This is the Arlo Guthrie Music Center, an old church which has been gutted and stripped of its previous decorations, but only enough to make the posters of various spiritual holy men hung around the back wall of the main audience area feel sufficiently awkward and creepy. The stage is located in the apse, where a preacher might have performed decades earlier. The maximum capacity of the Arlo Guthrie Theater is probably about eighty, but the tables and chairs allow a maximum of about thirty viewers to dine and enjoy the music.
Though I generally avoid making assumptions, I think it’s safe to assume the average concert-goer’s age is around sixty, putting the other attendees of the Sarah Lee and Johnny folk concert, generously, at three times my age. Tonight, in fact, I’m closer in age to the performers than the crowd, a coincidence that seems to happen all too frequently, and only, at concerts I go to against my will with parents.
I was feeling a bit like a rockstar as the youngest attendee until, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a family approaching a table in the back of the Guthrie Center. This was not a highly unique occurrence: there were many older couples sitting at tables around mine. But there was one unique aspect to the newest arrivals: a fucking five year old. As an aside, he was probably ten, but who gives a shit? This bastard, in one fell swoop, shifted my mood from what I would call “pleasantly surprised” to “bitter” in a matter of seconds.
The decor of the theater includes a series of modern art paintings scattered haphazardly around the church. The paintings themselves are composed of an expected level of abstractionism to be found in modern artworks, as well as the various drips of paint and swaths of gold that give the works a look of shine and unoriginality. Scattered among these newer works are a few leftovers from the church’s early days like a decaying crucifix and a painting in which the subject matter is difficult to determine, but has to have a Jesus in there somewhere. On the back wall of the church, the one facing the stage, where the apse used to be, and architecturally still is, a series of the aforementioned holy men posters hang. The posters, all of spiritual men of presumably Indian descent were most certainly not made in India. On the floor are a set of tables and chairs, the backs of the chairs covered in blue and white striped sheets that give the otherwise spiritual location a distinctly “naval” feeling.
In the background, while we eat the cheese plate, salad, and chili (the three main food items on order), a folk Christmas album is playing. This was a bit disorienting to many sitting in the pre-concert bliss, wondering why on earth Christmas music might be playing in a month that might very well be the “opposite” of Christmas-time: July.
The folk music industry in the Berkshires needs to begin investing in programs to enter emerging markets, or else the passing on of the baby boomers may very well be the end of folk music in this area. Having said that, given that Sarah Lee Guthrie is still playing in front of decently sized crowds years after her father, is perhaps a sign that the folk scene will be alive and well as long as old people are alive and well (And if not well, then at least well enough to stagger into the Arlo Guthrie Theater).
One couple, with the telltale wine cooler that one expects from a Berkshires bourgeois family, sit in the back, dressed in light summer garments. The man, bald but sporting stylish glasses, sits close to his wife, dressed in perhaps the latest styles from the Liz Claiborne outlet mall across the highway, or perhaps the Talbots in Lennox. Other couples, older, and showing small remnants of the hippy generation out of which they never quite escaped entirely like a chubby white-haired man wearing a Chicago shirt over his Dockers khakis.
A man comes on stage to warn the crowd that the concert is about to start, and looks like he too needs to be told that the 70s are over. He crosses the pleasant line between jokingly threatening and actually threatening when he tells us that if we don’t like what’s on show we can talk to him. However, as we are told, there’s no need to be concerned about that, because the content is “Top shelf, if I say so myself, which I do.”
The concert itself is delightful, family friendly, and a good showing of what I imagine modern folk music sounds like (having no knowledge at all what “modern folk” even means). First on the show are Michael and Ruthie, former members of the Mammals. Though certain members of the audience rooted at this, I can’t imagine it’s because The Mammals were a favorite folk act, but more likely because The Mammals were the best folk group to ever derive their name from taxonomy. Michael and Ruthie’s set was short and strong, perhaps the highlight of the whole night coming when they performed the “second best motorcycle song of all time,” which might as well have been the only motorcycle song ever written in my book because it’s certainly not a genre I’m acquainted with deeply. Following Ruthie and Michael were Sarah Lee and Johnny, the evening’s main act and happily following in the trend of going only by first names. Their set was pretty decent as well, and my personal highlight came when Michael and Ruthie’s son grabbed a miniature violin and ran around on stage pretending to play violin accompaniment to one of their songs.
This was the first Arlo Guthrie Center concert I’ve ever been to and, given a strong sense of realism, likely the last I’ll ever get to, but it was a fun time and other people should go if they can (even find it).