Goodnight, Little Arlo, Goodnight

I discovered Woody Guthrie in 1967 from a two inch column in my hometown newspaper, the Daily Oklahoman, announcing his death in a Brooklyn hospital. "Folk Singer Dies' was the headline, and I barely knew what a folk singer was, although I was already on the way to becoming one. I found a copy of his autobiography, Bound For Glory, and in that one book learned more about my home state and about the world in general than I had learned in all the books I had read or classes I had taken in my short fifteen years. A couple of years later I went to my first folk concert, a Woody Guthrie birthday celebration in Oklahoma City featuring Jimmie Driftwood, and a host of others that I can't recall. It was attended by Marjorie, Arlo and Nora Guthrie, and I remember the pride on their faces as each performer gave tribute to their husband and father. It was forty years later, as I was researching the history of the Walnut Valley Festival, that I discovered that the concert I had seen had been originally planned for Okemah, Woody's hometown, but the city of Okemah, still immersed in Woody's reputation as a radical and a communist, would not grant them a permit for the show. I couldn't help but think about that show tonight, as I watched "Little Arlo" on the stage of the Orpheum Theater, and how strange it must have been to have a father that was revered by much of the known world but roundly despised by the folks in his hometown, and I realized how that pride I saw on the Guthrie family faces had been tempered by forces that I was many years away from understanding.

Of course, Okemah now hosts a festival every year on Woody's birthday, a decidedly communistic affair with no admission and where all the performers play for free. Maybe they're just trying to make up for past wrongs. I'm sure I'll attend that festival someday, but having Arlo right here in town is certainly the next best thing. For all the "Woody" imitators out there, Arlo was certainly never one of them. His songs have always been carefree and easy, songs about riding motorcycles, passenger trains and "big airliners", his humor a more subtle but still substantial take on his dad's biting social criticisms. Still, he helped keep Woody's songs alive, recording songs like The 1913 Massacre and The Ludlow Massacre when no one else would. He was right on target tonight with "Pretty Boy Floyd" - what could be more timely than the lines "as through this life you travel/you'll meet some funny men/some'll rob you with a six gun/ and some with a fountain pen"? Also, "This Land Is Your Land" is not a song that normally brings tears to my eyes, but in Arlo's hands, on that stage in my chosen hometown, flooded by the memories of so long ago and of singing that song so many times and in so many places across this land, a good cry in the dark seemed most appropriate.

With his son, Abe, on keyboards, a very tight rhythm section, and the Burns Sisters on back-up vocals, Arlo Guthrie kept the Orpheum stage hoppin'- at least between stories. Backing up a natural-born storyteller must be challenging for a musician, but they all showed well-honed patience. My personal favorite was the story describing unwritten songs as fish swimming by, and instead of grabbing a line and a pole, you just grab a pencil and a piece of paper and see if you can catch one. I missed the actual punch line but it had something to do with staying downstream of Dylan, because he might throw some smaller ones back. I also loved his story about his very first memory when he was two years old, of simply standing next to Huddie Ledbetter, and how, almost sixty years later, his band took a day off searching for Leadbelly's grave in Louisiana. We heard how he made Steve Goodman buy him beers before he would listen to his songs, and we heard a retelling of a biblical story that turned out to just be a praise for the common man. The master definitely still has the touch.

Arlo closed his show with one of his dad's poems that he had put to music, a task still ahead for over three thousand songs. It was a song about peace, not the big peace that you see in the posters and slogans, but the small peace that lives inside one person, a peace that becomes the one true gift that one person can give to another. Arlo, you gave Wichita a great gift tonight. Thanks. And goodnight.


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The Power of the Picture

In both my MySpace bulletin announcing the article and my letter congratulating the photographer, I used the word "finesse" in describing Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee's images of Winfield 2008. I hope you'll visit to see what I mean. (http://www.hodgsonrigsbee.com/)It was difficult choosing one image to accompany the letter to my old friend, but the blue tent/blue sky/blue port-a-potty was imminently powerful for several reasons. First, it immediately separates 2008 from every other "Winfield". That photo could never have been taken at either the Walnut or Pecan Groves. Also, I love the way the sky shows both the power of the storm that has just passed and the incredible clarity and calm that was about to descend on both the tent and the plastic shitter. Certainly, it would be far too academic for an admitted Old Folkie to go on about how both structures are temporary representations of our "real lives" relocated to a place where our "real" lives should perhaps be. Sorry, you'll have to get there on your own. I will, however, mention that there is a "forth blue" that is not immediately apparent - the native stand of Little Bluestem grass that everywhere surrounds Winfield Lake - mowed down strategically to make way for the tents, shitters, and everything else that eventually followed. This grass likely grew here long before any of us, or any of our ancestors thought to draw taught string over boxes of wood to accompany the pure joy of living on this earth, atop that hill, under that perfect sky.

