In 1969 the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was so crowded that many of the artists couldn’t make it to the stage to perform on time.
So concert promoters pushed Country Joe McDonald on stage, where his unexpected solo acoustic version of the anti-war song “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” guaranteed his place in rock history. The song also became one of the biggest hits of the Vietnam War era.
Country Joe McDonald is coming to Langley next month to sing protest songs of a different era. He will present “This Land is Your Land, A Tribute to the Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 8, in the Front Room at Bayview Corner.
Woody Guthrie was one of the 20th century’s most important American figures and his songs changed the American musical landscape. As a songwriter, singer, fine artist, best-selling author, poet, social commentator and champion of the disenfranchised, Guthrie’s influence on popular culture is still strong.
McDonald’s career, as well, owes a debt to the famed folksinger.
If you go to Country Joe McDonald’s Website — www.countryjoe.com — and visit a page called “War and Peace in Today’s World,” you can get a glimpse of the ‘60s anti-war spirit that is still strong even after 40 years.
Country Joe started his long musical career busking on the streets of Berkeley, Calif. in the 1960s. He performed at Woodstock with “Country Joe and The Fish” and went on to a searing anti-Vietnam musical career by successfully combining the best of folk music with the fight of a rock ‘n’ roll activist.
After five albums with The Fish, McDonald began his solo career in 1969 with a collection of Woody Guthrie songs.
At the West Coast Hollywood Bowl California Tribute to Woody Guthrie concert in 1975, he was asked by Harold Leventhol, who managed the Woody Guthrie archives, to put music to one of the many Woody Guthrie lyrics that had no recorded music. That performance was released on an album documenting the event.
In 2001 he was asked by the National Steinbeck Center to give a performance as part of its display of the Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition, “This Land Is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie.” The performance served as a reason for McDonald to revisit his connection with Guthrie and the state of Oklahoma.
McDonald’s father Worden “Mac” McDonald grew up in the little Oklahoma town of Sallisaw, 100 miles from Woody’s birthplace of Okemah. And the rock star’s father was a farm boy and hobo like Woody who talked about this experience in his autobiography, “An Old Guy Who Feels Good.”
“I grew up with Woody Guthrie music in my household and made what Marjorie Guthrie — Woody’s wife — said was ‘one of the finest Woody Guthrie albums ever made,’” said McDonald.
The album was recorded in Nashville and entitled “Thinking Of Woody Guthrie.”
While preparing for the Steinbeck Center event, McDonald searched his archives and re-discovered a treasure trove of Guthrie related stories he hadn’t thought about in years. “I even found a picture of his on a pinto horse looking almost exactly like a photo in my father’s book of me on a pinto horse,” recalled McDonald. He also found several photos of Woody with his 9-17 Martin guitar which was the same model that McDonald uses for performing and composing. The result was a spoken word and musical solo performance piece that saluted Woody Guthrie’s life.
Through the years McDonald has performed the tribute about a dozen times in England and the United States. He hopes that someday it can become an actual theatrical performance with lights and slides and perhaps other musicians.
But 15 years after his first tribute, McDonald’s one-man show continues to spark his attention and remains a “work in progress.”
After 31 albums and more than a quarter century in the public eye as a folksinger, McDonald remains one of the best-known names from the 1960s rock movement who is still performing today.
Just as Guthrie did, McDonald is still actively pursuing the fight against war and was one of the prime supporters of Cindy Sheehan, an anti-Iraq War activist whose son, Casey Sheehan, was killed during his service in Iraq.
The show is 90 minutes long, with an intermission. Tickets are $20 general admission, $30 for premium seating. Tickets are available at Joe’s Island Music in Langley, 1504 Coffee in Freeland and at Goosefoot in the Old Sears Building at Bayview. Seating is limited to 100.
Call 360-929-2579 for more information.
Patricia Duff can be reached at 221-5300 or pduff@southwhidbeyrecord.com.
