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Bob Dylan in the Berkshires

Bob Dylan’s Tanglewood show, July 2, 2016, was his seventh performance in the Berkshires, but only the fifth time he has headlined a concert here. His first local show was as guest of Joan Baez at her Aug. 17, 1963 concert in Pittsfield, when he sang Only a Pawn in Their Game, Blowin' in the Wind, and A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall.

On November 7, 1975, he returned, with Ms. Baez and other members of the Rolling Thunder Revue, for the legendary party at Mama Frasca's Dream Away Lodge in Becket.

Bob Dylan at Tanglewood July 2, 2016

July 2, 2016 Tanglewood concert review by

It was a night of biblical proportions at Tanglewood, a concert by Bob Dylan that was a revelation, following a set by Mavis Staples that was a revival. The revelation is that some 55 years into his career, by remaining true and not wavering from his original vision, Bob Dylan was able to belt out a genre-skimming array of 20 songs, imbuing each one of them with just the right degree of scorn or glee, humor or haughtiness, bile, blasphemy, or belligerence.

Dylan’s constancy was demonstrated by She Belongs To Me, the second song tonight, which he also performed the first time I saw him, on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Tonight’s set started with Things Have Changed, his trophy-winning song from 2000, which was performed with more ardor and vehemence than an opening number usually gets, as if he’d been singing along backstage to old girlfriend Maris Staples!

Bob Dylan sings the Great American Songbook

Tonight’s setlist also demonstrated that Mr. Dylan’s perusal of the Great American Songbook is no passing fancy; besides doing five songs from the 2 new “Sinatra” albums, Fallen Angels and Shadows in the Night, he also sang How Deep is the Ocean and I Could Have Told You, brand new entries on Bob Dylan’s setlist. While it’s hard to imagine that his own lyrics have overlooked any nuance of emotion or condition of life, nontheless he seems all fired up to be singing this material, making a fresh wind blow through Tin Pan Alley.

Those seven songs were distributed evenly among his own, five of which hail from Tempest, which took the world by storm upon release in 2012, when Dylan-wags reminded us that The Tempest is the name of Shakespeare’s last play. Turns out not to mark the end of the line for the bard of Hibbing, at all! Tempest is a great album, and tonight Bob Dylan delivered five songs from it with a high degree of fidelity to the recorded versions: Pay in Blood, Duquesne Whistle, Early Roman Kings, Scarlet Town, Long and Wasted Years.

Duquesne Whistle gets your attention

Duquesne Whistle, in the 7tyh spot tonight but 1st on the album, reminds me of Like A Rolling Stone, the opening number on Highway 61 Revisted. Whereas the latter shocks the listener with the loud crack of a snare drum right up front, Duquesne Whistle lollygags for more than half a minute before slapping you awake. Bob Dylan is an artist who doesn’t put much effort into promotion, but every now and then he takes the measure of our attention.

And tonight, he even addressed the audience, after the first 9 songs, telling us the band would be leaving the stage but would return in a few minutes. For years, he spoke only to introduce the band and maybe say thank you at the end of the set and before the encore, but hadn’t even been doing that much talking lately. This encore alone was worth the price of admission: Blowin’ in the Wind, with Dylan’s vocals and piano assiduously accented by violin, and a rollicking reading given to Love Sick, off the immense 1997 album Time Out of Mind.

Mavis Staples rouses the audience

Mavis Staples had the audience in the palm of her hand by the time her opening set wound up, and on their feet, singing along and testifying! She doesn’t share Dylan’s reticence, rather is as chatty as your sister, eager to tell you what’s been happening. We couldn’t sit still during her set, which left us revived with the fervor of the Sixties. Her band is awesome and they mix up an intoxicating blend of gospel, soul, funk, blues, and rock ‘ roll.

Hotels near Tanglewood

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Berkshies transportation

For how to get to the Berkshires and public transportation within Berkshire county, see this page: Amtrak and Peter Pan bus schedules.

Tanglewood tickets and box office information

Tickets for Tanglewood concerts are available through Tanglewood’s website, www.tanglewood.org, SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office at 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA. Download the 2018 Tanglewood season brochure.