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Letter To An Old Friend

Dear Michael,

So great to talk to you recently, and I can't thank you enough for hosting my son on his journey to San Francisco. You asked about Winfield, and, as is my habit, I got pretty carried away with the answer. But then, we have over thirty years of catching up to do.

That little festival that we saw arise from the turmoil of the sixties has grown almost immeasurably since you left the land of sunflowers and catfish and ventured off to leave your mark on the world. Even I, living forty miles away, for many years have given way to the exigencies of raising a family and maintaining a business that required my full attentions in late September . I wasn't among the faithful when the campgrounds fell silent as the towers fell in New York in 2001, nor was I there to cheer the performers who rented cars to dash across the country under silent skies to their beloved Winfield. I was also absent during the sad and tragic death of Brian Redford in 1997, which brought the festival staff to it's collective knees in grief and put the future of our festival in serious doubt. But, I had gathered my musical wits about me recently and can now bear witness to the great flood of 2008, which turns out to not be so much about water and mud, but about the very part of our soul which makes this such a central part of our life. That one week camped at Winfield Lake showed us, in great relief, exactly why we go year after year - decade after decade - not for John McCutcheon or Tommy Emmanuel, as great as they are, not for Marley's Ghost or Hot Rize. We go for only one thing - ourselves - our community. Sure, Doc Watson and John Hartford brought us together in the beginning, along with Bromberg, Crary, the Blakes and all the rest, but it was a true community that was built up around this collective tradition of a music that heals the body and the mind, in much the same way a prosperous town would be built up around a sweet and steady flowing spring.

I shared some wine with some young folks from Valley Center just before I left on Sunday. They have yet to discover the music of John Hartford or even Doc Watson. Will they someday? Quite possibly. Will it matter if they don't? I don't think so. The Fast Food Junkies or Truckstop Honeymoon or the Bennett Brothers may be all they need. I know those folks were there the night before when Craig Dermer and Cody Bennett stepped into the middle of that field of Bluestem and played some of the most raucously sublime music that I have ever witnessed in all my years on this planet - it profoundly changed me and how music works in my aged brain - I can't imagine what kind of path it must have started them on. What's funny is that I had a complete field recording unit a few feet away in my tent - and right now I'd love to have the recording so I could learn the songs - but at that moment I could not do anything but be IN that moment - to exist only within that miracle of human spirit and song that is our reward for all the struggles of the rest of the year. As our fellow travelers stumbled in, drawn in like bees by the pure sound of molten honey, my companion and I sat at our dinner table and witnessed the beating heart of our musical heritage, passed down from fiddle to bow, father to son, friend to stranger, tramped across broken sod and frozen mountains, carried on backs through floods of great pain and great loss, packed in boxes and rucksacks across oceans when our homes could no longer hold us, and down strange and forbidding rivers as we searched for new ones.

This music needs no stage, no microphones, no sound board, no producer, no road manager. All it requires is an open space of Little Bluestem, a moon rising over a Kansas lake, and a few musicians with a story to tell. I wish you had been there, Michael, to see what you and Stu and all the others got started so long ago. I'm betting that that highfalutin' newspaper you write for will let you off for a few days next September, if you ask early enough, and I'll commit right now to finding you a tent and some sleeping bags. Pull that dulcimer out of the closet, I know you've still got it. Go back and read " Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me" again if you have to. Do whatever you've got to do to get your sorry Okie-to-Oakland ass back here where it belongs. In Kansas. In September. In Winfield.

Sweet dreams,

Tom


P.S. The photograph is by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee, from his amazing collection at http://hodgsonrigsbee.com/web09/winfield01.html


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Any Old Perch In A Storm

Sometimes a buzzard will roost wherever there's a little water and some good grub. Blue skies and dry roads also are required habitat for this species. And during full moon, they have been known to beat their wings in time with the song that springs eternal from the autumn earth of Cowley County. Carry on, amigos. See you at the Buzzard Lope.

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What's Winfield Without A Little Rain?

The Walnut Valley International Waterway is open for business and barges are loaded with grain and cattle and headed off to the centers of commerce and industry. Long-landlocked farms are prospering with catfish and oyster production. Fields that once waved amber are being planted with rice and cormorants are being imported to protect the crop. In the backwaters, young men are building rafts and making plans with displaced agrarians to escape unhappy home lives. Canoes are paddled with old Silvertones and cheap fiddles that the owners have been wanting to replace for years. Life goes on. Winfield lives.

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Winfield on the Air (Before the Flood)

This post was prepared before the quiet little Walnut decided to become the "wide Missouri" and send the land rushers rushing (O.K., some were definitely dawdling) off to friend's back yards, other local campgrounds, or any dry parking lot they could find. More on that later.

