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World of Bob Dylan

On June 1st, members of the Woody Guthrie Teaching Collective gathered once again in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to present at the World of Bob Dylan conference. The Collective hosted a roundtable on bringing Woody into the classroom and taking the classroom into the community. Titled “Woody Guthrie’s Expansive Reach: The Purpose & Possibilities of Historical and Contemporary Protest Music in Education,” this panel fostered a conversation about the efficacy of and need for bringing protest music to students at the university level. Mark Fernandez discussed the history of Pete Seeger’s “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” a song about World War II but resonant with the 1960s antiwar movement. Court Carney looked at Woody Guthrie’s “Grand Coulee Dam” and how educators can use this song to interrogate the past from various angles. Aimee Zoeller presented her work bringing South African singer Berita to Indiana as part of the Art for AIDS initiative. Michele Fazio discussed her ongoing research project on Sacco and Vanzetti, which she uses to promote civic engagement and community outreach. Finally, musician Chris Buhalis joined the group to sing the appropriate songs connected to the discussion, including “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” “Grand Coulee Dam,” “Two Good Men,” and ending with a rousing “Song to Woody” to connect directly with Bob Dylan. The roundtable attracted a large and engaged audience interested in expanding the university classroom through protest music.

Teach On and Sing Out!

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Hanging out in Tulsa …

The Collective met all together in person for the first time at the 10th anniversary of the Woody Guthrie Center to give a talk, “We All Work Together: Creating Curriculum for ‘People Are the Song’ and Beyond.” Here’s a few photos of the group in action. Next up: talking about Woody at The World of Bob Dylan 2023 conference!

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The Collective is heading to Tulsa!

The Collective is heading to Tulsa to celebrate ten years of the Woody Guthrie Center! There’s a full weekend of events scheduled May 5-7th featuring musical performances by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Jonatha Brooke, The Secret Sisters, and Pussy Riot, the honoree of this year’s Woody Guthrie Prize, as well as a poetry reading by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and talks by Anna Canoni and Douglas Brinkley. We’ll be leading a discussion, “We All Work Together: Creating Curriculum for ‘People Are the Song’ and Beyond.”

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“Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine”

My Relationship with Woody Guthrie by Court Carney

My introduction to Woody Guthrie came in fits and starts. I remember hearing “This Land is Your Land” in grade school, and I am sure I had some hazy idea that a guy named Woody Guthrie wrote and sang songs. In high school, I found my way into a more nuanced understanding of his life and career (a teacher hip to Springsteen talked about Bruce talking about Joe Klein talking about Woody). Soon came the Dust Bowl Ballads, the Columbia River Songs (which still find their way onto my course syllabi), and on and on. Then, in graduate school, Billy Bragg and Wilco released the Mermaid Avenue recordings, which completely reoriented my view of Woody and his songwriting. Songs such as “She Came Along to Me,” “One by One,” and particularly “Remember the Mountain Bed” (with its poetic evocation of love and the blurring of memory and melancholy) redrew my Woody map and illustrated his expansive vision in strokes of color. I began to grasp the largeness of Woody’s scope. 

My academic work connected to Woody came through a Bob Dylan-shaped door. In 2012, I presented my first paper related to Woody and the sprawling nature of his influence. I gave this paper, “‘Freak Weirdo’: Bob Dylan, Wilco, and the Redefining of Woody Guthrie,” at the “Woody Guthrie at 100” conference at Penn State University. More recently, I presented “‘Alive as You or Me’: Bob Dylan’s Woody Guthrie” at the World of Bob Dylan Conference in 2019. This paper examined Woody’s impact on Dylan, focusing on the months after Guthrie’s death in 1967.

In 2018, I published “‘With Electric Breath’: Bob Dylan and the Reimagining of Woody Guthrie (January 1968)” with the Woody Guthrie Annual. This essay looked specifically at the 1968 memorial concert for Woody and the first stage performance of Dylan since 1966. This essay also allowed me my first week-long dive into the Guthrie archives in Tulsa. The archives played a pivotal role in this project—especially in laying out the heretofore mystifying chronology between late 1967 and early 1968. A forthcoming essay focuses on Dylan’s “Song to Woody”—expanding my interest in teasing out the connections between the two songwriters. 

Overall, Woody continues to draw me into his world in curious and surprising ways. His writing remains inspirational in its simplicity and complexity, its humor and bawdiness, its heartfelt righteousness and cosmic knowingness. Woody grappled with issues that still reverberate across our contemporary landscape. He is forever relevant, forever compelling, forever present. Do you still sing of the mountain bed, indeed. 

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Folk Alliance International

Members of the Collective, Michele Fazio, Mark Fernandez, and Aimee Zoeller, presented at the annual Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City to discuss teaching folk music in the college classroom. Here’s a glimpse of the gathering of artists, industry professionals, activists, and fans of folk! What a great opportunity to talk about Woody and meet amazing musicians like Valerie June, Mary Gauthier, Janice Ian, and so many more who keep the tradition of folk music alive. Until next year!