Arlo Guthrie - Hesterly Armory, Tampa, FL, 11-11-1971

Arlo Guthrie was a prominent folk singer in the early 1970s, yet there are very few live recordings from that time with worthy sound quality. I've posted live recordings from him from 1969 and 1974, but there's basically nothing in between. So I decided to try to make something worthy. I found the best sounding audience bootleg from that era and used audio editing to bring it up close to soundboard-level sound quality.

I checked out a handful of audience boots from the era, and this one easily had the best sound quality. I wouldn't have given this a try if I didn't find this one with potential. The biggest problem was a lot of echo on the vocals. So I used the MVSEP program to split the vocals from the instruments. While I was at it, I boosted the vocals to a good level in the mix. Then I took the vocals track and ran it through the Reverb Removal option in MVSEP. But even that wasn't enough. I further ran those results through Adobe's vocal enhancer. I also ran all the banter between songs through that.

Between all these things, the very echo-y vocals sound almost normal now. Not quite, but close. So, while the sound quality still isn't ideal, I'm confident this is very listenable, and the best sounding live recording of him between 1969 and 1974.

In 1972, Guthrie would have the biggest hit of his career, with "City of New Orleans." But this is some months away from that, so that song wasn't performed here. According to the original notes I found, there was at least one more song played at the end of the concert, "Hobo's Lullaby." It's quite possible there were other missing songs, since this is relatively short compared to most concerts from that time period. Also, it seems the beginning of the first song, "Anytime," is cut off. So there could have been one or more missing songs there too. The way "Anytime" started sounded okay to me, even with the cut off, so I left it that way. Plus, I didn't have any other good live recordings of that song from that time period to use to fix it.

By the way, I find it interesting that although this concert is only two years after the 1969 concert I posted by him, only two songs are the same between those concerts: "Coming into Los Angeles" (his other hit) and "Stealin'." 

This album is an hour and two minutes long. 

01 Anytime (Arlo Guthrie)
02 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
03 I Could Be Singing (Arlo Guthrie)
04 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
05 1913 Massacre (Arlo Guthrie)
06 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Arlo Guthrie)
07 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
08 Mapleview (20%) Rag [Instrumental] (Arlo Guthrie)
09 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
10 Coming into Los Angeles (Arlo Guthrie)
11 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
12 Waiting for a Train (Arlo Guthrie)
13 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
14 Days Are Short (Arlo Guthrie)
15 Stealin' (Arlo Guthrie)
16 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
17 Gabriel's Mother's Hiway Ballad No. 16 Blues (Arlo Guthrie)
18 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
19 Lay Down Little Doggies (Arlo Guthrie)
20 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
21 Ring-Around-A-Rosy Rag (Arlo Guthrie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZFAGqFSG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Y2qkyDWWUF50qr1/file

The cover photo is from 1972. I don't know additional details. 

Arlo Guthrie with Steve Goodman & Hoyt Axton - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 11-11-1974

Today, a commenter noted that there are very few live recordings of folk singer Arlo Guthrie in his 1960s and 1970s prime. I thought, yes, that's true, but maybe I can find some more. To my very pleasant surprise, I found this concert on YouTube. It seems nobody has ever converted it from video to audio, so it hasn't gotten much attention as a musical bootleg. Hopefully that can change now, because it's a delightful concert, featuring not only Arlo Guthrie, but also the talented singer-songwriters Steve Goodman and Hoyt Axton.

This concert is an episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. It ran, intermittently, and occasionally using other names, from 1972 to 2018. I've previously posted two episode from the show, a 1982 concert starring Etta James, Dr. John, and Allen Toussaint, and a 2007 concert starring John Fogerty. But I've realized this show is a treasure trove that is often overlooked, so I plan on posting a lot more from it. Occasionally, the show encouraged collaboration, like this episode and 1982 one I've posted. In my opinion, those are the most interesting ones of all.

