Sandman's Journal

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

WOODY GUTHRIE 100TH BIRTHDAY BASH AT UNION HALL

Music by Fast Rattler, Dear Sister Killdeer, Chris Sand & the Big MT, Jennifer Combe.  Missoula's Bare Bait Dance Company to Perform.  More.

Artwork by Hana!

MISSOULA, MT, 7/13/2012 - Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday party will be held at Union Hall (208 E. Main), above Union Club on July 13th.  Portland's Fast Rattler, hot off of a West Coast tour, will join the ruckus.  So will locals Chris Sand & the Big MT, Dear Sister Killdeer, and Jennifer Combe who will lead the young-at-heart through a handful of children's sing-a-longs.  Bare Bait Dance Company will dance.  Actor Jeff Medley will recite one or two of Woody's writings to explore Guthrie's poetic core.  Show begins at 8pm.  Cost: $5-$15 sliding scale.

Show organizer, Chris Sand, is thrilled to announce that the late Utah Phillips' son's band, Fast Rattler, will headline.  "I met Brendan Phillips around 9/11," Sand says, "and then lost track of him.  I didn't realize he'd been traveling and performing with his father and learning his dad's songs.  It's fitting," Sand continues, "that two of America's most influential folk singers and champions of social justice, Woody and Utah, will both have a chance to be remembered and honored at a show like this at Union Hall."  To be clear, though, Fast Rattler is no mere Utah Phillips cover band.  This dynamic 4-piece string band performs mostly originals and beloved folk-classics. 

Bare Bait Dance Company is Missoula's newest professional dance company and is choreographed by Joy French. French's latest modern dance project, "Views from Grandmother's Porch," examines the grittiness of rural life from a tapestry of angles.  Her Depression-era-inspired pieces synchronize auspiciously well with both Woody Guthrie's stark, populist lyricism and the era that he lived in and wrote so much about.

Chris Sand & the Big MT is a three-piece country-folk band.  An award-winning feature-length documentary about Sand, Roll Out, Cowboy (directed by Elizabeth Lawrence), was shown at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in both 2011 and 2012.  The Woody Guthrie birthday celebration will also serve as Sand's official Montana DVD release party of Roll Out, Cowboy (www.rolloutcowboy.com).

Woody Guthrie is the writer of over 1000 songs ("This Land is Your Land," "Pastures of Plenty," "Hard Travelin'," etc.). Author. Artist. Agitator. Soldier. Sign Painter. Socialist. Sex Fiend. Patriot. Prophet. Punk. Hobo. Dad. His influence on U.S. Popular culture is immense.  This unique--and uniquely Missoula--event may become an annual one.

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