good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with the legendary folk artist, the son of woody guthrie. he reflects on 50 years of alice's restaurant and current running down the road tour. we're glad you could join us and a gorveconversation with arlo ge in just a moment.

i'm pleased to welcome arlo guj troy this program. he's been a leading voice in america. more than 50 years since his album, alice's restaurant. famous of woody guthrie. he is the in the midst of running down the road tour. we're delighted he took time off from the tour to stop by the studio. it's an honor, sir to you have on this great program. >> thank you. >> thank you. let me start with this. i was just tickled when i came across this. so his father, woody, wrote a song called old man trump.

yes. that trump. about his racist landlord fred trump who happened to be, as you know, donald's father. one of the lines in the song, and i quote, "i suppose that old man trump knows just how much racial hate he stirred up in that blood pot of human hearts. we draw that color line here at his beach haven family project." so your father lived in a trump building. >> me, too. that's why i brew up. >> that's where you grew up. >> and your father had something to say about old man trump. >> yes, did he. >> what do you make of that coincidence all these years later? >> well, you know, i have mixed feelings about it. first of all, i gave a lot of stuff that says oh, arlo guthrie, he's just like his dad. you know? and so i understand what that is like to have somebody place you in a guilt by association.

and so when think sister, nora, found these lyrics, she asked me if i wanted to do something. i said, no. there's enough to dislike about the president without having to go back to dad. >> right. >> but somebody put this to music. >> my son-in-law did, johnny. he did a really good customer it and others have done that as well. i'm happy they did it. it's just not my thing. >> so since you went there, how have you managed all these years being the son of woody guthrie? finding your own artistic path? >> you know what? i came to the conclusion at some point when i was very young that i was my own person. i just knew that somehow. and maybe it's because there were so many people that used to come to our house when i was a

little kid. and they would dress like my dad. they would talk like my dad. they would write songs like my dad. they would do all of these things. but they weren't him. at some point i realized even though you may admire somebody and draw admiration from them, you can't be them. it's no less true for me than anybody else. i always thought the kind of things we're doing is the kind of things my dad dreamed of. you know, i have taken my family all -- my wife and kids and all that out on the road. we have done tours together and the grandkids. that was the dream my mom and dad had. they never got to do it. i get to do stuff they dreamed about. and it's not the same as pretending to be him. but you can't run away from it. >> yeah. but in the midst of all that, arlo, how did you find your own

voice? >> mostly by accident. i didn't want to be a singer, songwriter, entertainer. i wanted to be a forest ranger. i didn't like being around large crowds of people. i thought forestry. i'll sit on a mountain in montana and wait for a fire for a couple years and then every night i wanted to go -- in my dreams, i would sit on the back porch and play muse wick friends. i actually went to school in billings to do just that. and it just didn't work out. >> you got pulled in anyway. >> so i didn't mean to be me. but at some point i realized that i was dealing with something that was bigger than me. >> when did you stop resist the call, the vocation? >> i left montana in the fall of

1965. i went to visit some friends that had an old church. i got involved taking out their garbage. and the tale -- that was '65. the tale i told about it sort of took a year to put together. so alice's restaurant took about a year. and then i performed it in the summer of 1967 at the newport folk festival. and i remember -- i wasn't scheduled to play there. i twlenlt with went there with e all the other people. but then at some point they said okay, we're going to have to, you know, put you on the main stage. you got to sing that song, man. i said really? they said, yeah. so i remember pete seager saying he may not able to handle this, you know, crowd out there. it's like, you know, thousands

and thousands of people. and so they said at the endst song, let's just -- he has a little part that goes if one person does it if, two people do it, if 50 people do it, so let's just go out and send out some friends and so the end of that thing, everybody who had performed at that festival is out there singing this song with me. i got back from that and it was like a switch had gone off. it was like. the old days are over. my dreams are shot. we're doing something else now. >> and bam, there you have it. 50 years later. alice's restaurant had just been rereleased. it's amazing how the stories come to be. 50 years since did you that. >> i can't even remember -- the only thing i remember about the original was that we recorded it in a studio sort of like this, you know. but with a live audience. so there's no take two. there's no let's do it again. there's no let's fix that.

and everybody that had been invited to that studio recording had already heard the song. this is supposed to be a funny song. they already heard it 100 times. so there was nothing funny about it to them. and every time i hear that original record, i hear, you know, that audience going -- you know? it drives me crazy. >> yeah. and i said, you couldn't stop it. was it victor hugo who said there is nothing so powerful as an idea who's time has come. you had to own it, man. >> i remember dealing with it and my mom telling me, you know, if you really want to do this, you better learn to do something else. because the audience is fickle. they can like you one day and not like you the next day. and i remember thinking about that. i said, nope. my mom is wrong. ifif i know how to do something else and the times get bad, i'll do something else.

