Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
August 17, 1980
Seeger-Guthrie: Back to the Basics by Tom DiNardo
(This is a review of a concert on August 16, 1980 at the Temple University Music Festival)
Folk Troubadour Pete Seeger, now 61, keeps rollin’ along and Arlo Guthrie has the experience of a veteran. Between them, an evening of toe-tapping music unfolds without pretense, charming a sellout house.
This year the duo performs as enjoyably without backup band, Guthrie’s piano accompaniments are becoming very tasty, and both have that amiable campfire-guitar tilt that sounds so easy but isn’t. Vocally, their contrasts complement each other — Arlo’s croony, mellow tenor sets off Pete’s husky, frayed baritone.
Seeger’s ability to get cooperation from the audience — "You can clap if you want, but don’t think you can get away without singing" — resulted in yodeling lessons and sing-along responses to the Zulu chant, "Wimoweh," the old "Hole In The Bucket," "Lonesome Valley," and the lovely ballad, "My Love And I." His coal-mining song, "Dark As The Dungeon," the stark "Garbage" song and his sister Peggy’s wonderful feminist anthem, "I Want to Be An Engineer," were as memorable.
"City of New Orleans" (along with the opening duet, "Midnight Special," done more rustically than Judy Collins a couple of weeks ago) and "Slow Boat Back Home" served as strong vehicles for Guthrie; the familiar talktune, "Alice’s Restaurant," an epic of unwanted garbage, unnecessary arrest, and the draft (to many all the same thing) was cheered.
The pair finished with the lilting "Amazing Grace" and Woody Guthrie’s "Goodnight Irene" in warm spirits. The evening’s simple, honest songs, rinsed by time, are a genuine American music, like Dixieland; it’s a pleasure to hear "‘folk" music that derives from Appalachia instead of Las Vegas. As Louis Armstrong said when asked his opinion of folk music, "That’s the only kind of music there is. I never heard no horse sing a song."
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