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Jay Farrar and Jim James Discover Woody Guthrie's California in New Album
Jay Farrar and Jim James Discover Woody Guthrie's California in New Album
Musicians team up for 'New Multitudes' based on the legend's unpublished lyrics
Over the course of dozens of hours spent combing through more than 3,000 Woody Guthrie lyrics collected in upstate New York, the thing that Jay Farrar kept discovering was California.
"I found myself not aware of the California connection at the time I was going through and looking at those lyrics," Farrar said of his exploration of the Guthrie archives that resulted in New Multitudes, his new album with My Morning Jacket's Jim James. "I guess that was an especially creative time for him, and I was drawn to the things he was thinking about at that time."
Both songwriters said inspiration came easily during their separate trips to look through the collection of nearly every notebook, sketch pad and scrawl-covered napkin Guthrie produced during his 55 years that made him one of America's most legendary folk singers.
Known famously for his workers' rights and protest songs, the California-specific material on New Multitudes presents a more fragile, lonely side of Guthrie, who married and divorced his third wife and saw his health falter during his California stints in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/jay-farrar-and-jim-james-discover-woody-guthries-california-in-new-album-20120216