VARIOUS: Woody Guthrie @ 100! Live At The Kennedy Center

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VARIOUS
Woody Guthrie @ 100! Live At the Kennedy Center
Legacy Recordings
Regardless of Eleanor Rooseveltâs attention to leftist music, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (1912-67) might have been surprised to find Washington, DCâs Kennedy Center honoring the centennial of his birth last year. Here it is in full on DVD and in slightly abridged form on CD.
Old Crow Medicine Show starts the event with âHowdi Doâ and âUnion Made.â Subsequent acts present Woodyâs various facets: populism, childrenâs music, pure fun, erotica.
Jimmy LaFave cuts loose with âHard Travelinâ,â while Judy Collins turns earth mother on âPastures of Plenty.â She and Woodyâs sidekick Ramblinâ Jack Elliot are the eveningâs sole performers who also sang on the two A Tribute to Woody Guthrie LPs drawn from 1968 and 1970 celebration of life and fundraising shows for the Woody Guthrie Foundation and research into Huntingtonâs Chorea, the hereditary disease that gradually killed him. (Jack encores â1913 Massacreâ on this new set, too.)
Sweet Honey in the Rock turns âIâve Got to Knowâ into fluttery doo-wop in contrast to their 1985 studio version of the song on Feel Something Drawing Me On, where the group had much different personnel. There they gave it a much more somber rendition.
Among Woodyâs unrecorded writings he never set to music, jaggy-voiced Lucinda Williams stunningly takes on the persona of a nurturing prostitute in âHouse of Earth.â Just like Woody adapted and updated earlier songs, Tom Morello adds his own references to brick throwing, Occupy and the Weathermen to âEase My Revolutionary Mind.â Woody would surely have dug the Occupy movement, but how might he have felt about the line âI want a Weather Underground womanâ?
People whoâve been hearing Woodyâs songs for decades may note that At 100âs deliveries arenât always the best available. Ani DiFrancoâs âDeporteeâ seems surprisingly passionless compared to, say, the studio recording on 1963âs Judy Collins 3.
The show ends with the performers all getting together for his anthem âThis Land Is Your Landâ â including, of course, the âno trespassing signâ verse.
The DVD is vastly stronger than the CD since, for bonus material, it has rarely seen footage of Woody himself singing parts of three songs plus tracks from the concert that couldnât fit on the CD. Also, thereâs time for singers to introduce the songs (Lucinda calls Woody a âsexual libertarianâ) and we see closeups of their faces. Unlike many concert videos, this one is utterly free of gimmickry and glitz. Maybe thatâs how Woody would have wanted it.
â Bruce Sylvester