Woody Guthrie Contest

Going down the road feeling bad and wondering why more people don’t know how Woody Guthrie helped define the face of modern music. It seems that a travelling troubador that was not part of Nashville or part of the rock n’roll scene was not considered an icon or a star and now, as we review the songs and the life and the ones that followed him, it seems he is more important than the star machine could make out. And when school children sang “This is your land” it is not their fault that the hammer of justice would not be recognized for his constribution. Or when the civil rights movement and the labor movements all had their day, he was one of them, not standing over them and guiding them. He was in the crowd. Or, he was in a hospital bed waiting for the truth to be revealed. And now, long after that hospital bed lay vacant, and Bobby D took it all back home, it is time for the truth to be revealed. Take out your Highway 61 albums, your Grateful Dead, Skull and Roses, or your Steve Earle cds, or your Lucinda Williams cds or even your Tom Russell painting and see Woody smiling from the background, a saint lost to time and media madness. He is a visitor from the past but his future is defined in every American child that picks up a guitar.