Happy Birthday Woody

Had the universe been large enough to contain his spirit, Woody Guthrie would have turned (100) years old today.  I often find myself wondering what he would think of what his beloved America has become.  In his life he was labeled a communist for his outspoken stance against the injustices that befell the migrant worker, his passion for ecological preservation, his disbelief in “big-business”.  He championed the working class, upon whose back this country was built and he was ostracized for having that voice.  He penned one of the most patriotic songs in the history of the United States, “This Land is Your Land” and still his character was often critically eviscerated as being anti-American.

He once said, “A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is or  who's out of work and where the job is or  who's broke and where the money is or  who's carrying a gun and where the peace is.”

When was the last time you heard any talking heads, whether left or right leaning speak with as much clarity as that?  The hell of it is that, it’s not a “folk song” it’s happening everyday on the streets around us.  The words he sang and thought and spoke all those years ago are as relevant now as they were then, if not more so.  In too many ways we haven’t progressed – if anything, we’ve regressed.  We’ve become even more a nation of whores:  political, social, financial, power hungry whores. 

Woody’s was the voice of reason in his time.  He called it as he saw and pulled no punches for anyone.  He believed in unions because they protected the inherent rights of the working stiff.  He believed that someone who worked an honest day should get an honest day’s wage.  He believed that government should not dictate or regulate the volume with which he spoke in public about his disbelief in the government.  He believed in personal freedom and accountability, but also understood that a government of a free people had a responsibility to assist those same free people when their decisions went awry.  He looked to government to not give a hand-out but to repay him what he was due – only in equal measure to what he had given it. 

He gave a voice to a whole generation of people who might not have had a voice without him.  He tattooed upon our national psyche the horrors of the Great Depression and the dust bowl and the great California migration.  He was our living, breathing, vocal Tom Joad.  He spoke when no one else would about ideas that no one else had. He was a democrat – not the party, but the ideal.  He was a believer in the inclusive possibility that is the American dream and sought only to ensure that it was equally available to all.  He was repaid by being dismissed as a socialist agitator and a schizophrenic after he died.

By all accounts, he was the least judgmental human being who’s walked the earth and was generous almost to a fault.  He would give away his day’s pay to a starving family when his own children were hungry. He would offer his coat to a shivering hitchhiker and catch a cold on his way home.  He possessed an unequaled generosity of spirit, of openness.  He held a hunger to experience the world and the people of the world and he wrote, or painted, or sang about every single person he ever met in his life.  He retained the childlike wonder of the unknown that most of us lose too early in life.  He continued to embrace the known and the unknown even as he lay dying.  He had the exceptional gift to be just who was at all times.

Through the years, his politics faded into the background and less and less was said or written about his “radical” nature.   Rightfully so, his music has been brought into the light, given the credit and acclaim it deserves but rarely received during his life.   He only recorded (400) songs but left countless thousands of others for us to discover after his death.  Billy Bragg, Jeff Tweedy, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Morello: these are just a few of the artists who have recorded and reintroduced Guthrie’s lyrical genius to the world.  His musical legacy is still very much alive today.

I have a print of a quote of his from an undocumented performance monologue hanging in my studio.  Every morning before I go to work, or go to play, or to mow the yard or to go do whatever it is that I’m off to do that day I read every word of the print:

            I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. 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. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim, too ugly or too this or too that…songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

            I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built…I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.

            I could hire out to the other side, the big money side and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs.  To sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all.  But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that.  The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

These words are supposedly about how he approached the craft of songwriting but they transcend that endeavor and speak volumes about his true character.  I am not a singer of songs. I don’t have the gifts that he had, but I understand what he was saying.  For me these words are a treatise on how to conduct oneself on the daily and they fully illuminate the kind, thoughtful, patriotic man that Woody was. 

I believe that reading his words every morning makes me a better man.

Happy Birthday Woody.  I hope you’ve found the peace in death, that you were always searching for in life.

“Left wing, right wing, chicken wing — it’s all the same

to me. I sing my songs wherever I can sing ’em.”

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie

14 July 1912 – 3 October 1967