Arlo Guthrie brought his unique brand of music and storytelling to the Prescott Park Arts Festival in Portsmouth NH Friday evening and he did not disappoint. Guthrie, the son of folk music legend Woody Guthrie, has been a popular singer and songwriter in his own right for the past forty years.
Guthrie performed in front of a a packed crowd of young and older at the Prescott Park Arts Festival, playing and singing some of his classics (“City of New Orelans” and “Los Angeles”), some of his father’s beloved songs (“This land is My Land”) and a variety of folk and protest era songs that were both entertaining and nostalgic.
Despite pleas from the crowd to hear the song that made him famous, “Alice’s Restaurant”, Guthrie deferred, joking that to do so would be like “Groundhog Day” for him.
Arlo Guthrie still has the goods. His voice is as strong as ever, his wit and wisdom engaging and his guitar and keyboard playing were right on the mark. Guthrie managed to deliver a performance that brought those who are his comtemporaries back to their youth, while drawing in a younger generation of folk music enthusiasts.
The Prescott Park Arts festival in Portsmouth NH
The festival is located on 3.5 acres in beautiful downtown Portsmouth. The venue is compact but accessible to people from New Hampshire and MA. What makes the festival special is that it has “a long and rich history of successfully presenting the arts with no fixed admission price. Because of this policy, many people have their first experience with a live performance at Prescott Park” according to information on the website.
The Prescott Park Arts Festival is celebrating its 37th anniversary of music, art, theater and dance on the banks of the Piscataqua River. Since 1974, it has reached more than 3.5 million people with “more than 10,000 productions offered at no fixed admission”, according to information on its website.
The goal of the Festival is to “provide quality family entertainment, promote artistic excellence in the community and maintain quality presentations of both entertainment and educational events.”
Though the Arlo Guthrie concert was the last in the summer concert series, the Prescott Parks Arts Festival also offers a Fall program.
For more information, visit the Prescott park Arts Festival website
SOUCE: Background information from Prescott Park Arts Festival
