W.R. Valley Players Fall Musical
Is ‘Woody Guthrie’s American Song’

The White River Valley Players will present "Woody Guthrie’s American Song," a musical about the life and times of Woody Guthrie, in his own words and songs.

Conceived and adapted by Peter Glazer, and directed by Dick and Dorothy Robson, the show will be performed at the Rochester HS auditorium on Rte. 100 in Rochester, Saturday, Oct. 18 at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 19 at 2 p.m.; and Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Oct. 23, 24 and 25 at 7:30 p.m.

The cast includes J.C. Calnan, Sue Clarke, Danny Dover, Ferron Griffin, and Greg Ryan in principal roles; with Marissa Achee, Ginny Scott Bowman, Mindy Branstetter, Cari Burkard, Monica Collins, Anne Ryan, Dorothy Robson, Dick Robson, Abby Leathers, David Marmor, Kurt Mitchell, Sierra Ostrow, Cynthia Ryan, Susie Smolen, and John W. Wong in the chorus.

The house band will feature Jake Morrow on guitar, mandolin and slide guitar, Dick Robson on guitar and octave mandolin, and Ellen Sutherland on bass.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in 1912 in Okemah, Okla. His father, a cowboy, land speculator, and local politician, taught him Western songs, Indian songs, and Scottish folk tunes. His Kansas-born mother, also musically inclined, had an equally profound effect on him.

Taking to the open road as a very young man, he fell in love with his first wife, Mary, in the Texas panhandle. It was there that he also made his first attempt at a musical career, and discovered a love and talent for drawing and painting.

The Great Depression hit hard, and like hundreds of "dustbowl refugees," Guthrie hit Route 66, looking for a way to support his family. Moneyless and hungry, he hitchhiked, rode freight trains, and walked his way to California, taking whatever small jobs he could.

In Los Angeles, Guthrie landed a job singing on KFVD radio, and began to attract widespread public attention, particularly from the thousands of relocated Okies gathered in migrant camps. The radio also provided him with a forum from which he developed his talent for controversial social commentary and criticism, and he became a hard-hitting advocate for truth, fairness, and justice.

Guthrie strongly identified with his audience and used his songwriting to give a voice to those who had been disenfranchised.

"I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good," Guthrie once said. "I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing…I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood."

Guthrie was never comfortable with success, or being in one place for too long. Arriving in New York City in 1940, he recorded "Dust Bowl Ballads" for RCA Victor, his first album of original songs, and throughout the 1940s continued to record hundreds of discs for Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records.

Guthrie’s first novel, "Bound for Glory," a semi-autobiographical account of his Dust Bowl years, was published in 1943 to critical acclaim. What is perhaps his best-known song, "This Land Is Your Land," written in the late 1940s, became known as a people’s national anthem.

In New York City, Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Will Geer, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Josh White, Millard Lampell, Bess Hawes, and Sis Cunningham, among others, all became Guthrie’s close friends and musical collaborators. As the Weavers, the most commercially successful and influential folk music group of the early 1950s, these musicians brought Guthrie’s songs to the larger public.

"The ballad singer is a mystery to everybody except maybe his own self…" Guthrie said. "What heart of the people has he found, what passport, what ticket, what philosophy, what religious faith that takes him out to the roads and trails again?"

He died of Huntington’s Disease in October 1967 and a month later, on Thanksgiving Day, his son Arlo, released his first commercial recording of "Alice’s Restaurant," which was to become the iconic anti-war anthem for the next generation.

In his lifetime, Guthrie wrote nearly 3,000 song lyrics, published two novels, created artworks, authored numerous published and unpublished manuscripts, poems, prose, and plays and hundreds of letters and news articles, which are housed in the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City.

WRVP directors Dick and Dorothy Robson chose the show about Guthrie after seeing the Vermont Stage Co.’s production several years ago starring Patty Casey.

"We wanted to do a small-scale musical with string band accompaniment, and Guthrie’s songs are accessible—they’re folk songs that speak to all of us and are easily sung," the Robsons note.

They also feel the show has real relevance for today’s tough economic times, as well as today’s problems with and attitudes towards both legal and illegal immigrants and the work they do. The dust bowl conditions of the 1930s find a parallel with the climate change worries of today.

For ticket reservations for the WRVP production call the Judy Jensen Clay Studio at 767-3271. Tickets will also be sold at the door. Both the Huntington House and The Village Porch will offer specials to play-goers for an early dinner between 5-6 p.m.

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