The Demolition String Band will host a Woody Guthrie tribute in Hoboken, Jan. 30.
Elena Skye and Boo Reiners of the dynamic Demolition String Band will host a Woody Guthrie tribute concert to benefit The American Civil Liberties Union, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. at Hoboken’s 503 Social Club.
“With all the struggles going on in our country these days, and the struggles we will be facing in the coming years, it felt like it was time to revisit the Woody Guthrie catalogue,” said Skye in a press release. “Before there was Pete Seeger, there was Woody Guthrie … his inspiring, empowering songs still ring true today in these tumultuous times.”
Skye and Reiners will perform in “our acoustic/mountain/bluegrass incarnation that night, with upright bass player Matt Quinones and fab fiddler Nick Reeb,” Skye says. The show’s lineup also will include Guthrie’s grandson Cole Quest, a singer and multi-instrumentalist who leads the Brooklyn-based band Cole Quest & the City Pickers; singer and actress Queen Esther; and violinist and singer Lisa Gutkin, who is a member of The Klezmatics (the group’s Grammy-winning 2006 album Wonder Wheel features lyrics by Guthrie that were not set to music during his life).
Other performers will include singer-songwriter Glenn Morrow; Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes of The Cucumbers; Gene Turonis (who just released a new album, Gene D. Plumber Celebrates Christmas); singer-songwriter Nate Schweber of The New Heathens; and Sean Kiely, who released an album, Postcards of the Reckoning, in November. (Kiley will open for Richard Thompson at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City on Feb. 21; he and his bluegrass band The Go Bailers have hosted a bluegrass night every Wednesday at Archer Bar in Jersey City for many years).
Woody Guthrie, as portrayed by Scoot McNairy in “A Complete Unknown.”
One of my favorite aspects of the new Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” is the focus on Guthrie, who inspired Dylan and so many other artists and activists, including Seeger, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Lucinda Williams, Wilco and Bruce Springsteen. In the beginning of the film, Dylan visits Guthrie, who was suffering from Huntington’s disease, at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris Plains. Dylan plays him “Song to Woody,” which appeared on Dylan’s 1962 debut album.
Though Guthrie died in 1967, his messages about poverty and injustice remain relevant. Music was his weapon; indeed, his guitar bore the message “this guitar kills fascists.” He chronicled the 1930s Dust Bowl, earning the nickname the “Dust Bowl Troubadour,” and was at the center of a new folk movement, along with Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry and others, popularizing protest and topical songs.
Every Passover, my family embraces his timeless songs, singing “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” and “This Land Is Your Land.”
The Demolition String Band, along with Stephen Said, performed a song featuring Guthrie’s words, “Go Coney Island, Roll on the Sand” on My Name is New York: Ramblin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town, a three-CD 2012 audio book that explored Guthrie’s experiences in New York. “I was given lyrics by his daughter Nora Guthrie to put to music,” Skye said. (Watch a live performance of this song, below.)
Elena Skye and Boo Reiners of The Demolition String Band.
This ACLU fundraiser is timely given concerns about the impending presidency of Donald Trump. Trump’s win “comes after a campaign in which he consistently targeted immigrants, transgender youth, and other vulnerable communities with hateful rhetoric,” said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero in November. “He also threatened retribution against dissidents and political opponents. … we know that despair and resignation are not a strategy. At the ACLU, we’re choosing to channel our fear into action.”
Romero said that “on day one of Trump’s term, the organization will defend against the administration’s unlawful deportation, provide legal defense to whistleblowers and critics of Trump, use the courts to affirm the rights of LGBTQ people, and challenge the administration’s attacks on reproductive freedom.”
Skye and Reiners have previously hosted Woody Guthrie nights in Hoboken and Jamaica, Vermont.
“It’s always a wonderful, good-feeling night.” Skye says. “I don’t think anyone walks away from a Woody Guthrie night without feeling somehow a little lighter in mind and stronger in spirit.”
For tickets to the Jan. 30 tribute, and information, visit elenaandboo.com.
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