RIG's third-generation folk royalty
by Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., May 22, 2001) - There's no getting around it, and they know. When the folk trio RIG performs, audience members are projecting onto the three, 20-something singers a panoply of preconceptions and emotions based on their love of the music and tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

"We're not trying to be Pete and Woody and whoever -- we just like to honor them," said Woody's granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie, who -- with her husband, Johnny Irion, and Pete Seeger's grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger -- is one-third of RIG, which performs this Saturday, May 26, and Sunday, May 27 at 8 as part of the Guthrie Center's Troubadour Series.

For generations of folk fans, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger stand as the twin totems of American folk music. Woody's son and Sarah's father, Arlo Guthrie, has also had a long-running relationship with Seeger, frequently performing twin-bills, carrying on the Guthrie-Seeger connection. In fact, it was the aftermath of one of those Seeger-Guthrie concerts that spawned RIG, when an informal, post-concert jam session with Sarah, Johnny and Tao struck a chord that slowly grew into RIG. "It happened as off the cuff as how we play," recounts Johnny Irion, who as the nephew of Thomas Steinbeck, John Steinbeck's son, boasts his own sort of American folk lineage.

"We literally went out one weekend playing together, and it was like, `We' re playing this weekend, why don't you come play with us?' And it happened again, and again, and then we just came up with the name, using the initials of our last names to make it something."

In just a little over a year, that something has grown into a semi-regular engagement. While all three musicians have busy careers outside of RIG - Rodriguez-Seeger performs with his grandfather and with his band The Mammals (all coming to the Mahaiwe Theatre on June 12), Sarah Guthrie performs with her father, Arlo Guthrie, as well as in solo shows and as a duo with Irion - when they come together something happens that is bigger than all of them. The sum, it seems, is greater than the parts, which is why RIG will be performing this summer at three major folk festivals in Newport, Philadelphia and Champlain Valley in Burlington, Vt..

"For a fledgling trio, those are really cream gigs," said Rodriguez-Seeger, who says he has at times felt uncomfortable with the whiff of nepotism that surrounds the group.

"I think we're in a ridiculously lucky situauion, in that unless we absolutely stink people are more inclined to give us the time of day than someone else," said Rodriguez-Seeger, who jokes about calling up Jakob Dylan and inviting him to join a band called the Nepotistas. "That used to make me very angry, the unfairness of our positions, but I' ve come over to the map that says it depends what you do with it." In large part, what the members of RIG do with their position as heirs to their tradition is build on it for a new generation.

"I'm using RIG -- and I think Tao and Johnny are too -- as a political outlet for our concerns," said Guthrie. "We're concerned about PCBs, AIDS, the environment, and I like to use RIG as the outlet for that because we hit the right audience for that."

Rodriguez-Seeger takes a slightly different point of view. "The nice thing about RIG is that we all agree some of it has purpose and some of it is just for fun," he said. "We're lucky in that we've had these family members who've instilled these deep beliefs about music and politics and how they interact. We believe it as well, and we're pretty much trying to do the same thing they've been doing, but in our own style.

"Sure, part of it involves politics, but I think we do it more gently sometimes than some. I've never been a big fan of whacking people over the head while singing songs. It's better to get them all singing along with you, and then think about the lyrics later."

One thing that Guthrie and Rodriguez-Seeger share in common is they were both initially reluctant to perform, and lured to the bandstand by their mentors. As Guthrie tells it, it wasn't until she went to the other side of the country to go to college that she discovered her calling.

"It was funny that when I left my home with a thousand guitars in it and wound up somewhere without any guitars, I reached out for one," said Guthrie, who grew up in Florida on an ashram and in the Berkshires, where she attended Becket Elementary School and Wahconah Regional High School. The guitar she reached out for was Irion's, and, he jokes, she's still playing it. As soon as her parents got word that she was playing guitar, her father invited her to join him on stage. Guthrie put her college plans on hold and instead opted for on-the-job training as an old-fashioned apprentice to a master who just happened to be her father, Arlo Guthrie. "I discovered as soon as I got away from everything that that's exactly what I wanted," she said. "It took me by surprise. I hadn't realized that's exactly where I want to be."

Rodriguez-Seeger had an equally roundabout way of making it to the stage. When he returned from a decade of living with his mother in Nicaragua in 1989, he said he became "a little annoyed and frustrated by this gringo grandfather of mine singing songs in Spanish pretty badly, and I told him so."

As Rodriguez-Seeger - who describes himself as "half Puerto Rican" -- tells it, his grandfather turned the criticism around on his grandson. "Well if it's so bad, why don't you help me out?" he answered. Rodriguez-Seeger - who wanted to be a filmmaker like his father -- began accompanying his grandfather in concert, at first on just a few songs in Spanish. As time wore on and age took its toll on his grandfather and limited how much he could do in any one particular concert, Rodriguez-Seeger's performing role grew to the point where he is now a full-fledged partner in Pete Seeger's shows.

The RIG trio serves as an outlet for the musicians to celebrate their family legacies by performing the music of their grandfathers as well as songs associated with their grandfathers' contemporaries. Thus, Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line" has become a RIG concert staple. Rodriguez-Seeger favors some of his grandfather's more obscure tunes, as well as Spanish Civil War ballads and songs he has written. Irion and Guthrie, both of whom have solo albums due out in August, contribute original compositions to the group as well as Woody Guthrie favorites.

Ultimately, Irion seems to speak for all three bandmembers when he calls RIG "a low pressure situation." "We do this to have fun, and that's it. We don't take ourselves very seriously as a group," he said. Nevertheless, this weekend's concerts at the Guthrie Center will be recorded for use as a possible live album. For tickets and info call 528-1955.

[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on May 25, 2001. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2001. All rights reserved.]