A folk music legend hits for a triple, at Monmouth U

WEST LONG BRANCH — The Center for the Arts at Monmouth University has announced that tickets are now on sale for a November 11 concert featuring the heir to one of the most formidable legacies in American folk music: Arlo Guthrie.Event:                Arlo Guthrie

Date:                  Friday, November 11, 2016

Time:                 8:00 p.m.

Where:              Pollak Theatre, Monmouth University, 400 Cedar Ave, West Long Branch, NJ

Sponsored By:    Monmouth University’s Center for the Arts

Cost:                  $40/$60 /$80 Gold Circle Contact Box Office for information on group rates

Box Office:         www.monmouth.edu/arts          or call 732-263-6889

Contact:            Kelly Barratt, Assistant Director Center for the Arts at 732-263-5114

The 8 p.m. Performing Arts Series event finds the Brooklyn-born musician, activist and occasional actor appearing with his full band at the Pollak Theatre, the same venue that played host to a 2009 multi-media tribute to the words and music of Arlo’s father, the legendary Woody Guthrie. It’s a renovated auditorium that greets the singer and multi-instrumentalist; one whose new seats, improved sight lines and enlarged stage area have enhanced the concert experience at the area’s premier mid-sized room for acoustic music.

His last time out on the road, Guthrie observed the golden anniversary of the song that put him on the map: “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” The laid-back, epic length talking-blues about the Vietnam draft, Thanksgiving Day, and the singer’s (admittedly minor) career as an outlaw became the side-long centerpiece of his debut album, and the inspiration for the irreverent 1969 feature film that starred Guthrie himself. It also helped Arlo emerge instantly from the shadow of his formidable family pedigree; revealing him as an artist of passionately held convictions, an easygoing good humor, and a way with other composers’ songs that saw him score his sole Top 40 hit with a 1972 cover of Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans.”

Here in 2016, Arlo Guthrie hits the road again for his Running Down the Road Tour, a project that spotlights material from three pivotal early albums — “Arlo” (1968), “Running Down the Road” (1969) and “Washington County” (1970). Described as “a flashback-inducing, mind-expanding show,” the performance features such era-defining milestones as “Coming Into Los Angeles” (which Guthrie memorably performed at the original Woodstock festival), “The Motorcycle Song,” and the Woody Guthrie tunes “Lay Down Little Doggies” and “Oklahoma Hills.” Other surprises are hinted at, during a set that “promises to take the audience back to the most remarkable, far-out era.”

The concert is also one of several Fall 2016 events that mark a special university affiliation between Monmouth University and the LA-based Grammy Museum. Attendees at the November 11 date will also have the opportunity to view “Bob Dylan: Photographs by Daniel Kramer,” a Grammy Museum-curated exhibit on the walls of the building’s Pollak Gallery. Collecting more than 40 candid images of the ascendant musical game-changer taken between 1964 and 1965, the Dylan exhibit remains on display through December 20.

Still running down that road as he approaches his 69th birthday; still active in numerous humanitarian endeavors based  at his Guthrie Center in Massachusetts (even as he espouses political beliefs that are more libertarian than liberal these days), the patriarch to an extended musical family that includes previous Pollak guest Sarah Lee Guthrie is introducing a new generation to his own rich legacy, with the renewed energy of the eternal troubador.

Tickets for the November 11 appearance by Arlo Guthrie are priced at $40 and $60 (with a Gold Circle seating option available for $80), and can be reserved through the Monmouth University Performing Arts Box Office at 732-263-6889, or online at www.monmouth.edu/arts. To schedule interviews, please contact Kelly Barratt at 732-263-5114.