Continue reading Bob Dylan at Tanglewood July 2, 2016

Bob Dylan plays the Berkshires

Bob Dylan’s Tanglewood show, July 2, 2016, will be the seventh time he has performed in the Berkshires, but only the fifth time he has headlined a concert here. His surprise appearance as guest of Joan Baez at her Aug. 17, 1963 concert in Pittsfield, when he sang Only a Pawn in Their Game, Blowin in the Wind, and A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall, came in the midst of an epic summer – following July appearances at a pivotal Civil Rights Rally in Greenwood, MS and the Newport Folk Festival and just before the March on Washington. Local reporter Milton R. Bass wrote: “His voice is not a pretty one, his guitar playing is just plain old banging away, but there is an intensity about him, a dedication, that forces one’s attention where it belongs.”

Rolling Thunder Revue Berkshires respite

Rolling Thunder Revue posterDylan’s second Berkshires’ visit was November 7, 1975, during the first wave of the Rolling Thunder Revue. After playing two shows the day before in Springfield, he brought the troupe to Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge for an all-day party and sing-along in Becket. Catching back-to-back episodes of the Rolling Thunder Revue is about as lucky as any Dylan fan can get, and listening to Vol. 5: Live 1975 of the Bootleg Series practically brings it all back home again!

Dylan at Tanglewood

When Dylan headlined his first concert in the Berkshires, at Tanglewood, July 4, 1991, the most familiar image of him was from the Grammys a few months earlier when he accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award, without a word of thanks to anyone, but with characteristically cryptic remarks about defilement and redemption, after performing an accelerated version of Masters of War, at a time when the country was drunk on the patriotic glory of the Gulf War. According to the Tanglewood electrician working the show that night, Dylan was quite belligerent, threatening to blow the show off if his demands for a total backstage blackout weren’t met. My friend told me that it nearly came to fisticuffs!

The second Tanglewood show Aug. 4, 1997, came on the heels of Dylan’s bout with histoplasmosis, a respiratory infection that nearly took him out. Opening the show was BR5-49, whose multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, who has been a member of Dylan’s band since 2005, when Larry Campbell departed. He performed an abbreviated set of 13 songs, including an excellent reading of Tangled Up in Blue, plus the rarely-performed This Wheel’s On Fire, co-written with Rick Danko, but without All Along the Watchtower, which had been on nearly every setlist since 1992.

Dylan’s ball park shows in Pittsfield

Then came the two ballpark/variety shows: June 23, 2005 and Aug. 26, 2006 at Wahconah Park in Pittsfield. With the estimable Willie Nelson on the undercard in 2005, Dylan went deep into his own songbook to perform a set that included 9 songs from 1967 and earlier. Mr. Dylan is expected to go deep into the songbook again at Tanglewood, but not his own, rather the Great American Songbook, including numbers Frank Sinatra may have done at Tanglewood in 1994.

Desolation Row is first among perhaps a score of favorite Dylan songs, from Highway 61 Revisited, which was released when I was sixteen. It was the highlight of the 2006 show, as I wrote at the time: “The arrangement of Desolation Row was simply spectacular – it was a sound ballet. There was luscious acoustic work between Garnier and Freeman, laying down swinging, jazzy lines and then doubling them. Geroge Recile was all over his drum kit, making thunder and great brassy noise. And Herron pinned down every phrase of Dylan’s with hot rivets of electric mandolin; a wicked cool effect.”

Opening this Tanglewood show will be Mavis Staples, whose own history with Dylan is a long and romantic one.

Continue reading Bob Dylan plays the Berkshires

Bob Dylan in the Berkshires

Update: Bob Dylan at Tanglewood July 2, 2016.

Bob Dylan has an association with the Berkshires that spans the five decades of his career and includes a couple of events at the apogee of all Dylan fan’s “wish-I’d-been-there” list, even though there have been only four Bob Dylan concerts in Berkshire county. For concerts, there were two Bob Dylan shows at Tanglewood, July 4, 1991 and August 4, 1997 then two of his minor league ballpark shows at Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, June 23, 2005 and August 26, 2006.

