Six years ago, Burlington musician Anders Parker and former Son Volt lead man Jay Farrar started sifting through some of Nora Guthrie’s collection of her father Woody Guthrie’s unrecorded lyrics. The Dust Bowl Troubador was a prolific writer and contemporary musicians have found a wealth of material to inspire and guide new music. Parker and Farrar combed through lines written in notebooks, on scratch pads and even napkins. They put the writings to music and added fellow musicians Jim James (of My Morning Jacket) and Will Johnson (of Monsters of Folk) to the project.
The resulting CD, "New Multitudes," has a release date of February 28th. Anders Parker joins us on Vermont Edition to discuss how the project came together, finally reached fruition and what he learned about Guthrie along the way. And he plays a few of the tunes live.