The pairing was, in fact, a natural fit: like Guthrie, McCoury is an unwitting classicist–he plays the old-timey songs (and covers some new-timey ones) in the old-fashioned way. “If I send you some lyrics,” Nora asked McCoury, “do you think you can put them to music?” “This Land Is Your Land,” for instance, was based on an old Baptist hymn sung by the Carter Family. In most cases, Woody hadn’t written any music at all but attached his new lyrics to traditional country melodies. Nora told him that Woody had written thousands of songs but the music to many of them had been lost. “I think,” she told Del, “if my dad had a band, it would sound like you.” McCoury had heard the name Woody Guthrie–had even sung some of his songs, like “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya”–but didn’t know all that much about the man. He also sings in a high-nasal country twang, and has been playing in a band with his two sons Ronnie and Robert for 30 years.Ī few years ago, the McCoury band played the Newport Folk Festival, and after its set, Del was approached by a woman with wild gray hair who introduced herself as Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter. McCoury, who is 77, learned his music, those same traditional church and folk songs, from his mother too–in York County, Pennsylvania, at the northern tip of Appalachia.
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