Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie - David Lutken on bringing Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie back to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

After nearly two decades away from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the critically acclaimed musical Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie returns following acclaimed productions across the UK, the West End and Off-Broadway. Created and performed by David Lutken alongside three actor-musicians playing more than twenty instruments, the show draws on Guthrie's own words, letters and songs to chart the life of the American folk icon through the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and the political movements that shaped twentieth-century America. We caught up with David Lutken to hear more about the show's long-awaited return.

For anyone who hasn't heard of Woody Guthrie, who was he in your own words? 

Woody Guthrie was a politically radical American folksinger, songwriter and author. He was born in Oklahoma in 1912. Throughout his difficult and restless life, he wrote and sang about suffering and injustice, often with wry humor, and incisive directness. The most famous of his hundreds of published songs is “This Land Is Your Land”, written in 1940. The legacy, inspiration and influence of his music continues today with many thousands of socially conscious writers and singers around the world.

If someone walked into the show with no prior knowledge of Woody Guthrie, what kind of afternoon are they about to experience?     

I would hope that, for the uninitiated, “Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie” would be something of a revelation. In ways large and small, Woody both appeared in a continuing line of socially progressive writers and activists in the U.S., and also forged his own unique, somewhat abrasive yet prescient path toward what would become America’s post-WWII struggle for Civil Rights, Equality and a true and fair socialist democracy, and he did it, mostly, by playing a guitar and singing.

Guthrie had stopped performing before you were even born, but you've been playing his music and embodying him on stage for the best part of twenty years. How did his music first find its way to you, and how has your relationship with him changed in that time?     

As I mention in the show, “I first started learning about Woody Guthrie and his travels and his music when I was in Nursery School in Texas.” In the early 1960s, many of my teachers, mentors, older siblings and friends were fans of folk music, and it was the Sixties, so even though he had stopped performing by the mid Fifties, Woody was on most folk singers’ lists - and on their minds, too. My ‘relationship’ with the man and his music hasn’t changed so much as deepened over the years. I’ve had many opportunities in multiple tributes, plays, concerts and other musicals to play and sing his songs, my group and I devised “Woody Sez” to tell the story of his life as well, and I can honestly say that it has changed mine.

What's your favourite song to perform in the show, and why? And is it the same as your favourite Guthrie song to listen to?    

At the Fringe this summer, Nyssa Grant and I will be performing the song “Jolly Banker” as Woody and his radio partner, Maxine “Lefty Lou” Crissman (whom I met twenty-some years ago) I think that’s my current favorite to sing in the show. My own favorite WG song of all, “Pretty Boy Floyd” from 1939, unfortunately didn’t make the final cut. It’s a spectacular example of Woody Guthrie’s protest balladry - we do reference its most famous couplet in a last musical montage: “As through this world I ramble, I see lots of funny men. Some will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen.”

Four of you play more than twenty instruments between you, swapping them mid-show. Has a handover ever gone spectacularly wrong?    

I remember once breaking a string in the middle of “Bound For Glory”, and Darcie, Helen and Andy valiantly ‘covered’, playing and singing furiously until I had replaced it, tuned up and started playing again … only to break another in the next verse!

Every generation seems to discover Woody Guthrie for itself. Now, streaming means a new generation can discover an artist's entire back catalogue in an afternoon. Why do you think his songs continue to resonate with young audiences?     

I hope the reason Woody’s song resonate, is the same reason that young people still want to read Shakespeare and Mark Twain, Robbie Burns, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Dostoyevsky, Sojourner Truth, Homer, Virgil, Omar Kahyaam, Siddhartha and Black Elk and listen to Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco, Chuck D, Jesse Wells and Bruce Springsteen. Their talents and passion for social progress are instantly evident, and they all, as Cervantes says: “Hit the nail on the head!”

You've won the Helen Hayes and Joseph Jefferson Awards for playing Guthrie and performed the show across Europe, the US, China and the Middle East. Is there one audience reaction from all those years that has stayed with you?      

In 2012, the centennial year of his birth, we played a week of performances of “Woody Sez” in Germany in a small theater at a huge, wonderful festival in Thuringia, in the village of Rudolstadt. We loved it and had a blast there. We were scheduled to be a part of a large outdoor concert the last day on the grounds of the town’s Medieval castle. We were completely unknown to most of the concert’s attendees, I’m sure, and we were scheduled early in the afternoon, long before the headliners’ evening and nighttime slots when thousands would be attending. Still, there were probably seven or eight hundred people spread out picnicking and listening to the early participants ahead of us, and they were having a good time. The weather in July was beautiful. We got up to do our 40 minutes and played our hearts out. At the end of the set, as we began to sing “This Land Is Your Land”, there was a hush and then, the crowd all stood up and sang with us - very loudly! And the cheers and applause were amazing. I’ll never forget that.

Beyond performing Woody Sez, what are you most looking forward to about returning to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer?    

I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of other shows!  And playing some music in a pub or two. And, if I have the chance, I’m going to try to do a bit of fly fishing while we’re there. My wife and I are very fond of fly fishing.

Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie will be performed at 5:30pm at Underbelly Bristo Square from 5^th – 30^th August.

Booking link: https://underbellyedinburgh.co.uk/event/woody-sez