Note that I just redid the covers of the other two Soundstage concerts I've posted, so the text can have a consistent look. I plan to post a lot more of these, so I've just created a Soundstage side label too. Here are the links to the other two, if you want the updated artwork and mp3 tags. Etta James, Dr. John, and Allen Toussaint:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/03/etta-james-dr-john-allen-toussaint.html

And John Fogerty:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/10/john-fogerty-pbs-soundstage-chicago-il.html

Arlo Guthrie only ever had one big hit, "City of New Orleans," in 1972. It was written by Steve Goodman. His music career was just starting, and Guthrie's cover helped establish his career, as well as giving him enough royalties to go into music full time. Unfortunately, despite being in his early 20s, he already had been diagnosed with leukemia. He managed to have a successful music career for many years, but succumbed to the disease in 1984, at the age of 36. Here's the Wikipedia page for Goodman, if you want to know more:

Steve Goodman - Wikipedia 

Hoyt Axton began as a folksinger in the early 1960s, releasing his first album in 1962. He didn't find much success in his own name until the mid-1970s, when he started to have a string of minor country hits. But he had a lot more success as a songwriter for others. His biggest success, by far, was the song "Joy to the World." The band Three Dog Night had a Number One hit with it in 1971. In fact, it was the biggest selling song of that year. He also had a reasonably successful career as an actor. Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Hoyt Axton - Wikipedia

At first, this album might have seemed a random collection of three folky singer-songwriters. But after Guthrie had a hit with Goodman's "City of New Orleans," their paths crossed often and they became good friends. Furthermore, it turns out Axton was a cousin to Guthrie, so they were linked as well. I was surprised to discover that while writing these notes. I was also surprised to learn that Axton's mother, Mae Boren Axton, was a songwriter too, and co-wrote "Heartbreak Hotel," the Elvis Presley classic.

Anyway, in this concert, Guthrie started out playing a few songs. Then Goodman played a few, then Axton. All three came together to sing the last three, but Guthrie generally took the lead on those. Since this was professionally recorded for TV, the sound quality is excellent.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
02 Take Me Back (Arlo Guthrie)
03 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
04 Son of Week on the Rag [Instrumental] (Arlo Guthrie)
05 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
06 Presidential Rag (Arlo Guthrie)
07 City of New Orleans (Arlo Guthrie)
08 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
09 Boomer's Story (Steve Goodman & Arlo Guthrie)
10 talk (Steve Goodman)
11 It's a Sin to Tell a Lie (Steve Goodman)
12 talk (Steve Goodman)
13 Door Number Three (Steve Goodman)
14 Do You Want to Learn to Dance (Steve Goodman)
15 talk (Steve Goodman)
16 Bone Fingers (Hoyt Axton, Arlo Guthrie & Steve Goodman)
17 talk (Hoyt Axton)
18 Sweet Misery (Hoyt Axton)
19 talk (Hoyt Axton)
20 Less than a Song (Hoyt Axton)
21 talk (Arlo Guthrie, Steve Goodman & Hoyt Axton)
22 Walkin' Down the Line (Arlo Guthrie, Steve Goodman & Hoyt Axton)
23 talk (Arlo Guthrie, Steve Goodman & Hoyt Axton)
24 The Story of Reuben Clamzo and His Strange Daughter in the Key of A (Arlo Guthrie, Steve Goodman & Hoyt Axton)
25 talk (Arlo Guthrie, Steve Goodman & Hoyt Axton)
26 Goodnight Irene (Arlo Guthrie, Steve Goodman & Hoyt Axton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mB3aeTwc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/hpcbe6lUoJd4PQ7/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from the YouTube video of this concert. It was rather low-res, but I improved it somewhat with the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Woody Guthrie All-Star Tribute Concert, Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA, 9-12-1970

In 1967, legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie died after being bedridden with health problems for many years. In early 1968, there was a tribute concert for him in New York City. Then, in 1970, there was a second tribute concert for him in Los Angeles, which is presented here. I'm not sure why it was thought a second concert was needed, but perhaps it was for people on the West Coast. Highlights of both concerts were combined onto one album, which was released in 1972. 

Like the 1968 show, this one had spoken word recitations between many of the songs. In my opinion, the music bears many repeat listenings, but I get bored with the spoken word parts. So this is a version of just the music, exactly the same as I did with my earlier post of the 1968 concert. Decades later, both concerts were officially released in full, so this recording comes from that.