and so i refused to do anything else. i refused to learn anything else. so that was it. >> you didn't have no fallback. >> and whether the times got bad, and they would -- and they do, you know, from time to time. there was nothing else to do. >> yeah. >> and i just kept doing it. so here we are. >> kind of like me. i don't got but one talent. and that is questionable on some nights. >> you got a good one. >> i appreciate it. tell me about your friendship with pete seager. you mentioned him early in this conversation. so it's not enough that your daddy is woody guthrie. then you're hanging out and become best friends with pete seager year after year after year. >> i remember the first time i went to visit pete and his wife toshie, i was five or six years old. and we went out. we were living in queens at that time in new york. and we went out to their place. pete had built a log cabin on a high bluff over the hudson river. and i just said, whoa, this is like davey crockett stuff or something. you know? and so we got there. i was really excited.

i remember my mom saying go play with the other kids. i was hanging out with his kids like any familiar lishgs you know? but over the years -- and i thinking maybe in the mid 60s to the late 60s that time. there were so many people out on the streets. so many things going on. and the war and change the lafrpg ray, all th lingerie and whatever it was and pete was always there. you could hear that banjo of his from blocks away. i remember walking through washington, d.c., and i could hear his banjo. and him, you know, singing. and there's no other instrument like that. and so i met up with him at all of these different things. and then in the late 60s, we started doing these annual shows together at carnegie hall in new york around thanksgiving. we did that. the last one we did together was

a few months before he passed away. he was 94. he couldn't even walk out on the stage. he had these two canes and he was getting out there. and that audience wouldn't let him do anything. r nev i never heard an audience clap for ten minutes. we couldn't get the show going. >> what did you see, what did you snens thense in that moment pete seeinger? >> pete is right. there is a power in music that most people underestimate. and you wouldn't know it really by what you like. it's what you don't like that shows you how powerful it is. and the old soviet union, there was pieces by beethoven that were banned. why is that? there's no words in there. but there's a spirit in there. that comes out. unless you're the kind of person who says i don't want to hear

that or that is dangerous, you know, when you feel -- when you're threatened by something, that is how you know the power of it. not when you're just sitting back having a cocktail on a beach somewhere and music playing in the background. that won't get your attention. but when something threatens you, you know it's what it is. and it occurred to me that pete always knew that. he always knew that there was a power in the songs. there was a spirit in people singing together. and he proved itver and over again. and i think that audience that night at carnegie and all of the shows he's done throughout his life helped build that conviction in him so that it was even more powerful because not only did he believe it, he could actually see it. >> does folk music, we are once again in a time of war, here just days ago the president dropping bombs on syria. does folk music, does music at large still have that kind of

persuasive, poignant power in it? >> it depends on how you identify folk music. for me, folk music is the original social media. that's the way people used to find out what was going on. >> i take it. >> and in the old days, and i'm not -- i mean i'm going to be 70 this year. but whether i was a kid, i remember hearing the recordings of people like my dad and others, buddies of his, who had come from these rural areas where folk music was only news they had. and they would write songs. and they might be faking fun of the town over the hill saying we're not dumb like those guys, you know? and you still see some of that in vestages of, like sports teams or something like that. you know, where you build yourself up by putting somebody else down. that happened throughout the history of music. it was local. then in the p 30s we started

building up a national music scene. and recordings of those kind of songs couldn't be played. they would make somebody angry in the next town. you had to plate song that's didn't offend anybody. and so the songs got dumber and dumber as it were. and it's only recently because of the internet and things like that that you can hear those kind of songs. so you wouldn't necessarily associate it with the guy like me and a guitar. they may be doing their own music. they're talking about what's going on and what's happening. you don't associate that with folk music. but i would. >> but back in the day, people at this level, not the kids on the internet, people at this level were speaking that truth to power. at this level they would do it. do you see artists in this

moment at this level who are doing that? of course. >> i mean, they're always there. >> right. >> but they're not always pob lar. >> right. >> you know, there was a sort of glitch in the system that happened in the -- during the '60s, like a lot of other things. music is only one part of it. not only do d. they speak truth to power, they also talked to each other. that was the thing. we were talking to other people. it wasn't just the music in those days. the guys that did the fashion. the guys that did theater, the guys that did art, the guys that did all -- we all knew each other. we were all hanging out with each other. and now it's all sort of target marketed so that, you know, there's music for if you you're 15 or 16. you got your own channel, man. you got your own radio and tv. you got your own stores to go.

it will get back there. that's a normal human kind of instinct draw that draws you into people who maybe doing a whole different world of art or different world and what you're wearing or how you look or what you speak like or what language you are talking. those people find their way together. just takes a little while. >> what do you appreciate most about growing up in the era that you grew up? we talked about the household you grew up, the people you got to know. what do you most appreciate about growing up in the era that you grew up in? >> what i was just talking about. there was this worldwide event that took place in the early '60s. i don't know what it was, by the way. and everybody who says they know what it was, they're making it up. it didn't come from the top

