Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Whilst history is often made far from home, it is the surroundings, comfortable or otherwise, of home that ideas often occur; and when those philosophies and beliefs stir, when they are captured in the rawness of time’s preserve where love is supposed to be at its most finite and pure, then it is within the graces of those with the fortune to hear the results to proclaim how worthy they are to be remembered, how legends are framed best when they in amongst that which they fight for.
It does not take a review to remind people just how influential the great American socialist songwriter Woody Guthrie has been, not just to those that immediately followed him in a post-war world, but to further generations who heard and embraced his message, his agony, his faith that humanity’s direction, especially that of his own country, could be changed. It does not tale a review, for there is not enough words in the world to exclaim the continuing relevance of the man, but in his own words delicately bound in a revered fashion via Shamus Records, (a label subsidiary of the artist’s long time publisher TRO Essex Music Group) Woody Guthrie -Woody At Home, Vol 1 & 2, the legend takes on another meaning, another perspective.
These home sampled recordings are a fascinating insight into the mindset of the man, they may sound old fashioned, the studio bells and whistles that so many new music listeners are enthralled with obviously missing, not just from home recordings but the simplicity of studios after the ravages of war, but deep within each song recorded, the odd example of the spoken word explanation, are so rich, so towering, that they defy age and season.
The two-volume set opens with arguably the songwriter’s most recognisable and searingly honest attitude to how Capitalism was burning the foundations of America, This Land Is Your Land, and follows through with tracks such as the damnation of racism’s ugly head that was observed the 1948 plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon, Deportee, Pastures of Plenty, the certainty that if Jesus was to appear today he would be murdered by Capitalists in the song Jesus Christ, Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done, Innocent Man, Backdoor Burn and the Big Landlord, Bouy Bells From Trenton, One Little Thing An Atom Bomb Can’t Do, My Id And My Ego, Funny Mountain, and You Better Git Ready.
Woody Guthrie – Woody At Home, Vol 1 & 2 is homely, but still full of rage, it is delivered with sweetness, but anger mixed with personal philosophy, and as this wonderful addition to the insight of a legend.
Ian D. Hall