Friday, March 09, 2012

Tulsa concert marks Woody Guthrie's centennial

The 100th anniversary of the birth of folksinger Woody Guthrie is July 14, but his centennial is being celebrated all year, and one of the biggest events will be a concert tomorrow in Tulsa with his son Arlo Guthrie, Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, John Mellencamp, Hanson, the Del McCoury Band, Jimmy LaFave, the Old Crow Medicine Show and Flaming Lips, "Oklahoma City's world-famously weird psych-pop show band," The Oklahoman reports.

The Woody Guthrie Centennial website says, "His songs have run around the world like a fast train on a well oiled track. They've become the folk song standards of the nation, known and performed in many languages throughout the world. Pretty Boy Floyd, Pastures of Plenty, Hard Travelin', Deportees, Roll On Columbia, Vigilante Man and This Land Is Your Land are among the hundreds of his songs that have become staples in the canon of American music."

The South by Southwest festival will include a panel discussion about Guthrie March 15 at the Austin Convention Center, with LaFave, daughter Nora Guthrie, historian Douglas Brinkley, music critic Dave Marsh and folksinger-songwriter Joel Rafael, whose Woodeye and Woodyboye albums honor Guthrie's songs and include "five previously unpublished Guthrie lyrics for which Rafael composed music," the SXSW site says.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yet he is not in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Shame on them when they now mention him in the intro to the new Bakersfield sound exhibit.