When Arlo Guthrie, and his extended family, took the stage Tuesday night at the State Theatre, 130 W. College Ave., the politically themed folk singer came full of both songs and stories.
The veteran singer reflected on his experiences at Woodstock, an event he said reporters asked him about all summer in anticipation of the festival's 40th anniversary.
"Well, I remember getting there," Guthrie said to a crowd rapt in laughter. "I remember looking at more people at one time than I knew I ever would again. I was looking at them the way you could back then - at each one individually."
The first portion of the group's performance consisted of family friendly songs, with the group playing a number of children's songs.
The group brought out four of the family's children to help sing these songs with them, expanding the constantly shifting group to 14 members at one point.
"My dad wrote a lot of kids songs because, I guess, that was a way to keep them quiet," Guthrie said. "Back then there was no entertainment industry."
Guthrie's now deceased father, Woody Guthrie, was a central focus of the evening. The group played songs by Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie and other family members who took the stage during the evening.
"I think it's wonderful - the children put tears in my eyes," said Dick Gold, a State College resident. "I like folk music and the common experience it comes out of."
The concert began with just Arlo's youngest daughter, Sara Lee Guthrie, and her husband Johnny Irion taking the stage to play an acoustic guitar song the couple wrote.
The singer's daughter played a guitar solo during the piece and made some slip-ups but the couple recovered well.
"She's a hot picker once you get to know her," Irion said.
Despite the large number of songwriters present, much the material performed was penned by Woody Guthrie and came from the Woody Guthrie Archives.
These archives contain lyrics to hundreds of songs but no recorded music, and as such the band had to write it themselves.
"Woody said, 'I usually play just two chords - I play Gs, I play Ds, and sometimes I play Cs to impress the ladies,' " Sara Lee Guthrie said. "Hopefully he was talking about our grandma."
The band also performed Woody Guthrie songs with music written by other musicians, such as Billy Bragg, Wilco and a klezmer group the Klezmatics.
Matt Olsen, of Clearfield, Pa., enjoyed the focus on Arlo Guthrie's father.
"I'm more of a Woody fan and I like how they threw in the old stuff that no one's ever heard," Olsen said. "I'm loving how the whole family came out. I knew a lot of the family did music but I never heard his daughter play. I was amused and delighted."
While many members of the family performed original songs, Sara Lee Guthrie's performance took a more prominent role than many of her relatives, performing lead vocals on many of the Woody Guthrie songs, as well as her own pieces.
At one point Arlo Guthrie introduced a song his father had written from the perspective of an outlaw who received a letter from a sheriff asking him to come to his office "Dead or Alive."
"I've been singing this song for years and only recently realized that if the sheriff knew where to send the letter, he could have just gotten the man himself," Guthrie said. "Poetic license or something."
The between song banter took a very prominent role throughout the night, keeping the audience laughing and entertained.
Dave Orrson (junior-material science) said he's been a fan of Guthrie for about five years and went to the concert for just that reason.
"That's why I wanted to come," Orrson said. "I think he's a really great storyteller."