Many of the musical acts in this concert were the same as the one in the 1968. Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Pete Seeger, and Odetta took part in both. However, the undoubted biggest name of the 1968 concert was Bob Dylan, and he wasn't present here. But another big star in the folk music world, Joan Baez, was only present here. That was also the case for Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Country Joe McDonald, and Earl Robinson. This concert also was half an hour longer.

If you prefer always listening to this with the spoken word recitations, you have the official album version for that. I'm just giving you a different option.

This album is an hour and 30 minutes long.

01 Oklahoma Hills (Arlo Guthrie)
02 So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh [Dusty Old Dust] (Pete Seeger & Joan Baez)
03 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Country Joe McDonald, Pete Seeger & Arlo Guthrie)
04 Hobo's Lullaby (Joan Baez)
05 Ramblin' Round (Odetta)
06 I Ain't Got No Home (Pete Seeger & Arlo Guthrie)
07 Pretty Boy Floyd (Country Joe McDonald)
08 Nine Hundred Miles (Richie Havens)
09 Plane Wreck at Los Gatos [Deportee] (Joan Baez)
10 John Hardy (Odetta)
11 Hard Travelin' (Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Country Joe McDonald, Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie & Joan Baez)
12 Vigilante Man (Richie Havens)
13 1913 Massacre (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
14 Do Re Mi (Arlo Guthrie)
15 Pastures of Plenty (Joan Baez)
16 Roll On Columbia (Earl Robinson & Pete Seeger)
17 Mail Myself to You (Earl Robinson)
18 Howdido (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
19 Woman at Home (Country Joe McDonald)
20 The Sinking of the Reuben James (Pete Seeger)
21 Jesus Christ (Arlo Guthrie)
22 I've Got to Know (Arlo Guthrie & Joan Baez)
23 This Train Is Bound for Glory (Country Joe McDonald, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez & Odetta)
24 This Land Is Your Land - So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh [Dusty Old Dust] (Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NPeRiSD5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/eVOGzmZgFPw3LgA/file 

The cover image is from this exact concert. From right to left, that's Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Odetta, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie. It's from the final encore. However, I had to do some Photoshop editing to get everyone to fit in with a decent size. The singers were standing with some big gaps of empty space between the microphones, so I moved them much closer together.

Various Artists - A Musical Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1-20-1968

In October 1967, one of the all-time musical greats, Woody Guthrie, died at the age of 55. His health started declining in the late 1940s, and in 1952 he was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease, which causes a gradual decline in motor skills and mental abilities. He was hospitalized continuously from 1956 until his death. From the early 1960s onward, Bob Dylan regularly visited him in the hospital and sang songs for him, but so did Pete Seeger and many other folk singers.

Back in the 1960s, musical tribute concerts weren't really a thing yet, but Guthie was such a towering figure that there actually were three such concerts. I plan on posting all three eventually. This is the natural way to start, since it came first chronologically.

This concert was officially released in full as the album "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Part 1," in 1972. In 1970, another tribute concert for him happened, and that was eventually released as "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Part 2." Then, decades later, highlights from the two were combined onto one CD simply called "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie." 

Normally, I wouldn't post something that has been officially released in full. But I think in this case I can made a more listenable album by subtraction. What I mean is, the 1968 concert was a combination of songs that were sung and spoken word/poetry that was read, going back and forth between the two. I think the songs have a lot of relistening value, but I don't want to hear the spoken word parts that often. So I deleted almost twenty tracks of that, keeping just the music. If you want the full version, the official album is for you.

In removing those tracks, I was careful to manage the applause at the end of each song, since the spoken word part often started while the cheering was still going on. In some cases, I was able to fade the cheering down to bring it to a natural end. But when it was too short for that, I pasted in some cheering from the ends to other songs.

Now, let's get to the music, which consists entirely of songs written by Woody Guthrie, or cover songs he was closely associated with. This concert is most famous due to the appearance of Bob Dylan and the Band. It was important for several reasons. This was Dylan's first public performance since his motorcycle accident a year and a half earlier. It seems he wasn't actually that seriously injured in that accident, and it certainly didn't take him years to recover. But he'd been living a fast and crazy life of stardom and wanted to step away from all that for a while, and the accident gave him an excuse to go into seclusion. After this concert, Dylan basically went back into seclusion for another year or so. But he considered Woody Guthrie so important to his life that he made this rare public appearance during that time anyway.

