Woody Guthrie and Songwriting
DIY - Everybody Has A Song In Them
Posted by Charlie Recksieck
on 2025-11-18
You can make a case that Woody Guthrie was the greatest songwriter of all time.
"This Land Is Your Land" could and should be our national anthem.
He's got great ones like "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "I Ain't Got No Home".
He wrote something like 1500 songs, 20 of which could be called standards.
Or it's easier to say he's the most influential songwriter of all time.
Just like an NFL football "coaching tree" refers to a network of coaches connected through mentorship, typically tracing which head coaches "trained" or influenced other coaches ... if you sketched out a "Woody Guthrie tree" it would feature Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, and countless folk and rock musicians who credit Guthrie as a major inspiration.
Woody's Claim About Songwriting
Guthrie often expressed the idea that everyone has a song to tell and that songwriting should be accessible to all.
He believed music was a tool for storytelling, social commentary, and personal expression, not just a profession for the famous. Guthrie encouraged ordinary people to write songs about their lives, struggles, and communities, making folk music a collective, democratic art form rather than an elite pursuit.
When Woody contends that every person, not just professional songwriters or people who get anointed to a position to have a platform or a microphone, should write songs - then perhaps there's something to be said for the idea.
His Quotes On The Subject
These maxims from Guthrie reflect his belief that songwriting doesn't require special training.
"Anybody can write a song. If you've got a story, tell it. If you've got a feeling, sing it."
"All you can write is what you see."
"A song ain't nothing but a conversation fixed up to where you can talk it over and over without getting tired of it."
"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work."
"There's several ways of saying what's on your mind. One of the mainest ways is by singing."
"If you play more than two chords, you're showing off."
"Some men rob you with a six-gun - others rob you with a fountain pen."
Write Authentically
Personally, I love writing about topics that most people don't sing about.
Our upcoming Bigfellas album has songs about time travel, people pretending to be Irish, Mike Love from the Beach Boys being an asshole, Amsterdam, Superman's whiny inner monologue, and other crap.
I mean love songs are a dime a dozen.
What new observations am I gonna have there?
But there's no competition lyrically when writing about the 1915 World's Fair.
A friend of mine in a band once didn't do a lot of songwriting but he wanted to.
He came over for a songwriting session, and he would keep throwing out cliched nothings like "Your love is like the highest mountain" or some such stuff and nothing caught fire.
Then we got high and walked from my house to a Thai restaurant and he was telling me cool stories about something that just happened to him and I had to stop him.
"Hey, THAT's what you should write a song about!"
If you write about something real or something YOU find interesting, then now you're on to something.
In Practice
I do have to be careful at it.
Some people really are better at this than others.
I've been to way to many open mic nights or seen even professional touring singer songwriters up on stage strumming a guitar over basically what should be an artless journal entry about a bad breakup.
So, I think I should qualify Guthrie's encouragement of songwriting and say something like "Everybody should write about something that means a lot to them."
A couple of times I helped a person write and record a song as a birthday present and even though it was my friend's first time writing a song, it came out great.
Try It
There really never been an easier time for it.
Recording tools are cheap and easy.
A C-minus song on its own can be instantly transformed to a B-plus over a professional beat.
And as much as I hate to say it, you can leverage A.I. tools to craft and amplilfy what you want to express - if you do it right.
Give it a shot!
