A Conversation with Nora Guthrie – HuffPost 9.6.13

Mike Ragogna: Nora, what was it about your father’s music that affected America so deeply?

Nora Guthrie: Maybe because, in the 1940s and 1950s, it was so different from any other music they were hearing. He was writing lyrics about things that were actually happening to them. It was personal, so much of it based on his own experiences in The Dust Bowl, yet it seemed to be much bigger than one man’s story. Where the personal and the universal meet, so to speak. His lyrics were unusually poetic and descriptive in describing his own “small” life, but he connected it to our “shared” life. He kick-started the idea that you could say what’s on your mind – personally and even politically – and use music as a tool to further ideas that he thought would be beneficial to the most people, while also creating a “popular” song. Songs that people could sing along to.

MR: When did you and Arlo become conscious of how important your dad and his music were to the culture?

NG: It was a very gradual thing. First, one or two people liked his songs, then three or four. It went on like that for many years, people slowly discovering his songs, so we didn’t really experience any sudden sense of his music, or his name, becoming popular to a mass audience. It wasn’t until other musicians who had big fan followings, like Dylan and Joan Baez, began to sing his songs that his name and music quickly began to circulate. But that was already the next generation, in the late ’60s and ’70s.

MR: How did your father become the voice of a conscious generation, like about when did that happen and were there certain events that triggered him to go that direction?

NG: The political movements of the 1930s and 1940s really educated him. Maybe that was the beginnings of his own conscience growing. He empathized with the labor movement, with the farm workers, with the people displaced by the dust storms, about people who had lost their homes or jobs and were on the food lines during The Depression. He began to write songs about them, instead of writing songs for dance halls or entertainment. Because he was used to being without much, it wasn’t that hard for him to take a stand on these issues, or hold true to writing lyrics about things he wanted to. He never had much to lose. It’s so different for musicians today. So many of them are used to having so much and afraid to lose it all. Woody was pretty simple. He didn’t need a lot. I think that’s one of the things that other musicians can use Woody for – a kind of reminder that if you don’t make your millions, and just do what your conscience tells you to do, you’ll survive! And you might even like it. I’m reminded of a letter John Lennon sent to Woody when he was going through his own trials and tribulations concerning his stance against the war in Vietnam and his immigration battle. He wrote, “Woody lives, and I’m glad.”

MR: Was part of the popularity of his material also due to the delivery? Like, was your dad’s charm also a part of the mix?

NG: He was definitely a charming performer and great storyteller. He would introduce a song with a story, often longer than the song itself, filled with jokes and wry one-liners! He’d get people smiling, laughing, and ultimately, listening. He definitely knew how to get their attention. My brother, Arlo, has this same innate talent. They woo you to a point where you’re lovin’ them, and you can’t wait for them to sing the song. Then they hit you with a line like “some rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen.”

MR: Were there certain topics brought up in his material, such as the plight of the Mexican worker in “Deportees,” that resonated with you more than others?

NG: Woody wrote over 3000 songs for every aspect of life, a song to sing at each moment of the day, for every mood, for every step of life’s journey. So it’s impossible to single out any, as so many resonate at different moments in time. At first, when I was really little, the kids songs were really the ones I liked! “Howji Do” was really funny. Then, when I got a little older, of course we all learned “This Land” in school. That was actually a little embarrassing, with all the teachers and kids looking at you, “Her father wrote that song!” I grew up to understand what “Pretty Boy Floyd” was all about, and really began to appreciate his ability to tell a story that exists for all time, like “1913 Massacre.” Funny you should mention “Deportee.” On Labor Day, there was a dedication ceremony in Fresno, California, at the mass grave where the migrants who lost their lives were buried with no names. A young musician, Tim Hernandez, spent the last two years researching the story and actually found their names! So the dedication ceremony will finally list all their names. I’m so moved when moments like this happen. Woody wrote the song more than sixty years ago, but it was unfinished business. “All they will call you will be deportees” was his lament. Now, that is no longer the case. The same thing happened recently when two young filmmakers researched the story behind “1913 Massacre,” and made a documentary about the incident, also including all the names of the children and families that died. That film is currently being shown on some public television stations and film festival, and hopefully many people will want to learn more about what took place when the copper miners of Calumet, Michigan, decided to strike in 1913, and the consequences they suffered for their cause. “Pastures of Plenty” is just about the most singular piece of poetic writing ever in a lyric. A total work of art. Springsteen once said, “Nobody can write songs like that anymore.”

