into place and were really, really excited to be working with Smithsonian—who put out so many of Woody and Pete’s records. Everything kind of just worked out and fell into place.
You also mentioned a project featuring the members of Vetiver, a band many of our readers know through the Shins. What does that entail?
Johnny: It hasn’t come out yet, we just made it so these will be new songs we’ve also been playing onstage. We made the record in Woodstock, and it will be coming out in the fall with Thom Monahan and Andy Cabic from Vetiver and Gary Louris with the Jayhawks playing on it. [Ryan Adams guitarist] Neal Casal and a bunch of people are also on the album. I’ve played with Vetiver, who I met through Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes. That’s actually how I met Sarah Lee as well, through Chris. I was in a band from North Carolina that opened up for The Crowes and moved out to LA in ’97. Chris was producing a band that he invited me to play guitar in and that’s how I met Sarah Lee. She had just moved out there. It’s been awesome, I mean every time I see him it’s like, “It’s all your fault, dude.” [laughter]
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.
