These are all songs written with what I call "Woody on the Brain." Songs like The Day Woody Guthrie was Born and The Day Woody Guthrie Died, written 10 days apart, are my attempt at keeping what Woody called the "hoping machine" alive. And always using those 2 songs as bookends, I began writing more. I wrote Today I Took My Boy to Ludlow....and went backwards in my catalog and pulled out 1913 Massacre pt II, Both songs are a form of songwriting hero worship to be sure....but also a way of remembering....which is easy.....and not forgetting (an entirely different thing)...which is hard. In the same vein, my song The Indianapolis is indirectly inspired by Woody's The Sinking of the Reuben James. This was something I did not realize until it was written, which shows you how much I know...and how prevalent Woody is in what I do.

In truth, I never let the poor man alone here. I questioned him in the grave with Woody Guthrie Did You Ever Cry?, whined to him about being pissed off at his frequently bewildering and seemingly bewildered disciple in I Got a Bad Feeling 'bout Dylan, and gleefully put him in harms way with Woody Guthrie in Baghdad (if only to see the faces of the brass), laughing to myself at the way Woody would fill out forms that asked for his religion. He'd pencil in "All".

I tried to take on the disease that killed him in Talkin' Woody Guthrie Huntington's Chorea Blues, aware the entire time that the disease still kills, and that we still don't know how to stop it...but wanting to get my licks in anyway. Woody raged against the dying of the light for sure, but he was forced to do so under different circumstances. He never took the easy way out, and in dying he wasn't allowed to.

And finally, in The Regret of Woody Guthrie, I took the liberty of speaking for him, which is obviously not a good idea but I did it anyway...so there (Woody and I have at least built in stubbornness in common). Woody was no saint. And if there's a heaven...while I'm sure Woody is driving St Peter nuts making up endless verses about George W Bush...at the same time maybe he's feeling a bit uncomfortable with the domesticity of it all.

His family always had to share him, and while in a selfish way that's good for us, I can't imagine they were happy about it.