Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion

Singer-songwriter, contemporary folk, Americana

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion play sweet, close-harmonied contemporary folk music which easily calls to mind other contemporary duos like Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, the Milk Carton Kids, and the Honey Dewdrops. They may also be of interest to more classic folk-pop groups like the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and other similar bands who have built their music atop a foundation of firm harmonies and acoustic pop instrumentation. Fans of the various members of the Guthrie family may also be interested to hear Guthrie & Irion.

Exploration (Rte. 8 Records, 2005) purchase/download

Bright Examples (Rte. 8 Records, 2011) purchase/download

Folksong (Rte. 8 records, 2009) purchase/download

"Georgia Pine" (from Entirely Live)
"Speed of Light" (from Bright Examples)
"Cease Fire" (from Exploration)

Sarah Lee Guthrie was born in Massachusetts in 1979, the youngest daughter of Arlo Guthrie and youngest granddaughter of folk music trailblazer Woody Guthrie. Growing up, she had little interst in performing music and carrying on the family torch. Her pursuits were more aimed at theater and dance (indeed, her grandmother Marjorie was a dancer with the Martha Graham company). But, as a teenager, at the age of 18 in 1997, she picked up a job as tour manager for her father for a brief stint and found herself drawn to the sort of performance she watched him do every night. In order to socialize with the rest of the crew, she started joining them for late-night jam sessions and eventually developed an interest in writing songs.

Meanwhile, Johnny Irion was born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1969. Also born and bred by a family of artists and creative-minded people, Irion is the grand-nephew of quintessential American author John Steinbeck. He was always drawn to music as a form of expression and, in the late 1990s, when he was working with Chris Robinson of the Black Crows in Los Angeles, Robinson introduced him to Guthrie. The two hit it off and were married in 1999, the same year they started a musical collaboration with Tao Rodriguez-Seeger (of the Mammals; grandson of Pete Seeger) called RIG.

Guthrie and Irion didn't start performing "solo" as a duo until 2000.

In the decade-plus since their collaboration began, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion have cemented their place in the burgeoning world of contemporary folk music and acoustic pop. Their music has evolved from straight-up harmony-driven contemporary folk to more dreamy, ambitious arrangements and often intimate, emotional lyricism.

Over the course of their career together, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion have made their way around the national folk and acoustic pop circuit, playing in clubs and theaters alike, not to mention their fair share of high-profile folk festivals. They've appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, Philadelphia Folk Festival, and elsewhere along the folk festival circuit. They continue to appear now and then with Arlo and Abe Guthrie as a band simply considered as The Guthrie Family (as they will during Newport Folk Festival 2012).

In addition to their four collaborative albums, Guthrie and Irion have released a children's album called Go Waggaloo (Smithsonian Folkways, 2009) on which they're joined by Arlo, Pete Seeger, and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, and a couple of albums under their individual names (although both have appeared on each). In the time between their 2005 album Exploration, they moved from South Carolina to Massachusetts near where Guthrie grew up. Sarah Lee also gave birth to two daughters (hence the children's album) and the duo appeared with Pete Seeger at Carnegie Hall.