Guthrie serves up peace at MCA

ORONO – Every year on Thanksgiving, while driving from Maine to my grandparents’ house in Massachusetts, my family would listen to “Alice’s Restaurant” on the radio. We would usually be in Boston by the time the song finished – over the (Charles) river, but not yet through the woods.

As a girl, I thought Arlo Guthrie was singing about Alice, a turkey dinner, and a heap of garbage in a VW microbus. The lyrics, I’d later learn, had as much to do with Alice as “Mr. Tambourine Man” had to do with a tambourine.

On Friday night, as part of the “Alice’s Restaurant Tour,” Guthrie sang both his epic and the Dylan classic – and a whole lot more – to a full house at the Maine Center for the Arts. After an energetic opener, The Mammals (a favorite at Brooklin’s Flye Point Festival), Guthrie took the stage for nearly two hours of song, comedy and storytelling.

Wearing jeans and a black shirt and with his wavy mane of silver hair flowing over his shoulders, Guthrie serenaded the audience of “peace and love types” in a strong, clear voice. Many were old enough to have lived through the Vietnam protests, Woodstock and the draft. But the younger crowd, including the towheaded boy fighting sleep beside me, knew only their parents’ stories.

Guthrie had plenty of stories to tell, and in true “Alice’s Restaurant” fashion took a roundabout – and side-splittingly funny – route to the moral. Halfway through his father Woody’s timeless tune “This Land is Your Land,” he stopped mid-verse to share the biblical tale of Joseph, his wild coat, his envious brothers, their plot against him and the anonymous man in the field who told Joseph which way they went, setting off a whole chain of events. The point? One person can make a difference – even in times of war and unrest.

This land was made for you and me, after all.

“I like songs that tell little stories, or big stories, as the case may be,” he told the cheering crowd, as he began strumming the tune to “Alice’s Restaurant.” “It sounds like a few of you have heard this before.”

“Of course,” answered the little boy next to me. He knew all the words, like I did when I was his age. Here’s to hoping he’ll never sit on the Group W bench.

Though Guthrie wrote the lyrics 40 Thanksgivings ago, the song remains the same. So does the message.

“If you want to end war,” Guthrie said, “you’ve gotta sing loud so people can hear you.”

Young and old, hands clapping, in one voice, the crowd sang loud and clear, like peace was on the menu.

“You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant. Excepting Alice.”