Also important was the fact that Dylan was backed by the Band. Most members of the Band had backed him on a 1966 tour, and then during his "Basement Tapes" studio sessions in 1967. But at the time of this concert, they still hadn't made a name for themselves... both figuratively and literally! Since they literally didn't have a name to call themselves yet, for this concert, they were billed as "The Crackers," weirdly enough. Later in 1968, the Band would release their first studio album, "Music from Big Pink," to great critical acclaim. They would continue to back Dylan on other projects, including the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival concert and a 1974 tour. This concert was critical to their early career as well as their evolving musical connection with Dylan.

By the way, in addition to playing three songs with the Band, Dylan sang on two others: "This Train Is Bound for Glory" and the finale, "This Land Is Your Land." His voice is just one of many on the finale. As for "This Train Is Bound for Glory," he sang a verse on his own. Unfortunately, the album only included about a 30-second long snippet of that song, and his part wasn't included. I didn't include that snippet since I found it frustrating to only have a bit of the song. I'm guessing there was a flaw with the recording for much of the song.

The other stars of the concert were some of the biggest names in folk music at the time: Arlo Guthrie (Woody Guthrie's son, who had just hit it big with "Alice's Restaurant" in 1967), Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Richie Havens, and Tom Paxton. (I was asked the other day if I could post something by Pete Seeger. I couldn't think of anything worth posting. But then I remembered this concert.)

If you want to know more about this concert, here's an article in Rolling Stone Magazine about it that came out just a month after it took place:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-turns-up-for-woody-guthrie-memorial-197917/

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Oklahoma Hills (Arlo Guthrie)
02 So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh [Dusty Old Dust] (Judy Collins)
03 Curly Headed Baby (Pete Seeger)
04 Ramblin' Round (Odetta)
05 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie & Judy Collins)
06 Pretty Boy Floyd (Tom Paxton)
07 I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water (Richie Havens)
08 Plane Wreck at Los Gatos [Deportee] (Judy Collins)
09 Vigilante Man (Richie Havens)
10 Pastures of Plenty (Tom Paxton)
11 Grand Coulee Dam (Bob Dylan & the Band)
12 Dear Mrs. Roosevelt (Bob Dylan & the Band)
13 I Ain't Got No Home (Bob Dylan & the Band)
14 Roll On Columbia [Edit] (Judy Collins)
15 Jackhammer John (Pete Seeger & Richie Havens)
16 Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done [The Great Historical Bum] (Tom Paxton)
17 Union Maid (Judy Collins & Pete Seeger)
18 This Land Is Your Land (Will Geer, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NrqpTP2Z

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/eas3q5bnIYHEX6d/file

What a historic photo for the cover! From left to right, that's Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Arlo Guthrie. I found a bunch of photos from this concert, but all of them were in black and white. I picked this one, and then colorized it with the Kolorize.cc program. It did a really good job, including picking the colors. I only had to make a few fixes in Photoshop.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 2 - Arlo Guthrie

The 1968 Newport Folk Festival continues with Arlo Guthrie.

As an aside, note that I'm not entirely sure of the order of performers in this festival. I tried to research it, but I only got some clues, like a mention of a particular act being the last one of the day, or one performer going before another one. So the order is my best guess. I do know which day each performance took place on though, and that information is in the mp3 tags. In Guthie's case, his set was on August 26th, the second day of the festival.

Arlo Guthrie is famous for being the son of Woody Guthrie, probably the most revered folk musician of all time. But he also has had a long and successful music career of his own. He found fame early, when he was just a teenager. In the 1967 Newport Folk Festival, he peformed a newly written long story-song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," and it got a tremendous reception. He recorded it at another concert shortly after that and released it on his debut album later that year. As a result, he was already well-known by the time of this festival, though mainly known for that one song.

If this is his full performance, then he didn't play that song this time. However, he made passing reference to it more than once, and you can tell from the reaction that the audience was familiar with it. Instead, he played a couple of songs done in a very similar vein, that was a mix of talking, often humorous, and singing. 

