Steve Earle and special guests will celebrate Woody Guthrie’s centennial at City Winery this week
CELEBRATION OF WOODY GUTHRIE’S 100th BIRTHDAY
City Winery
155 Varick St.
July 11-13, $60-$80, 8:00
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
One hundred years ago this Saturday, folk-singing legend Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. In his too-brief career — he died from Huntington’s Disease in 1967 in Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens at the age of fifty-five, his ashes sprinkled in the ocean at Coney Island — he created a lasting legacy that proved that music can make a difference in changing socioeconomic and -political times. His 1940 album, Dust Bowl Ballads, is still a primer for the folk movement, containing such songs as “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore,” “Vigilante Man,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” and “Blowin’ Down This Road.” This week City Winery will pay tribute to Woodrow Wilson Guthrie — yes, he was named after the New Jersey governor who was soon to become president — with the centennial celebration WoodyFest, part of a yearlong series of concerts put together with the Grammy Museum, the Woody Guthrie Archives, and the Guthrie family. The three-day event will be hosted by actor, author, activist, and folk troubadour Steve Earle, who is a kind of illegitimate son of Guthrie and Hank Williams. On July 11, Earle will be joined by John Hammond, Tim Robbins, and Diana Jones, followed on July 12 by Rachael Yamagata, the Wood Brothers, and Allen Toussaint and July 13 by Billy Bragg, Amy Helm, and Joe Purdy, with more to come. Be sure to study up on those other verses of “This Land Is Your Land,” because there’s sure to be a sing-along of the whole song.