The other two Bob Dylan appearances in the Berkshires were August 14, 1963 when he was Joan Baez’s unannounced guest at her concert at the Boy’s Club in Pittsfield and November 7, 1975 when Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue spent the day at Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge in Becket.

Bob Dylan at Tanglewood – 1991 & 1997

The Tanglewood concerts of 1991 and 1997 were light years apart in Dylan’s performance and demeanor. Although he was uncharacteristically chatty during the first one, which set a Tanglewood attendance record of 20,516, he raced through an 18 song set in a manner that got the gig listed on Dylan Pool (defunct website) in response to the request, “What was your worst Bob Dylan concert?”

The 1997 concert was just his second after recovering from a near-fatal heart infection. He was his usual laconic self, nattily-clad in a shiny blue western suit, and did an abbreviated set of 13 songs, notable for an especially fine rendition of “Tangled Up in Blue,” and for the omission of “All Along the Watchtower,” which Dylan had sung at every concert since 1992. The opening act that night was BR5-49, whose multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron is now a member of Dylan’s band.

Bob Dylan concert reviews and articles by Dave Read

    Continue reading Bob Dylan in the Berkshires

    Remembering Dave Van Ronk

    Article updated June 26, 2018 by

    Inside Llewyn Davis, the 2013 Coen Brothers movie based on Dave Van Ronk’s memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street, inspired me to tell the story of a few encounters with Van Ronk over the course of almost 25 years. We met at the Rusty Nail Saloon, Sunderland, MA twice in the mid and late 1970s and then did an interview before a concert at the Eighth Step Coffeehouse in Albany, NY in 1999.

    I had been turned on to Van Ronk my first week at college in 1967, when an upperclassman told me that I looked like him. I hadn’t heard of Van Ronk, so I borrowed his copy of Gambler’s Blues, and loved it right off the bat. Before long I added Gambler’s Blues and Dave Van Ronk Sing the Blues to my record collection, which already held 5 or 6 Bob Dylan LPs.

    Dave ReadI wasn’t aware of the relationship between Dylan and Van Ronk until I read Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography, by Anthony Scaduto several years later. In it, Scaduto reports that Dylan recorded Van Ronk’s version of House of the Risin’ Sun without asking permission. Even to a Dylan freak, that seemed pretty rude. In the fall of 1975, both of them made appearances in my neck of the woods – Van Ronk played a mid-week show at the Rusty Nail Saloon in Suderland, MA and Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue played back-to-back shows in Springfield.

    Beside Dave Van Ronk at the Rusty Nail Saloon

    The latter was announced about one week in advance and the rumors were that Dylan’s musical cronies were showing up and playing. Van Ronk’s concert was a couple days before and so when I arrived and saw him sitting alone at the bar, I was excited to say hello and ask if he’d be appearing with Dylan later that week.

    He had a glass of whiskey in front of him and was holding his guitar in his lap, slowly moving his palm along it, as if he were warming it up. I said hello, told him I was a big fan, and asked about the Dylan shows. His reply, made in a polite and not unfriendly manner, was that he didn’t want to talk about Dylan. Oops, I thought, and left Van Ronk alone with his pre-concert routine.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the show, surprised that he was so entertaining, with a dimension of personality that I hadn’t noticed listening to the records. But I couldn’t help myself later, seeing him getting ready to leave the club; after saying great show, nice to meet you, I asked him to verify Scaduto’s House of the Risin’ Sun report. Dave stopped in his tracks, stared into the vacuum of my eyes, and said, “I told you I do not want to discuss that man.”

    Besides feeling like an idiot, and not a litle rude myself, that was all the verification I needed. I attended both Rolling Thunder Revue shows in Springfirld, but didn’t get a chance to run the story by Dylan. (Story about the Rolling Thunder Revue.)

    Meeting Dave Van Ronk again

    The second meeting occurred 3 or 4 years later, by which time I had made the acquaintance of young woman who became an ardent fan, even though she bore no resemblance to Dave Van Ronk, none whatsoever. Since she also was a guitar player, her esteem may have been more genuine than mine, a mere doppelganger. We got to the club early and saw Van Ronk by himself at the far end of the bar, just the same as before. Instead of approaching with a head full of ideas, this time I was content to introduce my friend to Dave, and tell him that she was a guitar player too. He seemed genuinely charmed and within a few minutes, the three of us were sharing a booth close to the stage.

