Woody Guthrie Center

07/11/2025

We'll see you in Okemah today and tomorrow. The Woody Guthrie Center is hosting three events at the 2025 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival:
– "All You Can Write Is What You See" – 7/11 and 7/12
– Bringing It All Back Home: A Journey to “A Complete Unknown” – WoodyFest - 7/12
– "Woody Guthrie’s Wardy Forty" with Phil Buehler – 7/12

Learn more about these events and more at woodyguthriecenter.org/events.

07/10/2025

Join us in wishing Mavis Staples a happy birthday today. Mavis, renowned for her powerful voice and contributions to the civil rights movement through music, was the second recipient of the annual Woody Guthrie Prize, presented to her in 2015.

07/10/2025

The 28th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival kicked off yesterday evening and continues throughout the weekend in Okemah, OK. While you're there, don't forget to visit the Woody Guthrie Center's booth at the festival and say hello to our team.

Learn more and get tickets to WoodyFest at woodyfest.com.

Image courtesy of Woodyfest

07/10/2025

“Marjorie gave birth this morning at 10:10, July the Tenth, to a big seven pound baby boy over in the third ward of the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital where Classon crosses Prospect Avenue.” – Woody in a letter to Alan Lomax

Join us today in wishing Woody's son, Arlo Guthrie, a happy 78th birthday. Here's Arlo performing one of his dad's songs, "Pretty Boy Floyd," at Farm Aid in 1986.

Arlo Guthrie performs "Pretty Boy Floyd" live at the Farm Aid concert in Austin, Texas on July 4, 1986. Farm Aid was started by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and...

07/09/2025

In this clip, Sam Flowers, Senior Manager of Guest Services, shares the story of a banjo played by folk legend Pete Seeger. In "A Complete Unknown," Edward Norton brings Seeger to life as he champions folk music, faces contempt of Congress and breaks into “This Land Is Your Land” in court.

See the banjo and more on a guided tour of the current exhibition, "Stepping Into the Unknown: Artifacts from the film 'A Complete Unknown,'"at the Woody Guthrie Center and Bob Dylan Center every Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. through Aug. 17. Free with a dual-center ticket.

07/08/2025

"I love most, I guess, and confess to find my own ways in my own balladsongs to speak up, to speak out what's rambling around in my own mind. I love to protest about things that I see need protesting against, like all the sorry sad situations I can plainly see, like mobbing, and lynching, and bombing, and burning and killing, all of which are caused when you let yourself get afraid of any shape, any form, any flavor, any kind of racial hatred. I never would have craved like I did to write so many balladsongs, anyhow, if I'd not been able to tell you what I think is wrong with this world we're living in." – Woody

07/07/2025

"I've lived in these duststorms just about all my life. (I mean, I tried to live). I met millions of good folks trying to hang on and to stay alive with the dust cutting down every hope. I am made out of this dust and out of this fast wind and I know that I'm going to win out on top of both of them if only my government and my office holder will help me. I wrote up these eight songs here to try to show you how it is to live under the wild and windy actions of the great duststorms that ride in and out and up and down." – Woody Guthrie, in the liner notes of the 1965 Folkways Records reissue of "Dust Bowl Ballads"

Woody Guthrie’s first album, "Dust Bowl Ballads," was released in July 1940. This collection vividly depicts the hardships of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era, with Guthrie’s songs capturing both the despair and resilience of American families forced from their homes by relentless drought and bank foreclosures.

07/06/2025

"Marriage is something bigger and greater than you or me, and it is as durable as the sky which always remains clear and endless in spite of the clouds or planets that whirl and spin there." – Woody

07/05/2025

On this day in 1944, the SS Sea Porpoise, having just transported American troops to Normandy, was torpedoed – with Woody Guthrie on board. The ship was towed back to England for repairs. Guthrie, along with fellow folk singer Cisco Houston, disembarked and traveled by train from Southampton to Waterloo Station, as detailed in Jim Longhi's out-of-print book, "Woody, Cisco and Me: With Woody Guthrie in the Merchant Marine."

While in London, Woody visited the BBC offices and secured a spot on BBC Children's Hour, where he performed "Wabash Cannonball" and "900 Miles" just a few days after the torpedo attack. Following his brief stay in London, Guthrie took a train to Glasgow to continue his journey home.

Listen to the BBC Radio broadcast: youtube.com/watch?v=86e90MwKRAQ

This rare segment of BBC Radio's Children's Hour features a brief interview with folk singer Woody Guthrie. He recorded "The Wabash Cannonball" and "900 Mile...

07/04/2025

"Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me." – Woody

07/03/2025

to when the mural of Woody Guthrie went up on the outside of the center back in April 2013. It took Aaron Whisner from Clean Hands three days to hand paint it and it's been a staple of the Tulsa Arts District for over 12 years now.

07/02/2025

"The ones that make the big money don’t do much work, and some of them don’t do any at all. They are the ones that get to be millionaires, and multi-millionaires, and billionaires. The people, like you and me, have always been poor and always had very little, and have lived a life of hard times and tough spots." – Woody