Train hoppers reunite!

Larry Long, Fiddlin’ Pete Watercott, and Larry Dalton celebrate five decades of friendship rooted in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Hank Williams, and Bob Wills.

Long is an American singer-songwriter who has made his life’s work the celebration of everyday heroes. Author, historian, actor, and broadcaster Studs Terkel called Larry “a true American Troubadour.”

Watercott has been playing music for over 50 years. At age 10 he began playing the viola. In 1964 his sister Kit brought a plywood sunburst “Stella” guitar into the Watercott home. Pete took to strummin’ out the folk ballads of Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Phil Oaks, Pete Seeger, and anything that Sing Out! Magazine would print.

Dalton, a symphony musician, is one-third of the trio of brothers Dalton from the Illinois-Wisconsin area.

Through their early twenties, Long and Watercott hitched and hopped freight trains through the West performing music deeply rooted in American song tradition. Now 50 years later both have had successful solo careers.

In the course of their travels they joined up with bassist Dalton, whom they met in the High Sierra Mountain Range town of Truckee, Calif., in 1976.

Long has written and performed hundreds of ballads celebrating community and history makers. His work has taken him from rural Alabama to the Lakota communities in South Dakota. He has given musical voice to struggling Midwest farmers, embattled workers, and veterans. He was the troubadour for peace on Soviet/American peace cruises, sang for Mrs. Rosa Parks at the 45th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and organized the Mississippi River Revival, a decade-long campaign to clean-up the Mississippi river.
Long assembled the first hometown tribute to Woody Guthrie in Okemah, Okla., which today has evolved into the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival. In 2014 Larry was inducted into the National Old Time Music Hall of Fame.

He has been a Grassroots Concerts guest on four occasions, first in 1990 and most recently 2012. Long’s work in schools and communities sparked the creation of an international non-profit organization, Community Celebration of Place, which creates intergenerational and multicultural opportunities for students to learn and grow through a program called Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song.

Celebrating the wild Mustang’s heritage in the West Watercott has led horseback songwriting groups with Rock Creek Pack Station, drawing inspiration from the wild horses. Now in a seventh season, Pete has self produced a popular summer dinner concert series at the Pokonobe Lodge in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Pete has also produced six albums, including “Songs of Curley Fletcher” the only recording dedicated to the work of the great Western poet.

Dalton has been performing and recording with bluegrass, jazz, rock, rockabilly, gypsy jazz, big band and orchestral groups.

General admission to the concert is $15 at the door for adults and $5 for children under 12 with listening attention, when accompanied by an adult. Seating is first-come, first-served. Doors open at 6:30. 

Grassroots Concerts, which has been going since 1988, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.