Celebrate America's 250th: This Land is Your Land - The Folksongs of Woody Guthrie Outdoor Concert

Please note, this program will be held outdoors, weather permitting. Please bring blankets and lawn chairs.

This Land Is Your Land is a program that combines music performance (guitar and vocal) and spoken commentary. The program features songs by legendary folksinger and songwriter Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie (1912-1967), as well as commentary on the time period and each song. This commentary frames the program in a larger historical context, and offers specific details on Guthrie’s songs and his biography. The program also includes two singalong songs.

The presentation aligns with the Illinois America 250 Commission's theme “We the People.” This theme invites us to explore ideas of who has been included and who has been left out of the nation’s promise, as well as how people from all backgrounds have shaped and reshaped what it means to be part of “the people.” The Illinois America 250 Commission's goals are to uplift local stories, places, and programs; build pride; and showcase how Illinois brings the ideals of the Declaration of Independence to life. 

Bucky Halker is a songwriter, performer, and historian with 15 albums, including Anywhere But Utah: Songs of Joe Hill (2015), a musical tribute to martyred labor songwriter Joe Hill (1879-1915), and The Ghost of Woody Guthrie (2012), an original music tribute to the legendary folksinger.

Halker, a Ph.D. in American History, has lectured and published extensively on music in America and has toured Europe regularly since 1990. He is the author of For Democracy, Workers, and God: Labor Song-Poems and Labor Protest, 1865-1895 (University of Illinois Press) and the scholar-producer for the five-volume Folksongs of Illinois CD series.

Bucky received the prestigious Archie Green Fellowship from the Library of Congress – American Folklife Center in 2012. He served as guest professor of American Studies at Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany in 2016 and served on the Board of Directors for the Woody Guthrie Foundation for over ten years.