FEATURE ARTICLE
Arlo Guthrie concerts to mark 30th anniversary of "Alice's Restaurant"
by Seth Rogovoy(HOUSATONIC, Mass., Oct. 6, 1997) -- Thirty years ago this month, "Alice's Restaurant," Arlo Guthrie's first recording, was released, setting in motion a pop-culture snowball that would eventually grow far beyond anyone's expectations.
Thirty years later, Guthrie is hosting a series of concerts marking the anniversary of "Alice's Restaurant." The shows will benefit the Guthrie Center, a non-profit organization housed in the very same church that figured so prominently in the song and the subsequent movie of the same name.
The concerts, to be held on four successive nights at the church beginning this Thursday, Oct. 9, and running through Sunday, Oct. 12, will reunite Guthrie with members of Shenandoah, the Berkshire-based band that backed Guthrie on the road for about a decade beginning in the mid-'70s.
A one-hour radio program will be made from the concerts, which will be recorded for broadcast nationwide on Thanksgiving Day. A TV crew will also be on hand to film the proceedings for a documentary to be shown on cable TV in the Los Angeles area.
A limited number of tickets to the event are on sale for $30 in advance and are available from the Guthrie Center at 528-1955. Because the shows are essentially recording sessions, doors to the church, located at the corner of Van Deusenville Road and Division Street, will open at 7 p.m. and close promptly at 7:30.
This year's concerts for Thanksgiving Day broadcast expand on efforts begun last year, when a concert that took place at the center three nights before Thanksgiving was aired on 35 radio stations around the country.
"We're hoping to air on somewhere around 200 stations this year," said Guthrie in a recent phone interview from his home in the town of Washington.
Whereas last year the program was only available to radio stations via satellite transmission, which limited the number of stations able to broadcast it, this year the production company, Radio Today, will manufacture and ship CDs of the show to radio stations free of charge, in the hope that they will air the hour-long program, which will include pre-bought advertisements.
With four nights of concerts, each approximately one-and-a-half hours long, the producers will have approximately six hours of material to choose from.
Along those lines, Guthrie also hopes to make a longer, commercial- free program available to public radio stations and to military bases around the world -- where Guthrie says his music is surprisingly popular.
In addition to entertaining listeners and capitalizing on the already- popular, Thanksgiving-themed broadcast of "Alice's Restaurant," Guthrie hopes the radio shows will spark interest in the Guthrie Center, which he founded in 1991 in memory of his father, the legendary folksinger Woody Guthrie -- who died, coincidentally, thirty years ago this month, shortly after hearing a test-pressing of "Alice's Restaurant."
"We expect the shows to create some interest in Berkshire County and in some of the things we're trying to do at the church," he said.
While Guthrie said the center has been active these past few years in serving the needs of the local community with services, classes, lectures, meetings and other programs, he hopes the coming year will see a much higher profile for the center.
"We want to become a prominent part of life in Berkshire County," said Guthrie, who turned 50 this past summer.
Along those lines, the center has hired its first executive director, Jimmy Griffis, to oversee fund-raising and program development. A friend of Guthrie's who previously worked with community service organizations in Florida, Griffis has already secured the center's first grant funding, the majority of which will be used for the repair and renovation of the 135-year-old church building.
The center is also embarking on a membership drive, and is planning a mailing to over 50,000 households in the coming weeks. In addition, the radio broadcasts will include information on becoming a member of the Guthrie Center, which costs $25 per household.
"This radio show will give us the opportunity to reach hundreds of thousands of people, so this is a big event for us," said Guthrie.
The participation in this week's concerts by members of Shenandoah was precipitated, said Guthrie, by an impromptu reunion that took place at the Berkshire Music Festival at the National Music Foundation in Lenox last spring.
"We had so much fun together last spring," said Guthrie. "I didn't even know I was going to be able to be there. But we had a great time."
That gig marked the reunion of surviving Shenandoah members David Grover, Steve Ide, Carol Ide, Terry Hall and Dan Velika, along with Guthrie, for the first time in over a decade. Guthrie said that various members will appear on different evenings over the course of this weekend's four concerts, which in addition to "Alice's Restaurant," will also include other Guthrie and Shenandoah favorites.
[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Oct. 7, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
music news, interviews, reviews, et al.
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