    My recollection of the ensuing three hours is a little fuzzy, except that it was about as much fun as you could have, newfound friends, talking and laughing over round after round of whiskey. He did 3 or 4 sets and eventually the show had the feel of a conversataion between him and her. He ended with a charming dedication to her, but I cannot recall if it was Teddy Bear’s Picnic or Chicken is Nice?

    During the 1980s, I saw him again at various clubs in the Hudson Valley and the Berkshires. Those shows were before full houses and neither the opportunity nor the inclination to approach Van Ronk presented itself again. He did seem to be aging poorly, though.

    Dave Van Ronk concert and interview

    By the late 1990s, I’m writing a music column in a local newspaper and running a website, which credentials were enough to get me into a concert that he would be giving at the Eighth Step Coffeehouse in Albany, NY. We did a telephone interview from his Greenwich Village apartment the day before. (Interview with Dave Van Ronk.)

    Dave Van Ronk listening to Garth Hudson in Albany, NYI brought a tape recorder and a camera to the concert, but didn’t get much use out of either. The camera jammed up so I only got a couple eerie double exposures, and I left the tape recorder alone because I didn’t want to be intrusive. Instead, I scribbled notes furiously in the dim light as Dave gave a brilliant 2+ hour concert, which could’ve doubled as a lecture on the history of music in America. And Garth Hudson was in the house, to do a few songs by himself and to accompany Dave on accordian on a few others.

    Dave was hale and hearty, appearing way better than he had in the 80s. It’s none of my business, but maybe he’d quit drinking? That was the last time I saw Dave Van Ronk. The sadness of his untimely death in 2002, however, is assuaged by several factors:

    1. He was at the top of his game late in life;
    2. He’d received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP);
    3. He got props from Dylan in Chronicles, Vol. 1;

    Also of consolation is the fact that his posthumous CD, “Dave Van Ronk…and the tin pan bended and the story ended,” seems like a replica of the concert he gave at the Eighth Step Coffeehouse. Here’s hoping that Inside LLewyn Davis turns out to be deserving of it’s association with the story of Dave Van Ronk, whose influence extends far beyond the tenure and jurisdiction of the Mayor of MacDougal Street.

    Dave Van Ronk @ Amazon.com

    Continue reading Remembering Dave Van Ronk

    Joan Baez at Tanglewood

    Joan Baez performed at Tanglewood on Sunday afternoon, 6.23.13
    Joan Baez at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott photo.
    Joan Baez delighted an audience of perhaps 5,000 at Tanglewood on June 23, 2013 fifty years after playing to a sold-out audience at the Boy’s Club in Pittsfield on August 14, 1963. At Tanglewood, she sang Bob Dylan’s plaintive It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, his vituperative Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, and her own beautiful Diamonds and Rust, which describes her relationship with him. At the Boy’s Club show, she sang two Bob Dylan songs and then brought him onstage where he sang three of his own!

    Joan Baez cover of Time magazineJoan Baez appears as beautiful today in person as she did in 1962 when a Russell C. Hoban painting of her appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Anytime the 60s is mentioned, the image of Joan Baez is evoked, so long as the 60s still reference a time when world peace and human rights were what it’s all about. It always and everywhere is for her, from Mississippi in the 60s, to Czechoslovakia in the 80s, and Bosnia in the 90s. She got Amnesty International’s top award in 2011; top honors from the USA await.

    Today, she told us about the Woodstock museum at Bethel Woods where she performed the day before, pointing out that it is about way more than merely the August 1969 festival, which she headlined while pregnant with son Gabe, now collecting a check as her drummer. Father David Harris had been busted by the Feds a month earlier and wound up spending 15 months in prison for draft evasion.

    Joan Baez at the White House

    In 2010, Joan Baez performed at the White House Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement.

    The Indigo Girls opened the concert with a rocking set that had the audience up and dancing on the lawn.

    Joan Baez and the Indigo Girls at Tanglewood
    Joan Baez and the Indigo Girls at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott photo.

