Dreams of Woody Guthrie

Do you ever feel like you’re doing “It” wrong? But like, you don’t even know what “It” is? Up until that point you’ve always been able to pinpoint your faults with scary accuracy, like a self-deprecating laser beam. This is different though. This is something new, something unidentifiable. Something you can’t change. Haha, yeah, me neither. Cool.

Anyway, I’m a musician. You might have heard of me? Lorna Padilla? I run with a little outfit here in New Haven called “Go Folk Yourself”. We mostly do folk, obviously. I fell in love with it when I was a kid. My grandpa introduced me to this guy called Woody Guthrie. The dude was the definition of punk, and way more influential than The Beatles. You can quote me on that. This guy was chomping Bob Dylan’s flavour before Bob Dylan was even born. I’ve been thinking about Woody a lot lately. More than usual, I mean. You know he was one of the leading voices encouraging U.S intervention during WWII? Before Pearl Harbour too!

I know that it’s a little dramatic, but I often have dreams about terrible things happening to me. In fact, it’s what inspires a lot of my song writing. Living my own personal Pearl Harbour every night. Lately, however, I’ve been having dreams about Woody Guthrie. I’ll be stood up on stage in some dive bar or random dude’s basement, plucking away at my guitar (but with those weird floaty hands you get sometimes in dreams) and there he will be. Just watching me from the crowd. A crookedly placed hat atop his head, clean shaven and rugged-looking all at the same time. Peak Woody.

When I spot him in the dreams, I find it impossible to keep playing. The guitar melts in my hands like mercury and my bandmates disappear. Soon enough it’s just me and Woody alone in a crummy room. He sometimes has his guitar - the black one with the “This Machine Kills Fascists” sticker near the fingerboard. Every time I have one of these dreams, he opens his mouth to speak, and every time I reach that point, I wake up to his face plastered on my wall. A big glossy poster of Woody right opposite my bed (one of three in my entire house).

So today I wake up. I go to work at the second-hand DVD store that only ever seems to have copies of Moulin Rouge and Gremlins 2: The New Batch. When the workday is done, I go to Jared’s house (Jared is the drummer and the only one of us with a garage) for band practice. Lacey is our backing vocalist/washboard player and she does NOT like Woody Guthrie. Says he sounds like “some boomer radio crap”. That’s why we tell her to come along half an hour later than I do, so Jared and I can play some Woody before she comes along and starts bugging us to try one of the songs she wrote. We learned our lesson after her magnum opus, “Demons Ate My Congressman”.

I get to Jared’s, and he’s up on a stool in the middle of the garage, struggling to change a lightbulb on his own. There’s a joke in here somewhere but I can’t think of it.

‘Hey,’ I say, ‘Did you make sure to turn the light switch off before you got up there?’

‘Did I wha-- AHHH G-G-G-G!’ Jared fakes being electrocuted and falls off the stool in the process. He’s a dumbass.

‘You’re a dumbass.’ I say. I look around the garage. It looks kind of pathetic with the light off. All shadows and dusty corners. The drum set and amp pushed off to one side look like they haven’t been used in years and all the life has left them, even though we only played yesterday.

One excruciatingly long lightbulb-change later (wrong bulb) and we’re ready to play. We only have about ten minutes before Lacey shows up with another ill conceived song about local politics and how it’s kind of like some bible story she heard last Sunday. She’s not religious, but her parents drag her to church every Sunday which is a huge bummer. For her, not me. Jared and I decide to waste precious minutes arguing over which song to play.

‘Tear the Fascists Down!’ I demand.

‘Noooo, nothing from the WW2 years, I want to hear some Dust Bowl Ballads.’

‘Well I’m the one with the guitar, that kind of puts me in charge.’ I take my guitar out of its case. Black, with a “This Machine Kills Fascists” sticker near the neck. Not quite an exact replica of Woody’s but pretty close.

‘Okay, fine, but can I suggest: This Land is Your Land?’

‘Hm. Alright. But only because you can’t accompany Tear the Fascists Down to save your life.’

‘Screw you!’

