When an artist releases an album that really resonates with a wide swath of people, it can be a challenge to match that kind of momentum with a follow-up. In a way, it’s unfair to compare one album with another; […]
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About the time Woody Guthrie would have been singing lullabies to his daughter Nora, a preteen Del McCoury was sitting in a pew at the Missionary Baptist Church listening to his mom and dad sing. Occasionally, when she got a […]
Arlo Guthrie, a beloved folksinger, songwriter and storyteller, has been touring for more than a year commemorating the 50th anniversary of the real-life events that inspired his most iconic song, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” Two recent releases will allow Guthrie fans […]
Branded Man. Outlaw. Okie. Poet. The Working Man. Hag. Merle Haggard defies labels. But he has been tagged with many. Kris Kristofferson namechecks him in the superb song “Wild American,” a tribute to people who show courage, conviction and individualism […]
Seventy-five years ago, folk hero Woody Guthrie put pen to paper and fingers to strings to compose a subtle and catchy protest song. Many of us can sing at least a verse or two of “This Land is Your Land”, […]
What better way to grab an individual’s – or a community’s – attention with environmental activism than through music? While early rock and roll seldom raised listeners’ consciousness – its artists preferred to sing about hops, cars, teen angels, motorcycles, […]
I was excited when invited to see Arlo Guthrie at Walt Disney Hall, because though I’ve grown up on his songs, I’d never actually seen him play them live. The audience filing into the wonderful room was clearly a room of Guthrie’s […]
In a letter written for Sing magazine in 1955, Pete Seeger wrote about his friend — and one of his biggest personal and professional influences — Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly: “Looking back, I think that the most important thing I learned from […]
Guitarist Kev Wright announced this week that he has parted ways with The Righteous Hillbillies, the band he co-founded eight years ago with Brent James. In a Feb. 11 Facebook post, Wright said “with a heavy heart” that the split was […]
Between them, Woody Guthrie and Del McCoury’s voices have blown like wind through much of the last century. Each has traveled the length and breadth of the United States. The depth of the American soul these two men have mined in […]
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