    Songs performed by Joan Baez at Tanglewood, June 23, 2013:

    Lily of the West (Traditional cover)
    It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan cover)
    Joe Hill
    Long Black Veil (Lefty Frizzell cover)
    Deportee
    Hard Time Come No More
    Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Traditional cover)
    Country Blues (Give Me Cornbread When I’m Hungry) (Dock Boggs cover)
    The House of the Rising Sun (The Animals cover)
    Imagine (John Lennon cover)
    The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel cover)
    Diamonds and Rust

    Encore:
    Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Bob Dylan cover) (with Indigo Girls)
    Welcome Me (with Indigo Girls)
    The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (The Band cover) (with Indigo Girls)
    The Water Is Wide (Traditional cover) (with Indigo Girls)

    2nd encore – with the audience: Blowin’ In The Wind (Bob Dylan cover)

    Continue reading Joan Baez at Tanglewood

    Bob Dylan appears with Joan Baez at Boy’s Club Pittsfield, MA

    Bob Dylan first performed in the Berkshires on August 17, 1963 as Joan Baez’s unannounced guest at the Boy’s Club in Pittsfield, one of three Berkshire Music Barn concerts that were held in Pittsfield that year to accommodate a larger audience than the Music Barn’s Lenox facility could. (The others were Al Hirt and Ray Charles.) It came in the midst of a crucial time in the parturition of Bob Dylan, cultural icon.

    Bob Dylan spring and summer 1963

    • May 27 – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (his second album) released, containing such masterpieces as:
      • “Blowin in the Wind,”
      • “Girl of the North Country,”
      • “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Allright,”
      • “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall;”
    • July 6 – Dylan performed at a Civil Rights Rally in Greenwood, MS (the movie “Don’t Look Back” includes his performance that day of “Only a Pawn in their Game”);
    • July 24, 25, 26 – he performed five times at the Newport Folk Festival;
    • first week of August – New York to begin recording The Time’s They Are A-Changing
    • August 28, 1963 – he sang 3 songs at the March on Washington, two with Joan Baez.

    Joan Baez introduces Bob Dylan at Pittsfield Boy’s Club, August 14, 1963

    Berkshire Music Barn 1963 program; compliments of Billy Weigand
    Berkshire Music Barn 1963 program; compliments of Billy Weigand
    After writing that the capacity crowd received more than the price of their admission entitled them to when Baez brought on “folk singer and composer Bob Dylan, the hottest young man in the business…” Berkshire Eagle entertainment editor Milton R. Bass went on to write a succinct critique of Dylan’s performance that includes a sentence deserving of a place in the canon of Dylanology.

    “His voice is not a pretty one, his guitar playing is just plain old banging away, but there is an intensity about him, a dedication, that forces one’s attention where it belongs.” Milton R. Bass, Berkshire Eagle

    The songs Dylan sang that night were “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” “Blowin in the Wind,” and “A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall.” Baez had earlier sung “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Allright” and “With God on Our Side.” It would be a dozen years before Bob Dylan would return to the Berkshires, again unannounced, again with Joan Baez, but this time with the Rolling Thunder Revue, which descended upon Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge in Becket.

    Continue reading Bob Dylan appears with Joan Baez at Boy’s Club Pittsfield, MA

    Bob Dylan show Mullins Center Nov. 19, 2010

    Attending an episode of the Bob Dylan Show is like pulling your car over to the curb in the midst of an ordinary errand late in the afternoon of a drab day because you noticed something on the horizon and thought, Wow! that needs a closer look.

    Because life is an accumulation of errands, and even when we’re on foot, or in flight, we spend our days inside cars that are the suit of clothes we wear, the style of slang we speak, the slate of politicians we let seduce us.

    The Bob Dylan Show on the Friday before Thanksgiving, that maddening American holiday, at UMASS, Amherst, that architectural wasteland, was a most worthwhile detour. Bob Dylan at Amazon.com

    The Scream, by Edvard MunchThe only comment we have for the management is: please make an effort to book the show into auditoria in every case instead of gymnasia, because it is all about the music, after all, and a big cement gym sucks as a venue for music, an observation the tunes themselves ratify by living an extra second up in the dusty distant rafters where they sound like an Edvard Munch painting looks.

