So Timeless, So Timely, So Arlo : Witty Guthrie Honors the Past as Well as the Present at Coach House

Sometimes, just thinking of Arlo Guthrie can help make life a little more bearable.

At the end of your most harried, most frustrating, most spirit-sapping day, you can always look back and say to yourself, “Well, at least I got through it without having to sit through ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ again.”

It’s a fine thing to become acquainted with Guthrie’s humorous song about draft-dodging--a chatty epic so windy that those who heard the teen-aged Arlo unveil it in 1967 well may have missed the entire Summer of Love. It’s just not the sort of acquaintance any sensible person would want to renew.

Thus, as gentle and personable a folk-singing soul as Guthrie may be, it is a matter of some trepidation when he comes to town. Is he really going to play that song again? If so, it’s time to start hunting for a crossword puzzle to work on. Or maybe even a Form 1040. Anything but “Alice” (come to think of it, that other number, the one about pickles and motorsickles, is pretty scary, too).

Well, Guthrie came to the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Tuesday night, but there was no need to have worried about him committing nostalgic atrocities. Instead, he offered an excellent concert of nearly two hours that was fond of the past but alert to the present, consistently funny, but also fervent in its ideals.

Guthrie, 43, started with a half-hour solo spot, during which he won the audience with his skills as a humorist. His ability to tell a wry tale with self-deprecating wit, folksy inflections and a wonderful sense of timing made one think of Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain monologues (if Guthrie’s thoroughly grayed hair ever goes white, he would almost look the part. For now, he’s closer to Bert Lahr’s cowardly lion). Guthrie could have gone on telling stories without striking up a song, and few in the audience would have minded.

Introducing “Ain’t Got No Home” from the songbook of his venerated father, Woody, Arlo showed a willingness to have a little fun with the family legend.

“It’s not one of the ones my dad wrote, so much as one of the ones he stole,” Guthrie said, noting Woody’s fondness for nicking a traditional gospel lyric or melody. That sort of method used to raise howls of plagiarism, Guthrie added, until “Pete Seeger came along and renamed it ‘the folk process.’ Thank God for Pete.”

But when Guthrie got around to singing the Depression-era song, the humorous but cutting lyric about homeless wanderers getting the shaft was more than a bit of family nostalgia. It remains all too topical.

Next came a strong, involved reading of Bob Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In,” an apocalyptic but ultimately celebratory song that depicts a triumph of providence over the sorts of injustices detailed in “Ain’t Got No Home.”

Guthrie’s tuneful though nasally scrunched vocal style borrows liberally from Dylan; if today’s Dylan would perform his songs with the conviction Guthrie showed on that oldie, it would be cause for hosannas.

Guthrie showcased several new songs, most of them stately folk-rock anthems that expressed abstract ideals without sounding pompous. A song inspired by the 20th anniversary of Woodstock (Guthrie performed at the original festival) took a potentially embarrassing rah-rah refrain--”keep the dream alive”--and made it seem profound by pointing out that the dream of peace isn’t tied to, or even defined by, one event or one generation.

The struggle for peace also emerged in “When a Soldier Makes It Home,” in which Guthrie tied together images of Soviets and Americans returning from battlefields in Afghanistan and Vietnam to callous responses in their homelands.

Guthrie mused that the Gulf War’s triumphant yellow-ribbon receptions may have made the song “dated,” but he sang it with authority that suggested something quite different.

“I guess you had to be there to know that war was hell,” he sang--finding a glimmer of hope in the fact that Soviets and Americans now have shared the same experience and learned the same lesson.

Guthrie balanced the new material with such catalogue nuggets as the crowd-pleasing “City of New Orleans” and “Coming Into Los Angeles.” He also created a lovely moment with a slow and intimate sing-along version of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

After his solo segment, Guthrie received capable backing from Xavier, a band consisting of his keyboards-playing son, Abraham, and four of Abraham’s young buddies. They couldn’t match the acuity of Guthrie’s old backing band, Shenandoah, but they were competent, especially with backing harmonies.