The Arlo Guthrie Family Tree

The Arlo Guthrie Family Tree

by Benjy Eisen

Before he broke through with “Alice’s Restaurant,” before he topped the charts with “City Of New Orleans” and before he played “Coming Into Los Angeles” at Woodstock, folksinger Arlo Guthrie already had a famous name. His dad, Woody Guthrie (“This Land Is Your Land”), was the most recognizable folksinger of the early 20th Century, defining folk music for the next generation. That “next generation” would turn out to include such disciples as Bob Dylan and his own son, Arlo.

Speaking to MODE by phone from his home in the Berkshires, Arlo reflects, “There’s certain advantages of having the parents you have, and certain disadvantages. And that’s true for everybody. In my family the advantage, at least in the world of folk music, is everybody knows who you are. I mean even if I wasn’t me! And so the advantage of being me, in my world, is that there’s a long history of my family participating in that world. And I love that. That makes it easy. The only difficulty I ever had with it was years ago when people wanted me to be a clone of my dad. They wanted me to sing his songs his way, singing them old union songs or whatever. And so I’ve tried to balance, throughout my life, the obligation that you have honoring your parents, which I take seriously, but also the obligation to be yourself, which is what my dad’s whole point was.”

Guthrie is a dad himself now, and his children could probably say that exact same thing. Abe Guthrie and Sara Lee Guthrie are both musicians and performers, performing with their dad and independently.

“We started doing shows not just with me and a band, which is what I was doing for years, or me solo, which I was doing for years, but my son Abe’s been playing with me for the last 10 years off-and-on, and now his band Xavier has been playing with me for the last couple of years now. And then about two years ago, my daughter Sara Lee decided to join us, so she’s with us. And her husband, Johnny Irion, who just put a record out, has been joining us. So now we’re back to a large crew on stage and we just sort of all meet up at these cities,” he said. “I go and hang out for a couple of days and Johnny and Sara go off and do a folk club somewhere and Abe and the band play a little rock joint down the road and then we all sort of flock to the show. It’s like geese feeding.”

Arlo and his family-oriented entourage have already flocked to the Forum in Harrisburg (“It’s a really nice place!” he remarks, later complimenting The Whitaker Center staff as well as the food at Passage To India). The show returns to the Forum on Thursday, November 15 at 8pm. Tickets may be purchased through the Whitaker Center Box Office or by calling 214-ARTS.