Musician Sarah Lee Guthrie is on a new path and loving it

Sarah Lee Guthrie. // Courtesy photo

Along with her pedigree as the daughter of Arlo Guthrie and granddaughter of Woody Guthrie, musician Sarah Lee Guthrie has a long career of her own, including her acclaimed work with fellow musician and former partner Johnny Irion and  a long list of solo work. She brings the Sarah Lee Guthrie Trio to the Green Guitar Folk House listening room in Lenexa this Saturday, October 21, and we took the opportunity to hop on the phone with Guthrie to discuss what it’s like to be performing on her own after so many years of collaborative work with both her father and Irion, and how that’s affected what she does.

“It’s funny, I was actually just listening to an old recording that my dad and I had done of ‘Shady Grove,’” replies Guthrie. “We went into the loft in Chicago, and Jeff Tweedy recorded me and my dad doing five songs that we, and my brother, had been on the road performing. We just had the day off, and we’re like, ‘Oh, we’ll just go in and hang out and do these couple of things,’ and I miss it.”

It was great, Guthrie continues, to have had so many years on the road with her dad and brother and occasionally Irion and her kids—“the whole gang,” as she puts it—but things have changed quite a bit. She says that she’s grateful for those couple of decades that she was able to learn and grow, both as a part of her father’s show as well as her musical partnership with Irion.

“I think one of the best parts about our relationship was singing together and performing together,” Guthrie muses. “And so, there’s a great deal of me missing that, honoring that, but there was amazing trade here because I got down to Austin, Texas after Johnny and I split up, and I just had no idea what I was in for, which was this amazing scene of musicians playing in Austin—sometimes two to three times a night–in different configurations.”

As Guthrie explains, it was akin to starting over and trying to figure out how to do it all over again. She ended up starting a little honky tonk band and playing in a little bar where her sister was working, although that wasn’t without its own challenges.

“She was like, ‘You should come play,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t really play bars, I’m a folk singer,’” says Guthrie. “And she was like, ‘Get over yourself and just come play at a freakin bar, we’re midway through Covid, nothing else is happening anyways.’”

And so, Guthrie hit a reset button. She got down to Austin. She started playing music which was a little more country and a little more honky talk, which was always something she’d always loved.

“It was actually what Johnny and I started doing in Los Angeles in the late ’90s,” Guthrie says. “We were coming together on some Gram Parsons and George Jones, so, in a way, things full circle started to happen again where it was just this beautiful scene of country music entering my life again.”

And this time, she says with a laugh, people are dancing because it’s Austin, Texas and they do the Austin two-step down there, and she became the background music for the dancers, rather than the intense focus of the audience. That shift and change of roles ended up really inspiring Guthrie because, she says, suddenly, she wasn’t taking it so seriously.

“It wasn’t about career,” Guthrie says. “It wasn’t about success. It wasn’t about all of these things that I had, I think, mistaken for so long while playing music. It just brought it right back down to what was important. Honestly, the simplicity of just bringing joy to people so that they could dance. It wasn’t about money anymore ’cause I’m playing for tips.”

In a lot of ways, Guthrie says, it really invigorated the reason she does this, and it just became all heart. She credits that new approach and the enjoyment she gets from playing now for the opportunity to work with a lot of different people on her new tracks, “Honey and the Dew” and “Dog Gone Shame,” which were produced by Billy Horton, who’s worked with Charlie Crockett, most notably, along with a lot of local Austin legends. The songs feature Willie Nelson’s bass player, Kevin Smith, and Austin guitarist Dave Biller, and twang along like you wouldn’t believe.

“I’m really feeling very lucky,” Guthrie says. “My music has taken on new shape, and it’s taken on new intention. I’m not compromising any part of me for a man, and that’s a totally different dynamic. It’s for the fun of it. Yes, thank God, it pays the bills, too, but that’s not the primary reason why I’m playing music, and that’s liberating, you know? Feeling really good about this new stage.”

The Sarah Lee Guthrie Trio performs Saturday, October 21, at the Green Guitar Folk House listening room in Lenexa with openers The Shandies. Details on that show here.