    All the more reason to be grateful for the gene that allows one to cultivate the appreciation of so ethereal a shape-shifting headliner as Bob Dylan, who pulls over to the side of the road way more often than you or I do.

    This show demonstrated that the best of his songs can be boiled down to reveal a mere handful of notes – song cores that are both augur and auger; they have a dynamism that drills deeper to reveal more handwriting on the wall of your soul.

    For all I know, being bereft of all musical ability, except for desktop drumming, this is no secret. Regardless, tonight I got the feeling that it might’ve been on the agenda, that Mr. Dylan and his crackerjack outfit set out to demonstrate just how simple, and joyful, his songs can be. Maybe they went out of their way tonight to reveal the simple dancing skeletons bedecked in a wondrous wardrobe of Mardi Gras costumes?

    The sixteen performed tonight were a companionable mix with a range of ages that would be present at a typical Thanksgiving dinner: there were grandparents, adults, college kids, little kids, and babies.

    And how ’bout them babies! Some born full-blown, like toddler Jolene, b. 2009 and already anchoring the #1 encore slot. It will be fun to watch her grow, to doff gowns and don guises, to cast her dancing spell my way.

    Speaking of which, so too was Bob Dylan, born so much older than any of us. Witness the Witmark Demos, just released as volume 9 in the Bootleg series, 47 songs he recorded before turning 24, including one from tonight’s setlist.

    If Dylan had got struck dumb in Tin Pan Alley way back then, today we’d still be marvelling at tunes like A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Thank God he didn’t, because tonight we got a sparkling rendition of it. Whereas he’s always been varying the vocal styling, now he’s added a whole suite of gestures, as if he’s been studying the young Al Martino.

    The show started slow, chugging away from the station with an especially raspy singing of Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, a prosaic bit of testimony. He emerged from the between song blackout center stage but slightly askance to perform Shooting Star, another prayerful piece that he punctuated with a piercing harmonica coda.

    Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, a lyrical masterpiece, was next, introduced by Dylan on guitar. Would love to have heard it again an hour later, because the band hadn’t started coloring outside the lines yet. Spirit on the Water, which at its best reminds you of roller rinks and polka dancing, was also too restrained, unlike the next one, Rollin’ And Tumblin,‘ from which point the show soared.

    It featured Charlie Sexton’s stinging slide guitar, which seemed to limber his colleagues, and George Recile’s drumming, a force of nature that he can tame to modulated mayhem. The show was on. It will be remembered as the one where Mr. Dylan revealed a new facet of the song-and-dance man, appearing like the vocal soloist of your community orchestra, who has been coached to emote.

    Besides near archival-quality renditions of Tangled Up In Blue, Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum, Hard Rain, and Ballad of a Thin Man, the takeaway from this show was that the man who for decades has been lambasted for virtually ignoring the audience, now veritably pantomimes his songs!

    It is not likely that he’s ever again going to be shooting the breeze with the audience, as we saw during the Rolling Thunder Revue down the road at Springfield, but it was fun to see this new wrinkle, another glint from a passing star.

    It is too early to write his epitaph, but a good idea nonetheless to urge all the youngsters to catch the Bob Dylan Show while there’s still time for a glimpse of his ever-emerging refulgence.

    Continue reading Bob Dylan show Mullins Center Nov. 19, 2010

    Arlo Guthrie interviewed Nov. 1998 at The Guthrie Center

    May 23, 2015 Article by

    Arlo Guthrie in conversation at the Guthrie CenterArlo Guthrie first came to the Berkshires in the late ’50s to attend the former Indian Hill camp in Strockbridge, where his mother was the dance teacher. His Berkshire roots were further established while he was a student at The Stockbridge School and he became involved with the Berkshire Folk Music Society, then headed by the late Hank Grover, David’s father.

    Guthrie recently bought the Kresge Building on North St. in Pittsfield. Besides moving Rising Son Records there, he is looking into the possibility of developing an entertainment center. We visited with Arlo on November 16, 1998 at The Guthrie Center, in the former Episcopal church that his friend Alice Brock used to live in, and where much of Alice’s Restaurant was filmed.

