There's an article in today's Hartford Courant Travel section called "Arlo's Stockbridge". Cool beans!

http://www.courant.com/travel/hc-travgu ... nes-travel

I was just about to post this as well! Great article, I'm looking forward to the spring revival now!

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Arlo's Stockbridge


By ANDREA SACHS
Washington Post

December 17 2006

Imagine if you had heard Frank Sinatra sing "New York, New York" in a smoky Manhattan club, or caught John Denver performing "Country Roads, Take Me Home" atop a West Virginia mountain. Gives you chills.

When Arlo Guthrie performed "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" at the Guthrie Center in Stockbridge, Mass., in October, the legendary folk singer summoned the ghosts of the 1960s, calling forth Alice and Ray, the garbage dump and the draft - all characters and scenes intimately familiar to anyone who grew up singing along to the protest song-cum-Thanksgiving staple. Nearly everyone in the high-ceilinged church, aglitter with candles set on the 100 (sold-out) tables, knew the lyrics by heart. And during the sing-along refrain, the effect was more religious revival than concert.

"I grew up with Arlo," said Dennis Dilmaghani, a middle-aged New Yorker who was taping the show from the second-floor balcony. "This is the most genuine place to see Arlo and the most fitting place to hear" the fabled 18-minute story-song.

Thanks to "Alice's Restaurant" and its perennial radio play, Stockbridge and Guthrie will forever be linked. "It's become a little part of the history of the town," Guthrie said during a pre-show chat on the back porch of the Guthrie Center. "That's what makes an area feel like home - you have a history with it."

But times do change. Forty years later, there's no Alice's Restaurant, but you pretty much can get anything you want in Stockbridge.

Arlo Guthrie would never dump on Stockbridge.

In 1965, however, it was a different story. Back then, the young hippie and a friend tossed a VW van-load of trash off a cliff in the western Massachusetts town, creating a stir - and a song.

"Garbage has been very good to me," said Guthrie, 59, now a father of four whose hair has grayed and waist size has doubled since his youth, but whose vigor has hardly waned. "The great thing was, when the record came out, most people thought it was a nice piece of fiction."

A Little `Alice' History

Those who live around the Berkshires town, or were raised on 1960s anti-war music, know the truth behind the lyrics. (Guthrie completed the song Thanksgiving of 1966, making this year an anniversary of sorts.) Yes, Guthrie's friends Alice and Ray Brock are real, and in 1965 they did host Thanksgiving dinner for a motley group of pals in their home, a converted church that is, yes, just a half-mile from the railroad tracks in Housatonic, a hamlet bordering Stockbridge.

The illegal garbage run truly happened, as did the subsequent arrest, jailing and fining of Guthrie. The main discrepancy is that the Alice's Restaurant of the title does not refer to the eatery Alice briefly ran in Stockbridge. Listen closely to the lyrics, children:

This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the restaurant,

But Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,

That's just the name of the song,

And that's why I called the song Alice's Restaurant.

Today, the church where Alice and Ray served their holiday meal and stashed their garbage contains the Guthrie Center. The singer, who lives on a farm not far from Stockbridge, bought the former Trinity Church 15 years ago to house his philanthropic foundation and to host live performances. However, for droves of aging Arloheads who can still recite every word from every song, the church is a living artifact from the Age of Aquarius.

A few times a year, Guthrie performs in the hallowed church, attracting dedicated followers who travel many highways to hear the best of Arlo, live from Stockbridge. Last month, during a fan reunion on a grassy lot by the church, folks were excitedly comparing recent playlists in between strums on their guitars, swigs of beer and sideways glances anticipating Guthrie's arrival.

The singer still continues to tour the globe, his voice now a bit gravelly after singing "Alice" for so many decades.

Snow-Globe Village

Stockbridge (population 2,500) seems an unlikely spot for a countercultural movement. The town, about 40 miles southeast of Albany, N.Y., is as well preserved as a village in a snow globe, with every picket fence and steeple placed just so. One could describe it as Rockwellian, hardly a cliché in this case: Artist Norman Rockwell lived in Stockbridge for the last quarter of his life and worked in a light-streamed studio on Main Street. The studio has since moved down the road to the Norman Rockwell Museum, which was founded in 1969 - the same year the movie version of "Alice's Restaurant" was released.

The compact downtown is prim and puritan, with Colonial-style buildings, thick foliage shading the two-lane road and such area-appropriate shops as a Yankee Candle outlet and a Country Store. When the town isn't throwing some type of festival - one recent weekend there was a harvest celebration, a horse-and-coach procession, a wedding for 300 and an antique-fire-engine event - visitors can peruse art galleries, shop for crafts and kitsch or watch life stream by from rocking chairs at the 18th-century Red Lion Inn.

The town also has a strong creative streak, though it caters more to highbrow sophisticates than to "Kumbaya" types. "There are wonderfully artistic people here who come and see the Boston Symphony Orchestra [at nearby Tanglewood]. There's no better place to hear them, and there's no better place to see dance than at Jacob's Pillow," says Guthrie, whose mother taught summer dance classes here when he was a child. "We also have the Berkshire Theatre Festival and Shakespeare and all of the little clubs that are beginning to sprout up with music."

