Grandpa Arlo still leader of the band

By TOM KEYSER Albany Times Union – Published: November 19, 2009

Grandpa Arlo Guthrie, now 62, is leading a Guthrie fam band across country on the “Guthrie Family Rides Again” tour.

In August, Guthrie released “Arlo Guthrie: Tales of ’69,” a concert recorded just before Woodstock. Guthrie, of course, remains one of the most memorable Woodstock performers because of his stoned raps and declarations, such as “The New York State Thruway is closed, man!”

On this tour, the family features new songs by the legendary Woody Guthrie, Arlo’s father, as set to music by contemporary musicians. Woody died in 1967 at age 55 from complications of Huntington’s disease, a genetic neurological disorder. There is no cure, and each child of a Huntington’s parent has a 50-50 chance of inheriting the Huntington gene.

Between stops on the family tour, Arlo talked by phone with the Albany Times Union.

Q: What can fans expect?

A: We did a tour like this about three or four years ago. It was me and my son, Abe, who’s been working with me a good 25 years; and my daughter Sarah Lee and her husband, Johnny Irion. We were doing a lot of my dad’s old material and some of our own songs. It was such a good time, we thought, “Let’s take everybody.”

It’s my four kids and my seven grandkids, and a good friend, Terry A. La Berry. Its focus is on some of the new Woody Guthrie songs that have been coming out as the result of my sister Nora’s work in making the lyrics available to young musicians around the world.

People have been bringing these songs to life, adding their own music, because my dad … wrote a lot of songs that are just lyrics on the page. If he had a tune for them, the tunes went with him when he left us.

So we’re going to do those in addition to the songs we’re writing ourselves.

Q: Do the grandchildren perform, too?

A: Yeah, all seven of them. They’re everything from 2 to 18.

Q: So the 2-year-olds might get on stage?

A: There’s no “might” about it. They’ll be there.

Q: So it has an intimate family feel?

A: That’s all it is. There are songs I have to do just because I’m me — the shorter ones that are popular, you know, as far as I go. There are new songs some of the kids have written, new songs that even the grandkids have written.

Q: What’s the story behind “Tales of ’69″?

A: This was an old tape that had been sitting around the house. My kids were listening to it, and they called me into the studio. And they said, “Pop, you’ve got to hear this thing.”

So I went in. They had tears in their eyes. They were rolling around on the floor. They said, “You were crazy.”

I said: “That’s kind of funny. I don’t even remember that one.”

They said, “We’ve got to put this out.”

I said: “You can’t put it out. It’s not ready for prime time. It never really was.”

They said: “No, we’ve got to put this out. It’s too late in your career; it’s not going to hurt you.”

So we put it out mostly because we knew that there would be some old-time fans who would enjoy a little window into that world back years ago.

Q: Would you be 20 again, right now, if you could be?

A: No. I love being who I am right now. To me, the ’60s were all about people being free to experiment with their own lives, see what works and doesn’t work, rather than sit back and be told what should work for you, and what you should do …

That was a great time to grow up. And frankly, that has shaped my political philosophy to the point where I am constantly reminded of the danger of accepting other people’s experience as your own, that you really need to be free to have no doubt about your own reality. And that means taking chances.

Q: Did you ever think you’d still be making music and touring at this point?

A: I always figured that this is what I wanted to do. I didn’t actually want to do this for a living, by the way. I meant to be a forest ranger. So I went to college for that out in Montana. And I loved it out there.

But, the ’60s were going on. And they weren’t going on as much in Montana (laughs) as they were in other places. So I left school, because … I felt I needed to be on the streets at the demonstrations. I needed to be a part of the civil rights movement, not just hear about it. I wanted to be part of the anti-war movement, not just hear about it …

I found myself out on the street with a guitar, and there was my old buddy Pete Seeger, my dad’s friend, really, at that time. And so I just hung out with him and ended up playing songs with him so that we could feel good about marching around and demanding that things change. It changed my life. I ended up doing that as a living.

Q: I understand you never got tested for the Huntington’s gene. Why?

A: If they could do something about it as the result of finding out one thing or another, I might be interested. But just to find out? That doesn’t make any sense. If they had a test for your likelihood of getting hit by a car, would you take that test, too?

Q: Did you think about getting tested before having kids?

A: We didn’t have the test before we had the kids. But it would have been the same anyway.

Q: Huntington’s disease typically begins in midlife, from 30 to 50. So does that mean you’re free and clear?

A: It’s a curve. So far, so good.