• WHO: Pop Wagner, Charlie Maguire, Tony Glover
• WHAT: A WOODY GUTHRIE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
• WHEN: Wednesday, July 14, 7:30PM
• WHERE: Ginkgo Coffeehouse
  721 Snelling Avenue N.
  Saint Paul
  651.645.2647
• TICKETS: $12 advance-$15 at the door

Minnesota folkies Pop Wagner, Charlie Maguire, and bluesman Tony Glover come together for the second annual Woody Guthrie Birthday Celebration at the Ginkgo Coffeehouse at 7:30PM on Wednesday, July 14 on what would have been Guthrie’s 98th birthday.

Last year’s tribute on the same date sold out. The three plan to feature a different theme for the annual Guthrie concerts each succeeding year culminating in 2012, the 100th Anniversary of Guthrie’s birth in Oklahoma.

This time, the boys will pull deeply from a well of over 30 songs specifically commissioned by the U.S. Department of Interior about the Pacific Northwest and the Columbia River.

Serving officially as an “information consultant” on a salary of $3,200, Guthrie wrote a song a day from May 13-June 13, 1941, and recorded them in the studios of the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Oregon and later in NYC.

Songs include some Guthrie classics; “Roll on Columbia”, “Hard Traveling”, and “Pastures of Plenty”, and many other forgotten gems that lay in the archives of the BPA until they were discovered in 1987 by BPA employees Bill Murlin and Maurice Stroman who at that time worked in the audiovisual and art departments of the electrical utility. This body of music from a man that John Steinbeck recalled having a voice like “a tire iron on a rusty rim” laid the groundwork for all of the songs to follow that sang of the glory and majesty of natural places in the United States with lyrics that were prophetic and enduring.

The other part of the story is the closeness to not only the topic of rivers and the environment as perceived by Guthrie nearly 70 years ago, but to the folksinger himself and the seamlessness of experience and mentoring of Wagner, Maguire, and Glover, that gives their performances of the songs an almost familial ring.

Glover actually met Woody Guthrie on a visit that he made with friends at Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, in 1962.

Maguire, known for years as the “Singing Ranger” for the National Park Service on the Mississippi River, was tutored and mentored in “Woodyisms” by Guthrie fellow traveler Lee Hays in the 1970’s. That particular reminiscence between Glover and Maguire culminated in an article entitled Rambling Men for the Minneapolis magazine, The Rake. That got the Woody Guthrie Foundation involved and today even though the print magazine version is long gone, you can still read Glover and Maguire’s article on the web site under “Nora’s News”.

Wagner’s close brush with Guthrie occurred in numerous visits and concerts with Ramblin’ Jack Elliot (Woody’s traveling buddy) over the past 40 years.

“Woody traveled through just about every state in the United States”, Maguire says, “but Minnesota’s cities and rivers is one of only a handful of places he actually mentions in his songs. Woody’s songs about the Columbia River is easily translated to the great Mississippi River we have here, and the other great waterways of the United States”.

• Pop Wagner - (Guitar/Fiddle/Vocals) Folksinger,“Renaissance Cowboy”, Opera Singer, Movie Extra, Lariat Artist
• Charlie Maguire - (Guitar/Vocals) Songwriter,“Singing Ranger’, “Centennial Troubadour”, Bush & Ucross Fellow
• Tony Glover - (Harmonica/Vocals) Author, Journalist, Co-Founder of the seminal blues group “Koerner, Ray, and Glover”