This Land Belongs to Guthrie

One of America’s great iconoclasts was celebrated as a great American icon on Sunday in Cleveland in a star-studded tribute concert to Woody Guthrie staged by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to benefit the Woody Guthrie Archives.

The folk singer and songwriter, who died in 1967 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1988 as an early influence on rock, probably would have chuckled over the irony. But the three-hour concert at Severance Hall--the classically ornate home of the city’s renowned symphony orchestra--was actually not a stuffy affair.

The lineup included everyone from Guthrie contemporaries Pete Seeger and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to young punkish acolytes like Ani DiFranco and Billy Bragg. The contemporary star power was provided by Bruce Springsteen, with an assist from Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls and David Pirner of Soul Asylum.

This was not your typical rock tribute show, with the disciples playing lovingly faithful versions of the master’s standards. Instead, the performers blended their own music with Guthrie’s classics, giving the show a loose, informal feel and a crackling air of contemporary relevance.

Master of ceremonies Tim Robbins introduced each performer with dramatic readings of Guthrie’s essays, poems and homespun witticisms.

In some ways, the evening’s biggest star was the performer who took the most traditional and reverential approach. Springsteen’s latest album--the stark, acoustic “The Ghost of Tom Joad”--is named after the lead character in John Steinbeck’s Depression-era novel “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Springsteen opened his six-song set with a fierce acoustic rendition of Guthrie’s “Tom Joad,” a song Guthrie wrote in the 1930s after seeing John Ford’s film adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel.

Springsteen played only one of his own songs--the optimistic new “Across the Border.” But his set included one of the evening’s highlights, an eloquent reworking of “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” a song about immigrants and refugees as relevant today as it was when Guthrie penned it in Los Angeles in the 1930s.

Folk-punk singer-songwriter DiFranco, a passionate, dreadlocked troubadour for the ‘90s, opened the concert with a three-song set that underscored Guthrie’s influence on the younger generation of American songwriters. The highlight was a haunting, almost whispering blues version of Guthrie’s “Do Re Mi,” with the song’s winking sarcasm replaced by a quiet rage over the rich taking advantage of the poor.

The benefit concert was the finale of a 10-day celebration of Guthrie’s life and music organized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened in Cleveland a year ago.

“Hard Travelin’: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie” included an exhibition of rare Guthrie family photographs, a Guthrie film festival and a daylong educational conference at a local university.

The tribute was the brainchild of the rock hall’s educational director, Robert Santelli, who is aggressively working to establish the museum’s credentials as a major national cultural institution.

“We want the museum’s educational programs to be national and international in scope,” Santelli said. “So much has been written about the Hall of Fame as a tourist attraction, but it also has a strong mission to show how popular music is so deeply invested in popular culture.”

That message came through loud and clear during Sunday’s concert.

British folk singer Bragg introduced two new songs he wrote to Guthrie lyrics discovered recently in the New York-based Woody Guthrie Archives. “The Unwelcomed Guest” is the marvelous tale of a western Robin Hood who talks to his horse about the reasons he robs from the rich and gives to the poor. “Against the Law” features a classic Guthrie lyric in which he complains that everything--including breathing--seems to be illegal.

It was Arlo Guthrie’s job to warm the crowd up for the sing-along encore. He did it by playing his father’s “Dust Storm Disaster” and “My Daddy (Flies a Ship in the Sky),” plus his own Dylan-esque “When a Soldier Makes It Home” and “Doors of Heaven.”

The encore featured the entire cast in a rough but rousing sing-along rendition of Guthrie’s “Hard Travelin’.” The evening ended with everyone in Severance Hall singing Guthrie’s most famous song--America’s alternative national anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.”