Guthrie Tour Aids Musicians With Losses in Katrina

“This train is bound for glory,” sang Arlo Guthrie, joined by his daughter Sarah Lee, son Abe and various friends, as the City of New Orleans train rumbled past factories and fields between Chicago and Kankakee, Ill.

The Dec. 6 trip was actually the first time Guthrie rode the train celebrated in the Steve Goodman song of the same name that Guthrie made so famous. In a hastily-pulled-together benefit, Guthrie and a crew of musicians are riding the City of New Orleans from Chicago to the Big Easy, stopping along the way to play fundraising shows. The goal is to raise money for New Orleans musicians who lost instruments, homes and work as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

But in many ways the trip, which ends tonight with a sold-out show at Tipitina’s club in New Orleans, is just as much a celebration of the train itself. The route Goodman wrote about in 1970 was run by the Illinois Central. Now Amtrak operates the 19-hour trip, which runs daily between Chicago and New Orleans, passing through Memphis. The train stopped running because of Katrina’s flooding, and the New Orleans train depot was used as a temporary criminal detention facility. But service resumed Oct. 9.

Click here for link.
Click here to read the lyrics of the song.