Massacree Walk

Every May, when snow is a distant memory and the Berkshires are revving up for the summer arts season, the Guthrie Center holds its annual Garbage Trail Walk. The 6.3-mile tour, which raises money for Huntington's disease (Guthrie's father died of the degenerative neurological illness), follows the route spelled out in "Alice's Restaurant Massacree." But the tour is hardly seasonal; in fact, to accurately re-create the 1965 event, go in the fall, when the leaves crunch underfoot and the air smells of spiced pumpkin pie.

To remain faithful to the song, start at the third stanza: at the old Trinity Church by the railroad tracks.

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on -

Two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant,

But Alice doesn't live in the restaurant,

She lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog.

With its high-peaked roof and round stained-glass window, the church is a textbook example of New England architecture; only the peace-sign flag in the window gives away its bohemian reincarnation. When Alice and Ray lived in the church, they stashed their garbage in an adjoining sanctuary. The detritus is long gone, and the annex now is used as an entrance to the nave. Inside, posters, photos and other memorabilia capture Guthrie during his more rebellious times. .

Stop 2 is about four miles away, at the old Town Dump, which was closed 41 years ago, forcing a young Guthrie to search elsewhere to unload his trash.

The site off Glendale Middle Road remains shut, this time for good. The landfill is now punctuated with small lumps of rubble and wildflowers. Wild turkeys dash about, as if they know Thanksgiving is near.

To follow the song to the letter, the next stop would be the scene of the crime, where Guthrie dumped heaps of garbage off an escarpment.

Unfortunately, a house now stands in that spot, so it's best to skip ahead to the Stockbridge lockup, where Guthrie did time.

... When we got to the police officer's station, there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon,

And we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed.

And I said "Obie, I don't think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on."

The police station and the town hall are housed in the same stately white building, so locals can do all their legal errands at one time. To see Guthrie's cell, you don't have to get yourself arrested: His blue cell door sits outside, at the bottom of the stairs of the police station. Guthrie's jail has become a tourist attraction.

The final stop in Stockbridge is Alice's Restaurant. For a short time, the real-life Alice ran a restaurant off Main Street, along a narrow alleyway. Now a sign reads "Theresa's Stockbridge Cafe, formerly Alice's Restaurant." It is temporarily shuttered, but the connected Main Street Cafe is open - and crammed with tourists lining up for ice cream, home-baked goods and scented candles. The restaurant and gift shop sell Alice's Restaurant T-shirts, but the apple bread pudding is much more filling. Down the block, the public library has in its files clippings of the arrest and the police photos of the crime scene - black and white, not color, despite what the song says.

As a bonus attraction, fans can venture about six miles east to the town of Lee and the courthouse where Guthrie was fined $50 for some major littering. The red-brick building was closed the weekend I visited, but a kind cop opened the doors and pointed out where Guthrie stood and where the blind judge sat.

There are no relics of Guthrie in the courthouse, not a name scratched in the wood or a peace sign inked on a chair. But Guthrie did leave behind one lasting memento: a legendary song, an anthem of sorts to Stockbridge.

I knew there was something else I was supposed to pick up at the grocery store today! Thanks for the link!

I picked up my copy of the Courant today and what an awesome article and pix to go along with it. I see Kurt in the colored pic on the front cover of the Travel section, way to go!!

wait, that's you on the cover Kurt? that is definitely a cool picture

sorry for the double post. the board was giving me some weird error, so I didn't think it went through the first time

I'm not sure where to buy the Hartford Courant in the Poughkeepsie, NY area so I didn't see it. In the picture of Joel's set on the Hartford Courant website, I am trying to get the laptop to work with the mic.

kurt...

Kurt how far are you from the Mass line? I wonder if the town of Stockbridge or Great Barrington even sells the Hartford Courant. Great Barrington is like 10 or miles away from Canaan, CT. While I was staying at one of the hotels in town during the Fall Revival show WFSB-TV from Hartford, CT was on one of the TV stations. I don't seem why the southern part of the berkshires should sell the Courant

Well, I'm 1 3/4 hours from the church but I guess I'm only 3/4 hour from the Connecticut line down here. The photographer said the Courant bought the Washington Post article and he was there to take new pictures to go with it. Were there more pictures than are on the website? (which had Joel's set, the place setting window, the cutout of Arlo, and the closed Back Door.)

kurt...

The pix in the paper are entirely the same except that the Arlo and the restaurant pix are in black and white not color....AW BUM!!

Thanks for posting the link. Nice pics. I'd love to have a copy of the cardboard cutout of Arlo...

Somebody's gotta tell this reporter that Arlo's waist size has not doubled since the 60's as it says in the article!

And that The Church isn't 1/2 mile from the railroad tracks:

"Guthrie's friends Alice and Ray Brock are real, and in 1965 they did host Thanksgiving dinner for a motley group of pals in their home, a converted church that is, yes, just a half-mile from the railroad tracks in Housatonic."

I agree. His waist size definately hasn't doubled. He's still slim as ever. And handsome too...

Yeah, where did that waist size doubling bit come from? While he isn't the skinny kid of the "Alice's Restaurant" movie, he definitely has not doubled. If he were even a 30" waist back in the day, he's defintely is not a 60" waist now! The reporter also got his age wrong too. In spite of it, it was a nice review of one of my favorite areas. I'll have to try the restaurants Arlo recommends next time I'm up there. We always end up at the Barrington Brew House, which I've always liked (try the five beer sampler).

Bill in CT