Hitchin’ a ride on the Arlo Guthrie train

Glen Arbor Sun newspaper

Some legends never fade away, but just keeping on rolling down the track. Arlo Guthrie, the great folk guitarist and political protest singer who has carried the legacy of his father, Woody Guthrie (“This Land is Your Land”), to American musical fame and is best known for his lengthy blues song, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” and his cover of Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans,” is currently on tour and will perform at the Dunegrass Festival in Empire on Sunday, August 3.

Guthrie performed at the 1969 Woodstock Festival — one of the most iconic events of the ‘60s — and was at the center of American folk music during its glory years, as well as the movement against the Vietnam War. The 18.5-minute “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” a satire against the Vietnam Draft, made the rounds on every college and counter-culture radio station around the country after its release in 1967.

“City of New Orleans,” an ode to the bygone days of long-distance rail travel in this country, took a more circuitous route into our history books. According to legend, Chicago folksinger Goodman was given permission to play a song for Guthrie after a concert on the condition that he bring Arlo a beer. Asked what he thought of “City of New Orleans” afterwards, Guthrie allegedly replied, “Good beer!” Guthrie first appeared on “the train they call the City of New Orleans” in 2005 to raise money for musicians hurt by Hurricane Katrina.

The Glen Arbor Sun was fortunate to land a phone interview with Arlo Guthrie six days before his scheduled appearance in Empire. We discussed music festivals, the state of folk music today, the current war and American politics, and how his children (and grandchildren) are carrying on the family tradition.

Glen Arbor Sun: Have you been to northern Michigan before? Any memories? Will you get a chance to jump in the lake?

Arlo Guthrie: Yeah, we get up there every once in a while. On this tour we’re first heading up to the U.P., then coming back down through your neck of the woods. Over the course of 40 years we’ve been almost every place. I won’t be able to jump in Lake Michigan this time around though. We only get to do that stuff when we have days off or between gigs. But I’ve been in before, sure.

Sun: This is the first tour in quite a while in which you’ve played exclusively solo on stage. Why the long wait?

Arlo: To be honest, it’s more fun to play with other people. But I’ve gotta play solo once in a while. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Sun: The Dunegrass Festival has exploded in recent years, perennially featuring well-known performers (like you) from all over the country — some around here have suggested, at the cost of local musicians, who dominated the festival when it started in the early ‘90s. How do you balance those two approaches … famous musicians and local musicians?

Arlo: I’ve been reading a little about the history of [Dunegrass]. Sixteen years it’s been around — about as long as we’ve had [the old Trinity Church, now home to the Guthrie Center, a nonprofit interfaith church foundation dedicated to providing a wide range of local and international services including HIV/AIDS services to baking cookies with a local service organization, to simply offering a place to meditate].

It’s nice to see [that Dunegrass is] still going. It’s natural for it to grow into a bigger thing, but you don’t want it getting too big. Every organization has to decide at some point what it wants to do. Most feel the pressure from an audience asking, “How are you gonna top this? Who you gonna get that you didn’t have last year?” Soon you get caught in a spiral. Local media, newspapers, radio [are often fueling the drive] as if what happened before wasn’t good enough.

I started a music festival in Florida, which only ran for seven years. I stopped it because some of the people I ran it with didn’t understand that it’s good enough to have a festival that works. They kept asking me, “Who you gonna have this year?” They’re not happy unless Elvis shows up! Rather than go down that road, I decided to cut the thing off where it was. There are lots of festivals that have been around a long time, such as Newport. They go through droughts and floods and different times. Eventually they settle into something that’s comfortable.

Sun: How is folk music doing today?

Arlo: It’s a different world today. When I started performing, there was a need in the entertainment industry for the kind of music that I was playing. Folk music was suddenly becoming popular. Folk singers were looking for record contracts, and all of a sudden it became really big. I came in when someone doing what I was doing could get a major record contract from a company like Warner Brothers. Then it returned to normal, where the industry wasn’t interested in folk music.

The entertainment industry has become more and more focused over the years on pop music as its sole interest. What’s new this month? Just like the festivals that feel the pressure to constantly grow bigger, they get caught up in the same thing. The record companies have been bought by media companies, and people are constantly looking over their shoulders. If you don’t make the right decision, you’re out of there. All of the focus is now on the business and not on the music.