    “I’ve been trying to get something going in downtown Pittsfield for 25 years. I was interested in the old Palace Theater, or even the Capitol before they turned it into the Senior Center. None of that ever panned out because nobody had a clue as to the value of live entertainment.”

    Relating the results of a recent study, commissioned by the city of Pittsfield, that stresses how important providing live entertainment is to the revitalization of downtown, Guthrie continued,

    “We want to see if we can be a part of that process. We bought the building and we’re hoping that we can make a go of it. I want to develop a nightclub facility, maybe with a little food, but not a big-time restaurant. What I really know is not the restaurant business, it’s the nightclub/theater business.”

    After talking about the various “cultural centers” and “tourist destinations” of Berkshires, Arlo continued,

    “I see no reason why Pittsfield can’t become a part of all that, even add something to it and tie together all the different crowds. This is a beautiful part of the world, every part of it. We’ve been let down by the major industries. The only big industry that keeps growing is our cultural industry, so I’m anxious to see if we can all benefit from that.”

    The legacy of The Music Inn figures prominently in Guthrie’s motivation to extend his commitment to the Berkshires. His father Woody played the very first show there and Arlo played the last, exactly 25 years to the day later.

    “The thing we do in Pittsfield will be the closest that we can get to re-doing the kind of music that we had at The Music Inn. It’ll be a big enough club to bring in some of the same kinds of people – maybe the same people. With the help of the City of Pittsfield, I think we can make that happen. We also want a place for young people to go; we’re thinking of establishing a kind of folklore center there.”

    Arlo Guthrie photo proofs

    “It’s not something I have to do business-wise; I’ve got enough going on to keep me busy for a long time. However, one of the things I’d like to do is spend less time on the road. I’m on the road ten months a year, and I miss the Berkshires. I love it here and I think that we have an obligation to try and retain the best part of who we are for future generations.”

    Where did the name “Arlo” come from?

    Arlo Guthrie, interviewed at The Guthrie Center, Housatonic, MA in Nov. 1998 by Dave Conlin Read“When my mom was growing up, there was a series of children’s books, called “Arlo Books”, about a little Swiss kid named ‘Arlo’. They were in all the primary schools on the East coast, and she drew a picture for a class project of this kid. And my mom was one of these packrats who saved everything – every ticket stub of every place she had ever been to. She was incredibly organized.

    “While she was pregnant with me, walking down the beach one day with my dad, she suddenly realized that the picture she had drawn of this kid ‘Arlo’, in the fifth or sixth grade, looked exactly like my father. He was wearing the same clothes, the same kind of striped shirt, walking on the same kind of beach. And so she went back and found this old picture, and sure enough, she had drawn my dad.

    “So they decided that that was an auspicious sign, and that they were going to name me after the kid. But they didn’t know if I would go for a name as awkward as that, so they gave me the middle name ‘Davy’. So I was named after Davy Crockett. She figured he was a popular figure, sort of a rugged, mountain guy, and if I didn’t like the name ‘Arlo’ – which, she wasn’t sure what that was gonna do to me – that I could always call myself ‘Davy’. So I was named ‘Arlo Davy Guthrie.’

    Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge

    “I had been going to the Dream Away for years, I knew Mama Frasca real well – she was a terriffic, wonderful, crazy, wild woman. I really loved her and used to bring the kids up to her place every weekend. I actually did some recording with her at the old Shaggy Dog studio in Stockbridge. We did a great record there – all these great songs with this old gal. She made a single, and one song was called something like, “God and Mama”.

    “So after we did the Rolling Thunder Revue in Springfield (November 6, 1975), I tought it would be fun to take everybody up there. We came up with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Bobby Neuwirth and Ramblin Jack Elliott. They just loved it there; we were fooling around with Mama Frasca, and it became a part of the film, “Renaldo And Clara”. (For details of the party: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue party at Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge

    [Ed. note: Mr. Guthrie’s plans for doing business in downtown Pittsfield did not pan-out.]

    Continue reading Arlo Guthrie interviewed Nov. 1998 at The Guthrie Center