Arlo Guthrie "together at Last" with Solo Reunion Tour

Media Contact:

Kristen Gleason
Director of Marketing
The Paramount Theater
215 East Main Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434.979.1922 ext. 103
kristen@theparamount.net

For Immediate Release

January 25, 2008

As said by folk singer, musician, and composer Arlo Guthrie, “sometimes you just want to do things yourself.” Following decades on the road and a year performing with his children, Guthrie now hits the road solo, “a chance to do it like I did with nothing but a couple of guitars and a harmonica.”

In the Solo Reunion Tour -- Together at Last, Guthrie is alone on stage for the entire tour for the first time since 1965. Playing the piano, six- and twelve-string guitar, harmonica, and a dozen other instruments while weaving hilarious tales and anecdotes seamlessly into his performance, Guthrie makes a stop at Charlottesville’s Paramount Theater on Saturday, February 9 at 8 pm.

Taking the stage for pre-performance music at approximately 7:15 pm are local musicians The Buzzard Hollow Quartet.

Special Media Sponsor for this performance is Generations 102.3 and 94.1 -- Music for Your Generation.

In 1961 a young Arlo Guthrie took to the stage for the first time ... solo. He played in England, Scotland and Denmark during the summer of 1965, showing up at clubs or singing on street corners ... alone. In November that same year he began work on his epic adventure, “Alice’s Restaurant.” He worked as a solo artist touring around the world to as far away as Japan for the next two years until “Alice” was recorded.

In 1967 “Alice’s Restaurant” hit the radios and the record stores, and four events in 1969 converged to change everything. He appeared at Woodstock Music Festival, starred in the motion picture version of Alice’s Restaurant (directed by Arthur Penn), married Miss Malibu, Jackie Hyde, and bought an old farm in Massachusetts. He has rarely toured alone since those Woodstock days except for an occasional appearance. One exception was in 1993, when longing for the good old days, he took his pick-up truck on a one-man tour for a few weeks.

Over the last four decades Guthrie has toured throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia winning a broad and dedicated following for both his accomplished musicianship and natural-born storytelling. Quickly involved in the music that was shaping the world during the 1960s, Guthrie practically lived in the most famous venues of the "Folk Boom" era -- Gerdes Folk City, The Gaslight, and The Bitter End in New York City; Club 47 in Boston; The 2nd Fret and The Main Point in Philadelphia; The Golden Bear, The Filmore, and The Troubadour on the West Coast.

Guthrie witnessed the transition from an earlier generation of ballad singers like Richard Dyer-Bennet and blues-men like Mississippi John Hurt to a new era of singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Jim Croce, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs.  He grooved with the beat poets like Allen Ginsburg and Lord Buckley, and picked with players like Bill Monroe and Doc Watson. He learned something from everyone and developed his own style, becoming a distinctive, expressive voice in a crowded community of singer-songwriters and political-social commentators.

Alongside a thriving performing career in 1983, Guthrie launched his own record label, Rising Son Records, which holds his complete catalogue.  Not to be confined to the world of folk and rock, Guthrie created An American Scrapbook, a program of symphonic arrangements of his own songs and other American classics. Between 1998 and 2004 Guthrie performed over 40 concerts with 27 different symphony orchestras throughout the US. The show at Boston's Symphony Hall, conducted by Keith Lockhart, was recorded and aired on PBS' Evening at Pops. In 2001, his Fourth of July performance with the Pops was broadcast live by A&E and attracted an audience of over 750,000.

Guthrie is also heard alongside the voice of his father, Woody Guthrie, on the 1997 re-release of This Land is Your Land, which won several awards and a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Album for Children. Banjoman, a tribute to their late friend Derroll Adams, was co-produced by Guthrie and Hans Theessink with the help of Donovan, Dolly Parton, Billy Connelly, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and others. Other projects include Live in Sydney (2005) and the November 2003 Tribute to Harold Leventhal at Carnegie Hall including Guthrie’s family, The Weavers (Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman and Erik Darling), Peter, Paul and Mary, Theodore Bikel, and Leon Bibb, which was released to theatres in late 2005.

His latest album, In Times Like These, is a collaboration with friends -- musical director John Nardolillo and famed engineer George Massenburg. Recorded with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra during the spring of 2006, the live concert was released on Guthrie's 60th birthday, July 10th 2007, to wide critical acclaim.

Guthrie’s undertakings include community projects as well as artistic pursuits. In 1991, Guthrie purchased the old Trinity Church -- the very location where the events that inspired "Alice's Restaurant" took place on Thanksgiving 1965. The church is home to The Guthrie Center, a not-for-profit interfaith church foundation dedicated to providing a wide range of local and international services. The Guthrie Foundation is a separate not-for-profit educational organization that addresses issues such as the environment, health care, cultural preservation and educational exchange.

In December 2006, using the Guthrie Foundation as a springboard, Guthrie and his family rode the Amtrak City of New Orleans train from Chicago to New Orleans, stopping along the way to perform benefit concerts. “We saw the disaster unfold in New Orleans, on a level that probably hadn’t been seen since the Dust Bowl era ... and I wanted to do something that would actually help.” The tour Ridin' on the City of New Orleans (Benefiting Victims of Katrina) has raised over $140,000 directly targeted for musicians.

For the past year Guthrie toured with his children -- both because the spirit of the Guthrie Family has been handed down from generation to generation and simply because it was just plain fun. The First Family of Folk has a legacy “in the songs, the humor, the commitment to keep making the world a little better for everyone,” as Guthrie states. Now Guthrie continues on alone -- rambling through songs and tales, “philosophical in a naturally funny and folksy way and, as with great storytellers such as Will Rogers and even his own father, he always manages to pluck a gem from a lot of dirt” (The Los Angeles Times).

Continuing a periodic series of pre-performance music acts, The Buzzard Hollow Quartet will play in an a ppearance at approximately 7:15 pm that is free to Arlo Guthrie ticket holders.

Formed by some of Charlottesville's long-standing musicians who’ve played together and separately in various configurations for the past 20 years, the band consists of Kurt Dressel on acoustic and electric guitars, powerful and soulful singer Tim Anderson on vocals and acoustic guitar, Sonny Layne on bass and vocals, and Jeff Saine on pedal steel and accordion. Digging deep into the folk and jazz music of the past, The Buzzard Hollow Boys transpose
it into the Americana of the present.

The combination of Arlo Guthrie preceded by The Buzzard Hollow Quartet creates an evening steeped in musical traditions. As Guthrie comments, “some people think a folksinger is someone who just sings their own songs. That's a shame. It's like being of the tradition, rather than in it. I've taught myself to make any song I like my own."

Seats are still available for Arlo Guthrie with pre-performance music by The Buzzard Hollow Quartet on Saturday, February 9. Tickets are $30.50, $45.50, $50.50, and $55.50. Half-price student rush tickets and group discounts are offered.

Tickets are available online or through The Paramount’s Box Office at 434.979.1333.

For more information about Arlo Guthrie, please visit www.arlo.net.
To learn more about The Buzzard Hollow Quartet, go to www.myspace.com/buzzardhollowboys.