The Guthrie Folk Music Festival, Okemah Oklahoma:
A Journal

by Bonny Holder (page 3 of 3)

LaFave's Festival Finale

By now, I was itchin' to hear Jimmy's band again, as well as to see someone with a little meat on his bones. It's true, Jimmy LaFave has written a love song to Woody Guthrie, two lines of which go: "Dust bowl winds they blow right through your sweet soul. They carry you with a passion through this land, so brave and so free." That's the kind of songwriter he is! I can't imagine Jimmy complimenting Larry Wilson on his outfit, or grabbing Arlo's butt onstage. Teasing the audience with the possibility of sexual ambiguity does not seem part of the Texoma stage persona. I muse this over.

Jimmy appears to be wearing the exact same clothes as he had the day before. It wouldn't surprise me if he had been too busy to bother changing and had slept in his van. Preoccupation with his looks does not seem one of his characteristics. "My love, she speaks like silence," he begins. "Love Minus Zero No Limit", Dylan, as if I'm hearing it for the first time again. I want to rock. In a folky sense, of course!, I want to hear guys in t-shirts and cut-off jeans lay their music out over the prairie, over all our heads like the rays of the sunset we had just experienced together. Jimmy & his band do all that. People inch up towards the stage. The Dylan song is followed, without fanfare, by a Woody Guthrie standard ("I'm goin' down the road & feelin' bad, lord lord, and I ain't gonna be treated this a-way") and an Arlo Guthrie song ("When you're riding on a train to glo- glo- glory, you know I'll be waiting there").

"Arlo Guthrie fits right in with Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie as a songwriter," says Jimmy. "I hope that in the future they change the name to the `Woody and Arlo Guthrie Music Festival'." I snap to the fact that I, myself, am one of those who take Arlo for granted. He's just always been there. Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, quietly part of my life all these years. LaFave is right, Arlo's name does belongs up there with his Papa's.

After remarking about the beautiful Oklahoma sunset an hour earlier, and telling the audience, "I can see my Mom and Dad in the audience, so I know I'm home," Jimmy and his band take us on a ride through Texoma: "my celebration of Texas and OK music, all the influences... you know, the Guthrie family lived in Pampas, so Texas and OK are all one big happy family as far as I'm concerned, except for football rivalries."

Jimmy LaFave (r) with Slaid Cleaves.

and with Wilson

The band launches into Dylan's "Positively 4th Street". And then they play Jimmy's current "hit" song, "Never Is a Moment". "In the vastness of this world, baby, you are so unique," LaFave croons. The women who have not melted for Ellis Paul, give it up for Jimmy. "There never is a moment when you are not on my mind." He might be singing to a lover, but he also might be singing it to a daughter, or a sister. He might be singing it for Mary Jo Guthrie Edgmon. She told me that she loves him. He is a great love-song-singer. "Take the weight of the world off your shoulders on this glorious day." And, he's a gospel singer! He invites Slaid Cleaves onstage to sing another Woody Guthrie song. He's a folk singer as well! By the time the band says good night, Jimmy and the boys are joined onstage by Vance Gilbert, Don Conoscenti, Ellis Paul, Slaid Cleaves, Darcie Deaville, Luke Reed, Susan Stone, the Still On The Hill band, and Arlo Guthrie among others.

It's more than a tribute to a great dead American writer and singer, Woody Guthrie; the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is about life, how future generations have and do accept and embrace the truths he told. I'll never forget sitting on my blanket under that vast Okie sky for those two beautiful July nights, listening to so many American stories, different stories but on the same stage, songs and voices in a landscape so lush and so remote. The audience got the rare chance to listen to artists from across the country, who played for free and made a lot of friends and fans. And they got to see the local boys onstage and holding their own like Woody did. It was like walking down the dark alley in the Bob Childers song that Jimmy LaFave recorded - hearing the music through a screen, looking in and finding the light.

I'm going to check out all the musicians I saw at the Festival. Each and every person has something to tell me with their songs. But mostly I'll never forget the high and lonesome voice of Jimmy LaFave, in the bar, on the stage, pouring his heart and soul out to all those restless spirits in the night. - Bonnie Holder

Friday's Night's Finale.

Bonny Holder
PO Box 515
Cedar Crest NM 87008
505.281.4296
bonnyholder@hotmail.com

Bonny Holder has a regular feature column, "Eyes of the Beholder," at backwash.com and reviews CDs for Amazon.com.

Author's bio: "Always a folkie, two grown children, Colby Christofferson & Molly Christofferson. Live in the mountains east of Albuquerque w/ scientist husband, six dogs & two cats. My "maiden" name was Kaske. Born in Milwaukee, raised in Rockford IL, grew up in Milwaukee, lived in New Mexico since 1986. I like to go to one far-away folk festival every summer.

Favorites: Julie & Buddy Miller, Jimmy LaFave, Kevin Welch, Eliza Gilkyson, Dan Voll, Susannah McCorkle."

Hugh Blumenfeld, Editor
hugh@balladtree.com