"Everybody's going through a hard time and I loved that he had written this same feeling over 150 years ago," said Guthrie. "My father used to say that a folk singer's job is to comfort the distressed and distress the comforted. And I thought it was appropriate to do--to bring this old song that had the suffering of everyday people and bring it up to date."
The song is being submitted for Grammy consideration. And Guthrie is also doing something he's never done before: a virtual concert. It's through the website, Performance Tonight, with tickets starting at 15 dollars for an at-home evening of entertainment.
"To sing in front of a camera and pretend that there's an audience there is... I was never really good at that," said Guthrie. "So I'm nervous about this coming Sunday. That's crazy to me. I remember hearing the stories of Frank Sinatra in a recording studio with cut-out silhouettes of people so that he had somebody he could pretend to sing to because it