If you grew up next to an open stretch of field, chances are there’s a part of your heart that automatically gets Woody Guthrie’s music. When I put on a song like “Hard Travelin’,” for instance, and hear the warm finger-pickin’ style Guthrie learned from Lead Belly, the nasally and laid-back talk-singing style he learned from the old men playing folk songs on his porch in Oklahoma, the workmanlike poetry of phrases like “Hammer flyin’, air-hose suckin’, six foot of mud and I shore been a muckin’,” all the big box stores and glass buildings start to disappear, the creek runs clear, my upper lip stiffens, my eyes squint, my fingers drum the steering wheel of the Chevy truck I don’t have, and I slip back into a place and time I never lived in, but one that feels like home…
