Kat,

Sure.

Anne Price and I never do the exact same presentation twice. Our choice of songs depends mostly upon the audience – how familiar they are with Guthrie's work – and the length of time we have available. We have presented a brief version of WOODY REDISCOVERED in 40 minutes, and we have presented an extended version as a 2-hour house concert. We have also presented as 75-minute version of WOODY REDISCOVERED as a modified song swap, in which we leave 15 to 20 minutes for people in the audience to contribute little known Guthrie songs of their own choosing. The last time we did so was in Philadelphia last January, when one participant, bluegrass musician Mimi LaValley, came forward with a gem called Don't Marry.

Despite those changes, Anne and I seem to have developed a core of songs that we almost always sing, time and circumstances permitting. These include:

Steve
Mr. Tom Mooney
Lindbergh
Why Do You Stand There in the Rain?
VD Blues
Peace Pin Boogie
When the Curfew Blows
What Are We Waiting On?
Tin Horn Taxi
Sixty-Six Highway Blues
Sally Don't You Grieve (World War II version)
I Don't Like the Way This World's a-Treating Me
Blow, Big Wind

Anne
Peace Call
Ticky Tock
Way Down Yonder in a Minor Key
Ingrid Bergman
Heaven My Home
one of Woody's Hanuukkah songs
one of Woody's less known children's songs


In addition to the songs listed above, here are ones I sand when Anne and I presented WOODY REDISCOVERED as a house concert in Brooklyn, NY:

Listen to the Music
Taking It Easy, Taking It Slow (World War II version)
New Found Land (Living in the Light of the Morning)
Dry Spell on the Plains
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt
Pittsburgh Town
Good Old Union Feeling

Sorry, but I don't have the list of the additional songs that Anne did. Listen to the Music is actually a song fragment that appears in Bound for Glory. Woody says it was his first song, and that he made it up as a small child.

The sources of our Guthrie songs are many and varied. Anne likes to do songs where Billy Bragg, Hans-Eckardt Wenzel, or the Klezmatics have added their own tunes to Woody's lyrics. She finds these songs on CDs issued with the last ten years. I prefer to find little known songs that were published and/or recorded in Woody's own lifetime. Among the best sources are recordings Woody made for Moe Asch that are now available from Smithsonian Folkways. I have all of them. Another good source is an out-of-print book called The Nearly Complete Collection of Woody Guthrie Folk Songs, published by Ludlow Music in 1963.

Additional Guthrie songs can be found in Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People, by Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger. They compiled it in 1940, but it wasn't published until 1967. If you don't want to pay $2,000 for a mint condition first edition by Oak Publications, you can probably pick up a brand new copy of the 1999 reprint by the University of Nebraska Press for less than $100 (aginst a suggested retail price of $19.95). I paid $76 for one on eBay two years ago.

Another useful source is Guthrie's thin collection called American Folksong, edited by Moe Asch and first published by him in 1947. It was reprinted by Oak Publications in 1961.

There are, of course, many other sources. There are Guthrie songs in The People's Song Book, in issues of The People's Song Bulletin, in Sing Out!, and in various collections of Guthrie's prose. The thick 1976 edition of The Woody Guthrie Songbook, published by Grosset and Dunlap, contains many songs that have been omitted from later editions. That's where you can find the original lyrics to The Sinking of the Reuben James, in which Woody attempted to name each of the men who died. He managed to name 21 before writing in the eighth stanza: Eight-six men were drowned, I can't give you all their names. Fortunately, Pete Seeger convinced Woody to edit the song!

I hope I have answered some of your questions. If you would like us to present WOODY REDISCOVRED in your own town, please e-mail me rather than sending a PM. I check my e-mail at least once a day, but I often don't log onto Mudcat for days at a time.

--- Steve