Woody Goes Punk

In his documentary about country music, Ken Burns quoted Johnny Cash saying something like, "Whenever country music loses its way, all it has to do is get back to Emmy Lou Harris." Cash may have been right, but he might have missed and opportunity. Hr could have said the same thing about Hank Williams, Jimmy Rogers, and his family, the Carters.

I'll go one step further. Whenever the country loses its way, all it has to do is get back to Woody Guthrie. Thanks to the efforts of his daughter, Nora Guthrie, artists have been to Woody's legacy by releasing versions of some of the thousands of pages of lyrics he left unrecorded, or if they were recorded, no copy exists. I mentioned most of those artists in my previous post.

The latest addition to the songs of Woody Guthrie comes by way of the Boston-based band Dropkick Murphys. Their 11th studio album This Machine Still Kills Fascists is not my first encounter with the Murphys, but I've only listened to them on streaming and YouTube. This collection of Guthrie lyrics convinced me to drop some coin on them, and I'm glad I did.

The songs the Murphys chose to put their mark on cover the gamut of who Guthrie was as a songwriter. From the union organizer, Hitler hating American who stood up for the working class and the downtrodden to the man who was sometimes in trouble with the law and alcohol, Guthrie is present on every cut.

The Murphys's raucous punk rock reputation is fitting for the message of most of the tracks. The subtle, but evident, rage against the injustices that Guthrie was adept at observing, comes across in the constant driving beat and rhythm of tracks like "Ten Times More" and "All You Fonies." "Fonies" offers the same surety and hope that the oppressors, be it the Fascists (as in the Billy Bragg version of "All You Fascists" on the Mermaid Avenue album) or rich union busting company owners, are going to eventually lose.

Although I love the pro working class anti Fascist message of a large portion of the selections, I found the deeply personal "Never Git Drunk No More" a quite satisfying reminder that alcohol is just as addicting, if not more so, as any other drug.  The song features Nikki Lane offering what is perhaps the most powerful counterpoint to a guy asking forgiveness for his drinking. She just simply says, "Don't wanna make love to a bottle, I wanna make love to my man!"

The album concludes with a pleasant surprise. Most of the lyrics for which Nora Guthrie has invited artists to write music are just that, lyrics. The beauty of Woody's words are the opportunity to make them more accessible to the modern audience be it through punk as the Murphys have done or through other genres of the music world. For the most part, the artists have no idea what Guthrie intended for a melody, but in "Dig a Hole" we get a glimpse. The last cut of the album features Woody's voice telling Hitler where he's gonna end up. 

If you're a Dropkick Murphys fan, you won't be disappointed. They remain true to their musical spirit. More important is that they remain true to Woody's spirit. 

Definitely recommend it.

Available at Amazon in CD or Vinyl or Streaming 

Woody Runs Through Us

This Machine Still Kill Fascists by the Boston punk rock band Drop Kick Murphys arrives tomorrow. (I’ll get a review out soon.) The title comes from the famous picture of Woody Guthrie and his guitar. They are, however, not the only group to pay homage to Guthrie in recent years. 

Woody was a writer of songs of course, a lot of them. His son, Arlo, used to say people could wall paper their apartments with the amount of scraps that his father put ink and pencil to.

Woody's daughter, Nora, has invited numerous artists to view the volumes of material that Guthrie has left behind, most of which has never been set to music let alone recorded. Arlo and countless other artists have covered Woody's more famous and popular works. Nearly every kid in the United States knows "This Land is Your Land" thanks to it being part a thousands of elementary school choir concerts. But, there's more to Guthrie than just that, and more artists are discovering and have discovered that for themselves and, thankfully, for the rest of us.

Most people are aware of the work of Jeff Tweedy, his band Wilco, and Billy Bragg, the three volume collection Mermaid Avenue named after the area in New York where Guthrie lived with his family.

Both Bragg and Wilco recognized how much Guthrie has meant, not just to folk music but music is general. He is in the fabric of rock, punk, country, and pop. 

And they are not the only ones. Mermaid Avenue introduced people to forty-seven new songs by Guthrie. New Multitudes (Deluxe Edition) by Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker, and Yim Yames (AKA as Jim James of My Morning Jacket gave us another twenty-three pieces that reveals the depth of Guthrie's skills to make highly personal observations and well as social commentary.

He could also write poignant and touching love songs as evidenced in The Works by Jonatha Brooke.

The clearest connection to American music that Guthrie has, as Pete Seeger properly recognized, is folk. More accurately, probably, is the connection to country, the music of the folk. Not the sanitized pablum of today's Nashville sound, but, rather, the Oklahoma dustbowl country, the stuff of the Carter family to which his mother listened. The sound of cowpokes and Appalachia, the sound of bluegrass. The sound of Guthrie's folk of his day.

That's captured in Del & Woody by the Del McCoury Band. The song "The New York Trains" was nominated for a Grammy as Best American Roots Song in 2014.

Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen and others have sung Guthrie's songs. Some of them while Guthrie was still alive.

These new songs are by artists whose careers hadn't even started by the time Guthrie's was ending. Heck, some of the artists I mentioned here weren't even alive when he died in 1968. 

That's how good he was.

These 100 or so new pieces are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Thousands of pages of Guthrie's writing sit waiting at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One can hope that Nora Guthrie can find more artists to take a look at his words and make us listen to him again.

Buddy Guy Still Working the Blues

David Letterman used to say that Buddy Guy was the hardest working guy in show business. He's 86 years old and still touring and recording. His latest album, The Blues Don't Lie, (RCA Records) is a genuine masterful presentation of Guy's skills. Say what you will about other guitarists, few can come close to matching Guy's clear precision with his BG Signature Strat. Guy's response to anybody who might question his ability, "I Let My Guitar Do the Talking," leads off the album.

"We Go Back" featuring Mavis Staples is a touching examination of two friends reflecting on their shared experiences during a troubled national history. "Gunsmoke Blues" with Jason Isbel is an interesting commentary on gun violence in our nation. Guy gets a little more overtly political with "Follow the Money" featuring James Taylor.

Guy gets back to maybe a tongue in cheek mood with Elvis Costello on "Symptoms of Love." The collaboration of "House Party" with Wendy Moten is by far the peppiest, and most humorous song of the bunch. It had me dancing down the street, which surprised some of the people who saw me on my daily walk.

The other eleven songs are Buddy Guy and the blues at their best. Guy pays tribute to Sonny Boy Williamson and the genre itself in the title track. He doesn't forget that the blues has always had some undertones of sex and double entendre. With Bobby Rush, the two discuss their desires and simply ask, "What's Wrong with That?" Guy shows his understanding of the history of the blues with his soul bared in an acoustic version of the blues standard, "King Bee."

Produced by Tom Hambridge who also wrote or co wrote most of the songs on the album.

At 86 years old, Guy doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Why should he? He still got some talking to do.

Available in CD, Vinyl, and streaming at Amazon