As you may already know, the anniversary of Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday is being celebrated far and wide within music communities and by music lovers everywhere—via festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival and projects like the very cool Bound for Glory Woody Guthrie Centennial Project to name just a few.

Within the shared psyche of Sisters Dissonance are far away memories of being introduced to Woody Guthrie’s music for the first time when, as elementary school kids we both shared a teacher (passing through his class in different years) who’s mission was to indoctrinate every single sixth grader in the school into the world of folk music. More often than not we’d take a break from the books and he would play on his acoustic as we would sing along to the songs he taught us, including a canon of Guthrie’s songs. At the time he was pegged as being too eccentric (read “weird” in the words of 11 year olds), but Ady and I both know looking back with adult eyes, that that the true story is that he was a good-hearted, intelligent soul who’s guidance we were lucky enough to be under at that impressionable age. The musical knowledge, appreciation and philosophy planted by Mr. P still remains for both of us. I think he’d be proud to know that, too.

Flash forward to present day when we got to see one of our absolute favorites, The Felice Brothers, play a rather infectious version of Guthrie’s “Cumberland Gap” at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster on April 27, which ended with Ian Felice dedicating the song to him. I captured the performance, so here on record is yet another sweet little nod to Mr. Guthrie.