Of the more recent ones, “California Stars” and “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key” on the Mermaid Avenue recordings with Wilco and Billy Bragg, and the punk-rock “Shipping Up to Boston” with Dropkick Murphys, are also two favorites of recent recordings from the archives. But I could go on and on… “Wild Card in the Hole,” on Rob Wasserman’s Note of Hope CD, with Madeleine Peyroux and The Klezmatics’ “Gonna Get Through This World” on Wonder Wheel really stand out in today’s world. Jonatha Brooks “All You Gotta Do Is Touch Me” with Michael Franti on her album The Works is totally and deliciously indecent! There’s about a hundred more I could rave about. Lou Reed’s “The Debt I Owe” stays with me, and Tom Morello’s “Revolutionary Mind” is Woody at his best in-your-face!

MR: Beyond your family, do you think artists like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen carry the flag for Woody’s work?

NG: Well, it’s not really about flag-carrying, is it? Billy Bragg once put it very succinctly. He said, “We’re all links in a chain. Woody is the stake in the ground that all the chains are linked to.”

MR: What do you think of the state of things politically these days and do you have any suggestions to the politicians? What would Woody have thought and what might have he had advised?

NG: I would remind all politicians that they are constitutionally elected to represent and form a government that is in existence by and for the people. That’s the most simple and singular thought that should always be their motivation. Woody was a great believer in this. He loved when governments behaved accordingly, and despised when they didn’t. He could rave about it, and rage against it. As citizens, that’s also our job.

MR: What future family projects should we be looking forward to?

NG: We have an interesting project coming out this fall with Rounder Records, Woody Guthrie: American Radical Patriot.” This project highlights what I was just talking about, Woody’s relationship to the government and the times they were in sync, even collaborating on projects, like the songs he wrote for the building of The Grand Coulee Dam, and the anti-fascist songs he wrote during WWII, even songs he wrote about venereal diseases for the soldiers, interviews he did for the Library of Congress, etc.

We also have a beautiful photography book coming out this fall, Woody Guthrie’s Wardy Forty, which for the first time deals with Woody’s life with Huntington’s Disease. It’s a collaboration with Phillip Buehler, a photographer who captured the now abandoned ruins of Greystone Park Hospital in New Jersey where Woody spent many years as a patient in Ward 40. Greystone is where Dylan and other musicians would go to visit him, take him out for a day, and play music for him. We’ve included a lot of images of letters, songs, and photographs of Woody during these years, as he was still writing, thinking, living. As he said, “I ain’t quite dead yet.” It also includes interviews with people who knew him, or visited him, there. I hope it will give some historical background as to what people with hereditary diseases like Huntington’s had to deal with in those early days, as well as where we are now with current genetic research. As Woody wrote at the time, “The note of hope is the only note that keeps us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine.”

MR: Goofy Question. Does Arlo know how amazing his Amigo album is to this day?

NG: I know that I do! I’ll tell him you know too…

MR: [laughs] Thanks! What’s your advice for new artists?

NG: Don’t be afraid of caring about things. Don’t let anyone talk you out of caring about things. Find out what you care about and write songs about it. That could fill a lifetime, and is the secret to artistic longevity.

MR: What do you think Woody’s advice might have been?

NG: Woody knew himself. He knew what he wanted to do, and learned how to do it as best he could. “This machine kills fascists” was the note on his guitar. In “The Ballad of Tom Joad,” he ends with the line “…wherever people are fighting for their rights, that’s where I’m gonna be.” So he knew what his work was gonna be. Luckily, not everyone is given this task! Arlo jokes that in a world where so much is going wrong, it’s even easier for someone to do something about it, because even the littlest thing might turn out to make a huge difference. Some tiny little action can be the cosmic tipping point. Who knows what it takes to turn things around? Maybe it’s just one little song, quickly scribbled down, like “We Shall Overcome,” or “This Land,” written in a little flop house, that will turn out to make a huge difference. Or, on the other hand, maybe it’s a complete lifestyle change. Who knows? Woody would have simply pressed musicians with the idea to discover for themselves what their real job is, and not be afraid to take it on. On the other hand, sometimes your calling card comes to you, and you’re faced with having to accept it or reject it. In either case, fear not! There’s a point to your life, to your music. Hopefully, you figure it out while you’re still alive.

MR: After listening to this project top to bottom, what’s your reaction?

NG: I’m trying to figure it out…while I’m still alive. Haha!

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne