I just realized that I never did write about going to see “The Guthrie Family Rides Again” on the thirty-first of last month at the Long Center. I ended up taking M with me; this was her first really, truly not-a-kiddie-show concert, and she said she enjoyed it even though she only recognized “This Land Is Your Land”.
We had quite good seats for comps, in the orchestra about row twenty and middling right-side. Sound was very good throughout; whoever was on the board understood the band and the hall. And for a mercy, the show began only about five minutes late, which is VERY prompt for Austin. (Fifteen minute delays are common.)
Daughter Sara Lee and her husband Johnny Irion started the show with a couple of songs of their own, then gradually other family members joined them onstage, until Arlo came on about fifteen or twenty minutes in and took up his spot on a stool set dead center. From then on it was all the Guthrie family band, even including several of the grandchildren performing.
The songlist wasn’t much of a nostalgia trip: a number of Woody’s unfinished (and largely unknown) songs, with music added by people ranging from Sara Lee to Billy Bragg, several kids’ songs, one or two VERY not-kid-friendly songs (notably daughter Cathy’s “Shit Makes the Flowers Grow,” lifted from her work with the group Folk Uke), and originals from first one then another family member. The two songs that really dug back to the Arlo I remember were “Coming Into Los Angeles,” which he prefaced with a long story about what he remembered of performing at Woodstock (a saga that involved falling through the revolve in the middle of the stage), and “City of New Orleans,” which received an equally long introduction, as Arlo talked about the benefit train trip/concert tour they put together for Katrina relief in late 2005. Serendipity played a big part in the tour, which he said came together in three weeks when it should have taken six months to arrange.
Talking of that benefit, Arlo went on to say that its whirlwind organization left him feeling slightly disoriented, and that as the train pulled out of Chicago’s Union Station one December afternoon, he and his wife were sitting together in the observation car, with their daughters literally sitting on the floor at their feet. Annie got quiet for a minute, then got a strange look on her face, and then in a lull in the conversation she said, “Daddy . . . do you realize that we’re really here? We’re riding on the City of New Orleans?” and he swung right into intro from there . . . and the song, in that context, just blindsided me. I don’t think M understood why Daddy was crying and singing along at the same time, but I didn’t even try to explain it. As Kesey said, you’re either on the bus or off the bus.
The family ended the night with another look back to Woody, first with “This Land” and then an even older song that Woody would have heard over XERA as a young man, the Carter Family’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” They didn’t try to do an encore, because with thirteen musicians plus several small children onstage at the end, the logistics of getting everyone off and back on were just about impossible. They just wound down, said their goodnights, and that was all. And it was all it needed to be, too. This wasn’t about clapping and stamping and “MORE! MORE!” It was an evening for sitting around and singing the old songs with some old friends.