The last three songs are actually from a different set at the same festival. There was a special set with multiple artists that was a tribute to Arlo Guthrie's famous father, Woody Guthrie. Arlo played a few songs in that, so I put them at the end of his set. Two of them, "The Oklahoma Hills" and "Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues," were covers of Woody Guthrie songs. But the last one, "The Motorcycle Song," was an Arlo Guthrie original.

Note that the recordings of this festival were often plagued by the sound of wind blowing against the microphone. For some reason, this didn't seem to affect the music or singing much at all. However, it often was quite noticeable during the cheering after songs, and the banter between songs. It wasn't a problem with the first album I posted, but it affected some of the songs here. But happily, I recently got the audio editing program Izotope 10, and that has a "de-wind" feature that works very well. I'm not going to mark all the songs I edited, because there were many. But note that this version sounds better than others you might find on the Internet because the windy noises have been removed. (If any remain, please let me know and I'll try to fix them.)

This album is 48 minutes long.

013 talk by Jean Ritchie (Arlo Guthrie)
014 Swimmy Swim (Arlo Guthrie)
015 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
016 The Pause of Mr. Claus (Arlo Guthrie)
017 Meditation [Wave Upon Wave] (Arlo Guthrie)
018 The Oklahoma Hills (Arlo Guthrie)
019 Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues (Arlo Guthrie)
020 The Motorcycle Song (Arlo Guthrie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205366/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196802ArloGthrie.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RGMKhgyR

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. However, it was in black and white. I used the program Palette to colorize it, then did some touch ups with Photoshop.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Arlo Guthrie - Mississippi River Festival, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL, 7-7-1969

Here's the first of two closely linked concert albums. In 1969, Arlo Guthrie and Joni Mitchell were the two headline acts for the first annual Mississippi River Festival. This summer concert series would run until 1980. The entire sets of Guthrie and Mitchell were broadcast on public television, for a show called "Sounds of Summer" that had TV host Steve Allen introducing and sending off the acts. Due to that broadcast, both sets were professionally recorded.

I had known about these two concerts for a long time, but I hadn't been that interested in them. The sound quality of what I heard was good, not great. I put the rare songs Mitchell did on one of my stray tracks compilations, but that was it. However, I recently came across a better version that first emerged in the last year or two. It's a high quality soundboard.

So here's the Arlo Guthrie set. The Joni Mitchell one will follow. Guthrie played with a small band, while Mitchell performed in solo acoustic mode.

By the way, here's a fun fact about the 1969 Mississippi River Festival. It turns out that the Band played in the festival a week after the night starring Guthrie and Mitchell, and they were joined on the encore for three songs with Bob Dylan. (The songs were the covers "I Ain't Got No Home," "Slippin' and Slidin'" and "In the Pines.') This is interesting because Dylan made so few concert appearances from the end of 1966 to the start of 1974. Unfortunately, it seems there's no known recording of this.

In my opinion, Guthrie's most interesting music dates from the late 1960s and early 1970s. But there isn't much live music from that time. His 1968 album "Arlo" was recorded live, but I consider that more like a studio album, since it contained his latest batch of new songs. His Woodstock set has finally been released in good sound quality in recent years, but you have to buy a box set with something like 35 discs in order to get it. And in 2009, he released an album called "Tales of '69," which is an excellent sounding concert from some unknown date and location in 1969. Then there's this. Other than this stuff concentrated in 1969, there isn't much of his live music available from that time period, not even on bootlegs, especially not with this sound quality.

If you like Guthrie but don't have the "Tales of '69" album, you should give that one a listen. One nice thing about this show is that it's mostly different from that one, despite probably being recorded only months apart. The only two songs that are the same are "The Motorcycle Song" and "Coming into Los Angeles."

Although the sound is very good here, there was a fair amount of hiss. For the actual songs, the hiss is drowned out by the music, so I didn't consider it a problem for those. But I used some noise reduction and other tricks to reduce it only on the talking tracks, because it was much more noticeable during the quiet moments there.

I'm not a big fan of the Steve Allen talking parts, though I suppose they are culturally interesting. For the sake of completeness, I left them in. For the first part of his intro, there was some cheesy lounge music playing in the background, but I removed that using the Spleeter editing program. 

