THE attention of new generations of music lovers has been drawn to Woody Guthrie with the success of the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, and it is fortuitous timing for Somerset-based singer and songwriter Reg Meuross, whose brilliant new song cycle, Fire and Dust, was ready at much the same time.
The release of the CD is followed by a UK tour that stopped at Bridport Arts Centre in its trio mode, with Marion Fleetwood and Geraint Watkins. During the tour they will sometimes be joined by Phil Beer, and by Simon Edwards and Roy Dodds at some venues. Whatever the lineup and wherever the venue, a ticket will be worth the cost and the journey.
The Cajun feeling of some of this collection, provided by Marion’s fiddle and Geraint’s accordions, adds to the power of this story of America’s dustbowl poet, three of whose songs are included. For anyone who has, or has had, a love affair with the beauty, optimism and variety of the United States, this is a stark reminder of life in Guthrie’s heyday, and of the reality of the situation in the country today. In recent years, the words of a Guthrie song (of which there is no recorded version) tells of his feelings about his racist landlord – one Fred Trump. “The apple doesn’t fall very far,” Reg told the Bridport audience.
A few years ago Pete Townsend of Who fame moved to Dorset. He heard the song – called Deportees or Plane Crash at Los Gatos – telling of the deaths of everyone on a small aircraft taking fruit pickers from California back to Mexico, and, like so many others before him, was incensed by the fact the reports named the four white crew and bunched the other fatalities together as “just deportees” – illegal immigrants at the end of the picking season. Sound familiar?
Pete contacted Reg suggesting that their story might make a good song. Then came COVID, and before long Reg found he was writing a song cycle about Woody Guthrie.The resulting Fire and Dust is the story of the life of a man whose songs are now treasured in the Library of Congress. Fighting for much of his life against the onslaught of the hereditary Huntington’s Chorea, Guthrie criss-crossed the States as a hobo, jumping trains, meeting the dispossessed, the poor, the segregated and the disenfranchised – all on the other side of the Great American Dream. He challenged the Todd-AO, Kodachrome view of America, writing This Land is Your Land to counteract the America the Beautiful image.
He campaigned tirelessly. His efforts at domesticity were scuppered by family tragedy and loss, and he ran back to an itinerant life of a travelling singer.
Reg Meuross’s songs, some adapting, some taking their lead from and some telling the story of this remarkable life, along with the narration, fill in many of the gaps and celebrate the famous moments of Woody Guthrie, the man who inspired Bob Dylan, but thought he was a better singer than a songwriter!
Go and see the tour, at Stroud on 19th June, Wickham on 3rd August, Sidmouth Folk Festival, back in Somerset at the David Hall in September, or at one of the other dates. Buy the album and listen, and listen again. You’ll be glad you did.
GP-W