How old is arlo guthrie

As he begins to settle into retirement, I caught up with the longtime Washington, Mass. Like his onstage personality, he laughs easily, often talks in exclamations and is quick with a dry quip.

But I was only in front of an audience for two-and-half, three hours — the rest of the hour day I was with family and my friends and my crew. I miss being with my friends. Are you surprised at how that took off and became a tradition for people? By every measure.

There is no way I could have foreseen that it would become popular, first of all, let alone popular as a Thanksgiving song. The rest is fairly accurate. In fact, when Arthur Penn made the movie, he used [most of] the same people. So the cop in the movie is the real cop! The blind judge in the movie is the real blind judge. Those people played themselves. So I showed up. The fact that they found me not acceptable was their idea, not mine. A convicted litterbug. I was found unacceptable for military service.

Going back, your first performance was at Folk singer Cisco Houston brought you up on stage? It was his last gig. He was dying of cancer at the time. He invited me to come up and sing a few songs, and that was the beginning of it. Hell, no. So much for vows. Do you have early memories of your dad playing, or feeling that you wanted to get into folk music?

I have a photograph of me trying to plunk on a guitar at about a year old. Your father became such a massive figure in folk music. Did you realize that growing up? I could have a drink of scotch or something. They were people I came to love and emulate. For me, it stayed pretty much the same until last March. Nobody writes an minute monolog to get on the radio.

I knew my audience would be small but ferociously loyal. How do you see the role of the folk singer in society? Gospel music to me is the biggest genre of protest music.

You told me about Dylan coming to your door — did you hang out with him growing up? In lengthy posts on his Facebook page and website, the year-old folksinger announced Friday he is retiring from performance immediately.

He's canceled numerous shows he had planned around the country for the next year and said he won't be booking any more. Guthrie did not respond to email and phone messages asking to elaborate but indicated in his statement that health issues played a major role. He said he'd suffered two strokes in recent years, including a serious one that hospitalized him for several days last year.

He had played it at New York's Carnegie Hall in at what he'd previously announced would be the last of his 50 Thanksgiving weekend shows at that venerated music hall. But the day before, ironically on Thanksgiving, he suffered the second and more severe of his strokes.