Another fun fact: I was Googling Steve Allen just now, and I found out he was quite a musician himself. He claims to have written over 8,000 songs! Many were covered by others, and some became minor hits. He also released over 40 albums, mostly jazz, but also some poetry and some comedy. Turns out he was much more talented than I'd realized. So maybe he had more appreciation for Guthrie and Mitchell than other TV stars from his generation.

This concert is 56 minutes long, including the Steve Allen bits. 

By the way, if anyone knows the name of the unnamed bluegrass tune, please let me know so I can fix the song list.

01 talk (Steve Allen)
02 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
03 The Motorcycle Song [Significance of the Pickle Version] (Arlo Guthrie)
04 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
05 Coming into Los Angeles (Arlo Guthrie)
06 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
07 If You Would Just Drop By (Arlo Guthrie)
08 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
09 Oh Mary Don't You Weep (Arlo Guthrie)
10 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
11 Black Mountain Rag, Take 1 [Instrumental] (Arlo Guthrie)
12 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
13 Black Mountain Rag, Take 2 [Instrumental] (Arlo Guthrie)
14 Wheel of Fortune (Arlo Guthrie)
15 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
16 My Front Pages (Arlo Guthrie)
17 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
18 Stealin' - Amazing Grace (Arlo Guthrie)
19 talk (Steve Allen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Gt7aAT4C

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/FXHWICZD39ryMU7/file

I don't know if the complete performances of Guthrie and/or Mitchell are publicly available anywhere, but there's a 20 minute long YouTube video that has a few songs from each of them. I took a screenshot of Guthrie from that for the album cover. I also added the actual 1969 festival logo at the upper right corner.

In March 2025, I upgraded the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Arlo Guthrie - Pine Street Theatre, Portland, OR, 11-2-1988

Arlo Guthrie has had an impressive musical career, but I fear that a lot of people are forgetting about him because he hasn't been well represented on record. He does have some fine albums, but I think the best way to appreciate him is to see him in concert. He's as much a storyteller with a great sense of humor as he is a singer or songwriter. He could easily have had another career as a stand-up comedian.

I recently came across a bootleg of a solo acoustic Guthrie concert with flawless sound and a good setlist, so I'm sharing it here with you. This sounds as good as any officially released live album of his. In fact, it's almost too good, in the sense that it's a soundboard with very little audience noise, and in this case that means you can't hear much of the audience reaction when he jokes and such.

This concert is almost as much about Guthrie as storyteller as it is about him as a musician. I made separate tracks of his between song dialogue, and about one-third of the two-hour total time is just him talking. Furthermore, he talks a lot during his songs too. But that's a good thing, since all that talking is a big part of his appeal.

As for the music, this contains all his best known songs, such as "Alice's Restaurant Massacre" (which he plays live only rarely), "The Motorcycle Song," "The City of New Orleans," and "Coming into Los Angeles." So if you want just one Arlo Guthrie concert to listen to, I think this is the one.

01 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
02 Key to the Highway (Arlo Guthrie)
03 Freight Train (Arlo Guthrie)
04 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
05 The Motorcycle Song (Arlo Guthrie)
06 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
07 Oh Mom (Arlo Guthrie)
08 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
09 Coming into Los Angeles (Arlo Guthrie)
10 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
11 My Front Pages (Arlo Guthrie)
12 Darkest Hour (Arlo Guthrie)
13 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
14 I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler (Arlo Guthrie)
15 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
16 I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler, Part 2 (Arlo Guthrie)
17 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
18 I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler, Part 3 (Arlo Guthrie)
19 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
20 Alice's Restaurant Massacre (Arlo Guthrie)
21 The City of New Orleans (Arlo Guthrie)
22 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
23 When a Soldier Makes It Home (Arlo Guthrie)
24 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
25 Gabriel's Mother's Hiway Ballad No.16 Blues (Arlo Guthrie)
26 This Land Is Your Land (Arlo Guthrie)
27 Amazing Grace (Arlo Guthrie)
28 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
29 Highway in the Wind (Arlo Guthrie)

https://bestfile.io/en/VC6fLaPJlQ57rpf/file

The cover art comes from a screenshot of a concert from that era.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.