While we play I imagine the garage door rising up slowly, the way it does. First we would see some loafers, shining black leather tapping impatiently on the ground. Ratty slacks and a thick plaid shirt dwarfing the frame of this folk legend who came to see us. Then I panic. Start to worry about my guitar melting away. I snap out of my fantasy in time to nail the solo, then I’m snapped out of the song by a loud grinding noise. The door is opening.

A familiar face crawls out from under the thin metal door, not bothering to wait for it to raise fully.

‘Hey guys!’ Lacey says. She’s chipper. That’s the word I would use, chipper. Not a very folk punk attitude if you ask me, but what do I know? I’m just the expert. Woody Guthrie was always focused, always thinking about somebody less fortunate than himself. I didn’t get that impression from Lacey. ‘I have got something really special for y’all today! Feast your eyes on this.’ She pulls out a sparkly green notebook and opens it to about the middle. I dread to think what fills the rest of the pages.

Jared reads through it first, his face remaining stoic and impossible to glean any insight from. This frustrates both Lacey and myself. She’s watching him and biting at the skin around her middle fingernail.

‘I like it. Doesn’t seem like your kind of thing though.’ Jared seems genuine. Usually when he lies about liking one of her songs, I can tell. He passes the book to me, and I immediately feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. “DREAMS OF WOODY GUTHRIE - By Lacey O’Hara”. Unlike Jared I don’t hide how I’m feeling as I read. It’s like going through the five stages of grief. She wrote a song about my idol, the man I’ve been obsessed with since I was old enough to appreciate music, and practically reached into my dreams to pluck out some of this… this poetry. And it is really, really good.

‘So? What do you think?’ Lacey asks, getting ready for a tongue-lashing.

‘I… why did you write this?’ I can feel tears welling as I speak.

‘What do you mean? You guys like him so much I thought I’d try and write something just for you. God knows you two put up with enough of my bull.’

‘That’s real nice of you Lacey, thanks.’ Jared says. I shoot daggers at him, but they’re probably undercut by the wetness of my eyes. He doesn’t care. Gets up and hugs Lacey like a chump. I don’t know why I’m so angry at her, but I am. It’s all I can feel right now.

‘Yeah, thanks. I just think… no, nevermind.’ I say.

‘What? What is it?’ Lacey asks, worry creasing her forehead.

‘I was just going to suggest a few things. Do you mind if I take this home, make some edits?’

‘Um, sure, you’re the expert on Willy Guthrie.’

‘Woody.’

‘Don’t you want to play it first, though? See how it feels?’

‘No, I’d rather not play it without the edits. No offence, Lacey, I just think it could be better.’

‘Dude.’ Jared whispers, nudging me with his elbow.

‘Tell you what, you guys practice Demons Ate My Congressman, I’ll be back in a minute.’ I tear the page from the notebook and stuff it in my backpack.

‘Careful!’ Lacey says as I thrust the notebook into her hands. I leave, unsure of where to go. Maybe I should just burn the damn thing, tell Lacey it got lost, that I’ll look for it some other time? She wouldn’t believe that. Besides, what’s stopping her from just writing it again? She could. She could when I couldn’t.

   I wonder what Willy-- I mean Woody would do. Lacey’s idiot stink is rubbing off on me. Woody would probably say something wise about the establishment and how much it sucks. Maybe write a song about how the Catholic Church is responsible for everything wrong in America. What’s the point? I’ve got nothing to say that Woody or Lacey couldn’t say a thousand times better.

When I get home I head straight to my room, ignoring my abuelita when she asks about my day. The door slams behind me and I don’t know what to do. I want to cry, scream, tear this paper into a million tiny pieces. Instead, I set it down on my desk and pick up a pen to make my “improvements”. Half an hour later I give up, having only doodled a cowboy hat in the margins. I fall asleep pretty soon after that.

I dream of Woody again but it’s all off. Wrong. I’m playing in a crappy bar. It’s familiar, Ritchie’s or Ricky’s or something. The words I’m singing aren’t mine. They belong to Lacey. Woody is there in the crowd, same as always, but he’s not looking at me. He stares at Lacey with a look in his eye, different from the look I usually get. It’s something like admiration. Something like pride.