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by Seth Rogovoy
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.
Arlo Guthrie has just released "Mystic Journey" (Rising Son), his first recording of all new songs in 10 years. A lot has happened to Guthrie in the last decade, and much of it finds its way onto the album of 11 songs, all but two of which are Guthrie originals.
For example, the album kicks off with "Moon Song," an uptempo anthem of persistence and renewal that Guthrie wrote for the TV show "The Byrds of Paradise," in which he taxed his acting skills to the limit by portraying an aging hippie.
But more than anything specific, the songs on "Mystic Journey" are about an individual's spiritual search and coming to terms with the passage of time, concerns that Guthrie, who dedicates the album to Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, his spiritual guide, presumably shares.
Songs like the title track, "Stairs," "Face of Time," "Wake Up Dead" and "Doors to Heaven" are infused with mysticism and spiritual yearning. Rendered in Guthrie's signature nasal, froggy croak (as resonant, comforting and familiar as ever) the tunes show that time has only made Guthrie a more confident, mature artist, willing to experiment and take risks in ways that keep on pushing the borders of where he has been before.
"I ain't looking for friends or lovers/Ain't looking for a pot of gold/Had it all when I was younger - It got old," sings Guthrie in "Under Cover of Night," just one of a number of songs which return to the subject of the spiritual search implied by the album's title.
It's a topic approached in a variety of ways both musically and lyrically. "Under Cover of Night" is a jazzy, bluesy tune flavored by Ed Gerhard's slide guitar. "Wake Up Dead," perhaps the album's highlight and the obvious pick to be the first single, features Guthrie at his sneering best in a Bob Seger-like rock ballad.
"Stairs" features a Beatles-esque arrangement, with a horn section boasting Berkshire all-stars Charlie Tokarz, Jeff Stevens and Steve Ide. The title track, written by James Rider, is a Dire Straits-like folk-rocker, with Xavier's Tim Sears providing Mark Knopfler-like guitar licks throughout.
Not that the album is all lofty and high-minded. "All This Stuff Takes Time" is a Dylanesque blues-rocker full of classic Arlo wit, satirizing contemporary pop psychology. Guthrie tries his hand at pop crooning on Charlie Chaplin's "You Are the Song." By golly, he can actually sing if he wants to! And "I'll Be With You Tonight" takes the album out on a fun, swinging note of R&B.
The album was recorded last year by Greg Steele at Derek Studios in Dalton. The all-Berkshire effort includes backup by members of both of Guthrie's former backup bands, Xavier and Shenandoah.
Arlo Guthrie and his son, Abe, share co-producing credits, and the album sounds utterly professional. There are some weak links, however - an anomalous synthesizer part on the folk-protest tune, "When a Soldier Makes It Home," for example. One wonders what a producer like Jeff Lynne or Don Was might be able to do with Guthrie, along the lines of work they've done recently with Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, George Harrison and Willie Nelson, in helping to uncover aspects of a familiar artist that have as yet been untapped.
While in the studio last year, Guthrie and his band also re- recorded his classic album, "Alice's Restaurant," in its entirety. That album, which is also now available, sounds as fresh and relevant as it did when it was first released in 1967.
In addition to the well-known title track (recorded live at Alice's Church last fall in a slightly updated and longer version than the original) the album includes "Chilling of the Evening," as classic as classic folk-rock could wish to be. "Ring-Around-A- Rosy Rag" is a whimsical ditty. "Now and Then," featuring what now sounds to us like something off of the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," shows that Guthrie was as attuned to pop influences as were the Beatles, whose "Sgt. Pepper" was released the same week as the original "Alice's Restaurant."
The album closes with the modern epic, "Highway In the Wind," capping this effort which in spite of its pedigree and in a tribute to the integrity of the writing sounds utterly contemporary.
For more on Guthrie, check out ArloNet, the unofficial Arlo Guthrie home page on the World Wide Web. There is also a Guthrie Usenet newsgroup called alt.music.guthrie, for discussion of Arlo and Woody Guthrie.
Over at the Old Egremont Club you can catch blues-rockers Ben Jamin' tonight, Bev Rohlehr and the Colbys tomorrow night, and an open-mike/hootenany hosted by Rick Tiven every Thursday night in March from 9 to 2.
In case you missed it, the Night Shift Cafe in North Adams is back in business next month with shows including fiery, folk-rocker Ani DiFranco on April 14 and New Orleans pianist-singer Dr. John on April 26.
(This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on March 15, 1996. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1996. All rights reserved.)
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