Details on getting tickets for this Saturday's show are at Mountain Times

kurt...

Interview with Arlo in the latest issue of Nightflying, a regional entertainment guide out of Little Rock, Arkansas.

http://www.nightflying.com/new/arlo.html

Stay well, Y'all --
Muffy
Memphis, TN

wow! what an article...thanks muffy!

Thanks for sharing that! I didn't know he was a church deacon. Mike sued to be one along time ago...

You're more than welcome. Thought you'd like to see that there's interest in Arlo ... even way down here ...

Muffy
Memphis

Arlo is looking forward to visiting Galway. Galway Independent

kurt...

AS printed on Galway Independent
Rising Son

Benjamin Coombs talks to Arlo Guthrie, who, like his legendary father, Woody Guthrie, is a troubadour and folk singer in the classic tradition




Are you looking forward to playing in Ireland?

Ireland is a terrific place to come to and I especially love Galway. It�s a wonderful little town. The last time round it was colder than hell and they got a coal fire going. Then Donovan showed up and we played and it was lovely. This time I�m playing for two nights and I�m looking forward to hanging out.

Do you enjoy all the travelling?

I�ve always loved going places and I haven�t tired of it yet. It�s like having a big house and exploring all the different rooms. I have friends every place I go and I love all the different food too!

Do you feel privileged to make a living through music?

It�s the best job in the world; I love it. I get to play with family and friends and it�s different every night. It�s the best thing I can imagine.

What can we expect from the shows?

I�m playing with my son and my grandson too and that�s pretty special. This tour we�re celebrating my father�s music, so there will be three generations of us playing his songs. What�s amazing is that his songs sound fresh and relevant and yet they were written 60 or 70 years ago. They sound like they could have been written last week (laughs).

Your father was a prolific songwriter wasn�t he?

Yeah; I�m never going to be a writer like my dad. He would write for hours every day and when everyone else was asleep he was still writing. He had to write, it was like breathing to him. It was almost like an obsession and everything else came second.

Tell us about your songwriting. Do you enjoy it?

Yeah, it�s exciting because it�s constantly surprising. You don�t know what�s going to happen next. There�s also a feeling you get when a song is coming through that blocks out the whole of the rest of the world and I�d give anything to have that more often. When I was young I was more prolific; I sometimes wrote maybe ten songs a day. Nowadays I write less; they�re few and far between, but I like them a lot and I think they�re some of the best I�ve written.

You grew up with lots of great bluesmen and folk players hanging out at your house?

Yeah, for me it was natural. Sonny Terry and Brownie Magee were like uncles to me. I remember them writing out guitar chord diagrams for me. I loved them dearly. I knew our house was a little different. In those days being a musician was not respectable and it certainly wasn�t something you aspired to.

You�ve also met a lot of other amazing people over the years - people like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix?

It�s interesting that these people you mention are people who were different. They went their own way and let others do the same. They had a �live and let live attitude�. They were outcasts in their own time because they refused to go along blindly with the way things were. There�s a lesson there for all of us: if you want to make a difference you have to do things yourself without waiting to see who else is coming along!

You put a lot of energy into projects that help others, things like fundraising concerts?

Well we grew up like that, so it�s not a big deal. In the old days if someone couldn�t pay their bills we used to have a rent party where a load of us gathered and all chipped in to help (laughs). Nowadays I think people feel more isolated. Our natural feelings of community are threatened by globalisation and the homogenisation of things.

People still appreciate traditional and folk music today don�t they?

Sure! The world is becoming a lot smaller place so more people are getting to hear music from all over the world. A lot of young musicians are picking up on it. In places like Ireland people have been playing the music for a very long time and the music is still passed through the generations. You can hear the history in the songs. You can hear a song from Ireland and instantly know where it�s from. The same is true for the folk music of Japan or China or wherever; there something unique in it.

Do you think that music has a lot to teach us?

I think that there is no better prescription for this world than music. We need to learn to listen to one another and music teaches us that. Musicians learn to listen to one another well and that carries over into normal life and enriches their lives. Sometimes in life families are not really listening to one another; it�s all just part of a background noise.

What would you do if you weren�t a musician?

I never intended to play music professionally; I wanted to be a forest ranger off in the woods. I don�t like large crowds (laughs).

What advice would you give to somebody who wants to be a musician?

If you go into music to be �somebody� then you�re barking up the wrong tree. You have to just love what you are doing, even if that means playing in a bar and passing a basket around. If you�re willing to do that then you�re a real musician.

Thanks for posting that. That was neat...

I don't think this article has been posted - if it has sorry

Galway Advertiser

http://www.galwayadvertiser.ie/content/ ... 0fb3d96b05

Excerpts:
“With me you have to have something that says something,” Arlo replies. “George W Bush is the best thing to happen to folk singers in years."

“We are preaching to the choir but from time to time the choir needs to be fed,” says Arlo. “There are a lot of idiots in the world."

_____________________--
“There are a lot of idiots in the world." I just had to repeat that

I agree with Arlo's statement....In this world today there is not enough peace, harmony, and bright light neon colors to shed darkness. How depressing!
You can't change people but you can change their underwear

“George W Bush is the best thing to happen to folk singers in years."

LOL! That sounds like our article. Thanks for posting that...

I did up a wallpaper pic of Arlo using one of the pics. It is here:

http://xs205.xs.to/xs205/06330/ag1wallpaper.JPG

Enjoy!

Wallpaper is nice Cheryl ....I love the lettering! Thanks for sharing!

Glad ya liked it. We're no good at it but we try lol...

The reviewer didn't expect to enjoy himself but Our Folkslinger prevails!

kurt...


Just a pity that Alice doesn't live here anymore
Tuesday August 22nd 2006

HIPPIES are so bound up with the mythology of the '60s that encountering one in the flesh can be a little disconcerting.

This is especially true in the case of Arlo Guthrie, an unreconstructed child of the flower power era, who looks and behaves as if he came to arrive in the year 2006 as the result of a bad trip.

Peering at the audience from behind flowing tresses and breaking into the occasional giggle, Guthrie seems to embody the universal Vietnam-era slacker. His music, however, harks back to an even more distant time. Guthrie's father, Woody, was a founding figure in American folk rock, inspiring, among others, Bob Dylan.

Clearly, he was a huge influence on his boy Arlo, too - at one point the singer puts away his guitar to play a recently unearthed recording of Woody addressing an audience in 1941.

Not that Arlo hasn't carved out a niche of his own. In fact, his biggest hit, 'Alice's Restaurant', came to define the protest song movement of the '60s. Sensing he is among friends tonight (half of the audience appears to be American), Guthrie elongates the track into a half-hour folk-rock jam (it clocks in at a mere 18 minutes on record).

For fans, the prospect of a 30-minute-plus 'Alice's Restaurant' is presumably thrilling. Guthrie agnostics, on the other hand, might find it too much to bear - particularly in light of the fact that the story the song has to tell is essentially a meandering stoner monologue.

Such excesses are worth enduring, though. When not trying to remind us how crazy the '60s were (his anecdotes go on forever), Guthrie proves an assured reader of the great American songbook.

As the final curtain looms, he delivers an absurdly earnest version of his father's US heartland paean, 'This Land Is Your Land'. In our cynical times, Guthrie's hippie vibrations feel like a splash of scented water across the face.

ED POWER

actually i get the distinct impression that the author was one of the "Guthrie agnostics" and was glad to get out of there...

also, someone might want to point out his poor choice of words regarding:

I think we all know that wherever arlo goes, he's generally among friends!