down. it came from the bottom up. and i remember. i remember the newspapers and the tvs and the radios all trying to identify, especially the politicians, who are these people? it was a groundswell. and so they made up leaders. and we all bought it. that one there. that's the leader. you know? well, when you have leaders, you can -- and everybody accept that's, then it's easy to change what's going on. but we didn't have leaders. nobody could change anything. even at the women's march, they had all the speakers and talkers and organizers. most of the people in that crowd didn't know who they were. never heard of them before. but those are the people, the media goes to and says that's a leader. it's their fault there are all these women out there on the streets. and i think that was the one

thing i felt personally was the most interesting thing. it couldn't be identified. it was just a change in consciousness. something happened. something shifted. it changed everybody. it didn't even change everybody, by the way. it just changed -- it didn't even change most people. it changed critical mass. >> just enough. >> yes. just enough. >> and that's when i'm looking for today. i see the same thing happening right now. there is not a majority. there is not most. there is enough. and if everybody who feels that enoughness is willing to get out there and say me too, i'm in this, it will change faster than anybody could imagine. >> is there a lesson or lessons for that group of enough in this moment to take from the group of enough in your era? are the lessons that you learned? >> i don't think there is any lessons can you learn. >> okay. >> everybody is going to reinvent the wheel no matter

what you say. no matter what i say. >> okay. >> i remember i was walking down the street with pete when he was 92, 93. that was during the occupied thing in new york. >> yeah. >> and pete wanted to go. >> yeah. >> it was after a show that we had just done together. i'm looking at him like, pete, are you kidding me? now is the time to have a beer. he's like, no, we're going to meet the kids. i'm like okay. whatever pete wants. so i'm following him down the street. he's got these two metal canes. and he's walking 30 blocks. it's like in november. it's cold. he's got this funny little hat on. we were meeting them in the middle like columbus circle. there were a bunch of young kids coming up town and we were going downtown. we met columbus circle. nobody knew who he was.

nobody recognized him. nobody had learned anything from him. they were singing songs that they knew like snip its of, a couple of words. then they move on to the next song. nobody knew enough to keep the same song going. but there is pete. and he's got that banjo. and he starts playing. all his young people that never heard of him start looking like who's that guy? and there was something magnetic. he drew them in. he had been doing this a long time. he started giving them the words. so that they could follow along. and all of a sudden, there is a spirit thing going on. it's a heart thing. you feel that. oh, man. i'm here and something is happening. >> oh, yeah. >> that changes you. it changes the chemistry in your brain. it changes your heart. it changes everything. i was not even concerned after that whether this particular movement, you want to call it, was going to succeed or not. that wasn't the point of it.

the point was to change everybody who was there. so they would have the initial experience. it took us years when in the early 60s time after time, thick after thing, place after place to get this that spirit organized to where you knew how you fit in. you knew that you counted. that took a long time. it already started. not with just those folks but with different people in different places. if i would have imagined at some point that all i am is toast and done when i'm out of here, why bother? but there is something else going on. and i'm not a thee loathian. i don't know what it s i don't even care. it's not my interest. my sense is just to acknowledge it. if it comes to you to figure

out, great. if it doesn't, you don't belong there anyhow. so there are a lot of people trying to get something. there are a lot of people trying to understand. a lot of people trying to believe or trying to have faith or trying to -- you don't need to try anything. it's all there. all you have to do is not be closed to it if it sure ever come upon you like those moments that we were just talking about with pete. it comes upon. it finds its way into your life somehow, through somebody, circumstances you couldn't predict. it comes. and that's all you need to know. >> and then sail your vessel. >> that's it. >> it's been 50 years since alice's restaurant was first performed. and that's at newport the folk festival. and there is a special version of it out now on the 50th anniversary of the great classic. you would be kind enough, sir, to play us out with something? i'm going to say good night to the audience. you do your thing. that's our show tonight.

thanks for watching much as always, keep the faith. and here is my man, arlo guthrie. ♪ times like these when night surrounds me ♪ ♪ and i'm weary and my heart is worn ♪ ♪ and the songs they're singing don't mean nothing ♪ ♪ cheap refrains play on and on the storm is here ♪ ♪ the lightning flashes between commercials they're taking names ♪ ♪ singers around where the cash is ♪ ♪ just another length in slavery's chains ♪ ♪ you see the storm clouds rise above me ♪ ♪ the skies are dark and the night is down ♪

♪ i walk alone along this highway ♪ ♪ where strangers gather one by one ♪ ♪ when leader's prophet and deep division ♪ ♪ when the tears of friends were enfound ♪ ♪ timed like these it's good to remember ♪ ♪ these times will go and times to come ♪ ♪ i see the storm clouds rise above me ♪ ♪ the skies are dark and the night is tough ♪ ♪ i walk alone along this highway ♪ ♪ where friends will gather one by one ♪ ♪ i know the storm will

soon be over ♪ ♪ the howling winds will cease to be ♪ ♪ i walk with friends from every nation ♪ ♪ on freedom's highway in times like these ♪ ♪ join me next time for a conversation with killer mike. that's next time. we'll see you then.

good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a question with the rapper and activist joins us to talk about his long awaited debut album. the product is confrontational, uplifting and steeped in a personal story that envelopes his hometown of chicago. we're glad you joined us. vig mensa coming up in just a moment.