Me & Woody

Intro

Moock with daughter Clio

Boston singer/songwriter Alastair Moock is now offering school performances and workshops on American songsmith and dust bowl activist Woody Guthrie. Telling the tale of America's greatest troubadour through song and then using those songs to teach songwriting craftsmanship, Moock teaches vital aspects of American history and language arts skills to kids of all ages.

Alastair was first inspired to pursue a career in folk music after reading Woody Guthrie's memoir Bound for Glory in high school. Since then, he has gone on to win top honors at some of the country's most prestigious songwriting contests, record five critically acclaimed albums, and tour throughout the U.S. and Europe.

But in between time on the road and in the studio, Alastair has also had a long career working with young people of various ages. From the Big Brother/Big Sister program in college to SAT and college prep at numerous programs including Upward Bound; from multiple stints at public, private, and DSS-referred afterschool programs to his ongoing work with school-age guitar students, Alastair has been committed to youth enrichment for over 15 years. Having kids of his own — twin girls born in December, 2006 — finally convinced him to start bringing his two passions together.

School Performances

Moock's performances around Woody Guthrie are essentially a biography through music. Using Woody's own songs, as well as some of his own, Alastair tells the tale of Woody's development as a songwriter and union crusader coming of age in the Great Depression.

Excerpts from Bound for Glory and songs like So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh illustrate in vivid detail — and with considerable humor — the rapidly changing environment Woody grew up in. Born to relative prosperity in a poor part of the country just before the Great Depression, Woody saw his hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma go from farm country to oil boom town to the depths of poverty in the course of a few years. His home life was equally turbulent; he lost houses and family to a series of fires and his mother to mental illness brought on by the Huntington's disease which he himself would eventually inherit. When the dust bowl had engulfed his region, Woody moved west to find work — first as a sign painter, then, increasingly, through music. Songs like Hard Travelin' tell of life on the road. After landing in California along with thousands of “Okies” looking for farm work, Woody grew angry at the unjust treatment of his migrant laborer peers, and began to write about it in songs like Do Re Mi. Songs like The Union Maid and This Land is Your Land signal the dawn of Woody's lifetime commitment to unionization and his patriotic pursuit of justice for all.

Alastair's performances are adaptable and appropriate for kids of all ages, and one of Moock's real strengths as a performer is his ability to engage multi-age audiences at once. This is due in part to his agility as a performer, in part to the upbeat energy of the musical program, and in part to the broad appeal of Woody's tale: personal struggle, the pursuit of justice, and a belief in cooperation being story elements that even the youngest audience members can appreciate.

Workshops

Schools and programs that hire Moock for his Woody performances can also bring him into the classroom or small group settings, to work with different age groups. Woody serves here as a departure point for explorations into the songwriting process.

Kindergarden - Third Grades

With younger grades, Alastair expands on his performances with more intimate sing-alongs of Woody's songs for young people such as Mail Myself a Letter, Ship in the Sky, and Bling Blang, as well as songs by some of Woody's contemporaries — Leadbelly, Elizabeth Cotton, Mississippi John Hurt — and a few originals. He then leads the group in a re-write of one of Woody's songs: for example, This Land is Your Land may become This Class is Your Class. In addition to teaching rhyme, rhythm, and cadence, this exercise helps kids learn how to write about what they see and know. It's also a great way to demonstrate that it's possible to jump right into songwriting without much musical background. (Woody himself was a notorious borrower of traditional and popular melodies.)

If teachers choose, they can supplement Alastair's workshops, before or afterwards, by implementing parts of the amazing Woody Web elementary curriculum available from the Woody Guthrie Foundation. The curriculum covers multiple areas of study: from geography and math (mapping Woody's travels, measuring distance, computing scale) to language arts and social studies (writing Depression-era news reports, working with timelines, learning about unions) to environmental science (discussing causes of the Dust Bowl) to visual arts (studying line, shape, color and perspective through Woody's numerous wonderful cartoons and paintings). For schools interested in larger-scale residencies, Alastair can also facilitate this curriculum himself.

Fourth - Twelfth Grades

With older kids, Alastair plays a game of his own invention that uses one or more of Woody's more lyrically sophisticated songs, such as Deportees or Pastures of Plenty. After breaking the class into teams and giving everyone relevant background information on the song topic, Alastair has the kids fill in missing lines from verses and then vote on which line they think is the “real” one. In addition to fitting the rhyme scheme and cadence of the lyrics, kids must try to match Woody's voice and tone and make their writing period-appropriate. The exercise teaches how to write empathically and provides opportunities to talk about songwriting and general creative writing essentials: metaphor, imagery, point of view, etc. The proof of the game's success is the fact that kids pick the lyrics of their peers at least as often as they pick Woody's lyrics. They also just have a great time playing it.

Depending on time and the size of the class, Alastair may expand on this exercise by having kids write their own whole verses to fit the song, or write about something else entirely, using the melody and structure they've been working with.

A side note... Alastair has also used Woody's song Deportees to work with Spanish classes. The song is about Mexican migrant laborers and provides a good opportunity to discuss immigration issues. And, in addition to playing his fill-in-the-blank game, Moock also works with the class and teacher to translate parts of the song into Spanish.