Fifteen to twenty years ago saw a great decline in interest of American music around the world, whereas if a record came out in United States twenty years ago, it made the charts everywhere. That doesn’t happen anymore. And in my mind that’s a great thing. I think the music’s better off when those [record company] guys aren’t involved. Because of the Internet and iTunes, people can make more diverse music than they ever have before. I think that’s great, though I don’t know how long it will last. Go to iTunes and look at the newest release. The picture of that record isn’t any bigger than the picture of my new record. The outside hype is the only difference — which most people aren’t interested in anyway.

Sun: Who are some of your favorite young artists?

Arlo: The days are long gone when I was up on who was the newest, latest thing. But I do get to meet people from time to time. The best part of the festivals for me is meeting other musicians. Get on stage, sing your song, have some fun, but you get to hang out back stage with others who love playing music. I got to meet the Duhks recently … young, great musicians. Recently I played the Telluride Fest and got to hang out with Bella Fleck. He walked over to me and said, “Hey, our birthdays are the same day [July 10]!”

Sun: In the midst of another war, with another criminal in the White House, and people dying again because of our government, what’s the role of folk music, or protest music? How has it changed since the ‘60s? And is folk music rising to the challenge?

Arlo: The best thing folk music does is that it gives you the long view; it tells you where you came from. It tells you where you’re at and what the potential is to go somewhere else. You remember songs that you heard when you were a kid, and it brings the past into the moment, and reminds you how the world felt then. You remember what’s happened since then. Music can be a mile marker. And I’m not just talking about protest songs. Music gives you a clue as to where you’re going. I think right now most people in this country are not as happy about where they’re going as they should be. For the first time since I was a kid, a whole bunch of young people are interested in getting involved in politics, both on the left and the right, and that’s a good thing. Take the candidacy of Republican Ron Paul, for instance.

Sun: Yeah, while he’s conservative on some social issues, once Dennis Kucinich dropped out of the race, Ron Paul was basically the only anti Iraq-war candidate … from either party. His campaign signs were everywhere. I even saw placards last fall at the Saturday farmers market at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco … liberal San Francisco!

Arlo: I like what Ron Paul stands for on fundamental issues. He was one of few guys running not to save the world. The principles on which this country was founded he nailed right on the head. Don’t get involved in other people’s business. Keep the government small. Don’t invade other countries, and stay out of people’s social lives.

The interest of young people in Ron Paul on constitutional issues and civil liberties I found very heartening. But the establishments on both the left and the right literally wrote this guy off. I have no sympathy for them. [His positions were] just too fundamental [for them]. Nevertheless, I hope young people will remain involved and not just walk away.

Sun: What do you think about Obama?

Arlo: I like Obama. I think his long vision of things is very healthy. But I also think that the political maneuvering that candidates have to do is sad and unfortunate. In order to become a president or someone in a position of authority, you have to sell something. The true reality of the situation is that politicians, including Obama, have to sell something. You just hope they don’t actually believe some of the things they say [to get elected]. You get the feeling that they’re becoming more and more like a used car salesman. That puts another dent in the idealism or hopes and dreams that you have.

But you accept those bruises as you get older. We all have to make those choices, and we do it more and more often.

Sun: What would you like to see happen in America in your lifetime?

Arlo: A return to some core values. Get the government out of people’s business. Make little things more important than big things: local schools, local hospitals, local health care, local environmental issues, local personal freedoms. The real hope for America is and has always been in its diversity, and diversity happens on a local level. The more we become uniform, the more we take the same view, the less we are able to focus on the unique abilities of people as individuals.

In a time like this, people seem to be less individuals. People feel less as individuals as they do the need to gather in big groups. We end up arguing over important topics on a countrywide scale, or nationwide or a worldwide forum, without allowing local people to make up their own minds. Whether it’s about abortion or stem cell research or gay marriage, the right of habeas corpus or global warming. We tend to think we can only solve these issues only when we all agree.

But the best thing to do when we are divided is to let people go their own way. When you keep arguing, you tend to grow more totalitarian. People recognize that the best way to survive when you are headed in that direction is to accumulate more power. That’s certainly true for the current administration and all these guys making a whole lot of money. Instead we need to focus more and more on local liberties, local freedom. Every school district should have their own idea on what to teach, they don’t need to follow a nationwide curriculum. At the same time, on some issues we have to begin local but then think global, like the issue of global warming.

Sun: Your children, Abe, Sarah Lee and Cathy, have all become musicians. What do you tell them about their grandfather, the great Woody Guthrie?

Arlo: They’re doing great. Abe and his son Christian are joining us on the tour as well. It’s a men’s trip. They don’t ask much about Woody. They never knew him, of course. But they just go out into the world and find out for themselves.

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