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Arlo Guthrie

About this Artist

ARLO GUTHRIE was born in Coney Island, New York, in 1947, the son of legendary folksinger Woody Guthrie and Marjorie Mazia Guthrie, a professional dancer with the Martha Graham Company and the founder of the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease. He grew up surrounded by musicians: Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Sonny Terry, and many others were significant influences on Guthrie's musical development. Throughout the 1960s he played the clubs of Greenwich Village as he developed his own distinctive, expressive voice in a crowded community of singer-songwriters-musicians.

Guthrie gained international stature upon the release in 1967 of Alice's Restaurant, and its title song helped foster a new commitment among the '60s generation to social consciousness and activism. Over the last four decades Guthrie has toured throughout the world, earning broad-based acclaim for both his musical accomplishments and his captivating storytelling. On the road nearly 10 months of the year, Arlo is frequently accompanied by his daughter, Sarah Lee, on acoustic guitar and vocals and his son Abe on keyboards and vocals.

Since 1998 Arlo has performed An American Scrapbook, his symphonic arrangements of original and classical American songs, in more than 40 concerts with 27 different U.S. symphony orchestras, including a show at Boston's Symphony Hall conducted by Keith Lockhart, which was recorded and broadcast on PBS' Evening at Pops.

In 1991 Guthrie purchased the old Trinity Church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, that was the scene of "Alice's Restaurant." It now houses the Guthrie Center, a nonprofit interfaith church foundation dedicated to providing community services, the Guthrie Foundation, which addresses contemporary issues such as the environment, health care, cultural exchange, and education, and Rising Son Records. Guthrie has written and published the newsletter The Rolling Blunder Review since 1986 and is the author of the children's book Mooses Come Walking, illustrated by Alice May Brock.