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When Bob Childers, AKA the Dylan of Dust,
opens the Ribbon of Highway Endless Skyway(RHES) show with narration about
riding the rails, he does so to set the proverbial stage. Childers gives
the listener a quick crib sheet to prepare them for their journey. When
Jimmy LaFave starts singing “This Train is Bound for Glory,”
the audience has now grabbed a hold of the passing rail, headed into Woody
Guthrie’s mind for the next few hours.
“This train don’t carry no gamblers, users, six time cheaters.”
Meaning the words of Woody Guthrie, from songs such as “Deportee,”
“Hangknot,” “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key,”
“1913 Massacre,” and “Pastures of Plenty” to lengthy
narrations about hoboing, unions, and political petitions, there will
no artifice revealed here. Nothing for cheaters or portly “politishuns”
as Guthrie might say. Only a sort of stream of consciousness version of
Toqueville’s “Democracy in America” will be articulated,
and it will be the audience’s decision what will be mentally accepted.
But the show appears to work on multiple levels, bringing the listener
in first through beautifully performed music, only to give way to intellectual
comprehension. All of the artists involved, Jimmy LaFave, Eliza Gilkyson,
Slaid Cleaves, Ellis Paul, Joel Rafael, Sarah Lee Guthrie, Johnny Irion,
Kevin Welch, and Michael Fracasso, have the emotional and intellectual
ability to articulate Guthrie’s thoughts. They are endowed with
enough temerity, the result of living enough to see the world through
unclouded eyes, to make the listener feel the words at least through empathy.
Then slowly, somewhere around the song “Peace Call” near the
end of the show, such empathy gives way to intellectual understanding.
The relevance, which appeared only feasibly through the way the songs
are sung, become clear through the actual words themselves; as the story
moves from the trains through McCarthyism, war, and social injustice.
Sample Show Setlist(see www.guthrie.org
for song lyrics):
Narration: Riding the Rails
This Train is Bound for Glory
Narration: Indian Free Lands
Down in the Oklahoma Hills
Narration: Okemah
Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key
Narration: Outlawing
Pretty Boy Floyd
Narration: Dust Bowl
Pastures of Plenty
Narration: California
Vigilante Man
Narration: Skid Row
I Ain’t Got No Home
Narration: Union Member
1913 Massacre
Narration: Time
Stepstone
Narration: Folk Process
Be No Church Tonight
Narration: Musical Metaphysics
Do Re Mi
Narration: Dylan
Lonesome Valley
Narration: My Voice
Deportee
Narration: In the Red
Ramblin’ Reckless Hobo
Narration: Painting
Hangknot
Narration: Religion
This Morning I Was Born Again
Narration: Kid’s First
Children’s Medley(a collection of Guthrie’s children songs)
Narration: Petitions
Peace Call
Narration: War
God’s Promise
Narration: Love
This Land is Your Land
Intro: Rock and Roll
Going Down the Road
Ramblin’ Round/Goodnight Irene
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