Front Porch Radio (http://www.frontporchradio.net/) has been active for several years as a way for folks to keep the spirit of Winfield alive in their kitchens, their bedrooms, and out in the garage while they're sharpening their tent stakes. No longer just a campground stage with broadcast capabilities, FPR has grown into a 24 hour internet stream of any and everything you might hear down on the Walnut River, anything from Patsy Montana to Split Lip Rayfield. Also, they've built up a video archive of many of the performers that have graced their little campground sound booth out in the wilds of the Walnut Grove.

In addition, they have been joined in these efforts this year by the Wichita State internet radio station, WSUiR. (http://wsuir.wichita.edu/index.html), The brain-child of John Harrison and Lauren Hirsh, WSUiR is a collaborative community and campus-based radio project. They have opened their studios and on-site equipment to anyone willing to make a programing proposal and go through their training necessary to make things work. Their plan is to set up a team of Winfield festival-goers to scout out and record actual campground music sessions, for streaming to the unfortunate souls strapped to their real lives somewhere beyond the Walnut Valley. The monstrously entertaining James Gates is scheduled to pull off a live feed of the James Gates Show, as well as five-minute spots at the top of each hour. They also plan to broadcast some "best of" Front Porch Radio recordings. The magazine, Naked City, is also one of the collaborators, although I'm not clear yet on their involvement.

Just like everyone else, I'm sure their plans will adapt to the weather and eventual festival decisions.

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It Ain't Your Grandpa's Radio Anymore

Since the Great Depression, folk and traditional music has been preserved over the airwaves when it was faltering elsewhere. In the thirties, marketing geniuses heard dollar signs in the proliferation of "hillbilly" music, since it was mostly mountain folk who had migrated to the cities, only to find themselves not only completely cut off from their culture, but soon out of work with little other diversion besides the "talking box". In Nashville, WSM was beginning to broadcast the Grand Ole Opry, and out West, Woody started writing his first songs at KFVD while broadcasting the folk songs and hymns that he grew up with to the masses huddled on the California coast. Pete Seeger, Uncle Dave Macon, The Carter Family and hundreds of others might have never been heard by a wide audience if not for fact that three out of four families had such a box in their house. Even in the last thirty years, nothing has done more to bring folk music into the average American household than Prairie Home Companion.

Today, the internet has trapped the little rabbit of radio, and has got him running in a wheel to nearly every house in the land. Before I stir up whats brewing in Winfield, I'd like to head up to Kansas City for a spell. Up there, they have a beast known as Community Radio. Sound subversive? You bet it is. Folks putting on their own shows without answering to advertisers or paying huge sums to "public" radio syndicates? It's downright radical. Here's how they describe themselves: "KKFI is an independent, non-commercial, non-profit, 501(c)3, volunteer-based, community radio station. Our vision is to provide a broadcast voice to the voiceless...to those in our community who are otherwise un-represented or under-represented by mainstream media. Our eclectic music programming includes blues, jazz, reggae, rock, hip hop, alternative, Hispanic and world music. Our local and national public affairs programming includes shows dealing with working class, peace, justice, GLBT, and alternative health issues." Find them at http://www.kkfi.org/

Folk music fans score because the Foolkiller crowd has their own show - "Foolkiller Folk" - that runs from 11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. every Sunday. The Foolkiller was a Folk Music and Theater Collective that operated out of Harry Truman's old haberdashery at 39th and Main back in the 70's and early 80's. They, along with the Wichita branch, The Market Street Forum, brought the likes of Utah Phillips, Rosalee Sorrels, Sparky Rucker, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott out here to the flatlands of the lower Midwest. Come to think of it, it was at a Foolkiller retreat that I got to hear Houston Stackhouse, the falsetto blues singer whose band was the house band the night that Robert Johnson was killed. And it was at a Foolkiller conference that I stood with twenty or more folks holding hands and chanting in a circle around Charlie Parker's grave. Mary McCaslin, Jim Ringer and Mark Ross dropped in regularly, and the wonderful folk quartet, Rosy's Bar and Grill, rose out of the Foolkiller ranks. The current radio show, "Foolkiller Folk" has three rotating "host couples": Valerie and Mark Andruss, Bob and Diane Suckiel and Steve and Kathy Peters. Each adds their own flavor to the show, and each of them are skilled exhibitors of the best and farthest reaches of this music we love. They keep people posted on concerts in the Lawrence/K.C. area and also organize their own house concerts through Cross Currents - The Kansas City Folk Arts Alliance (http://www.crosscurrentsculture.org/Index.htm)

Now remember, even though it's on the internet, this is real radio - there's no going to the archives to hear past shows. If you want to save something, you gotta thread some tape on a digital spool of some kind and record it yourself. However, they do post a playlist after each show, with links to purchase the individual tracks or CD's from Amazon.