Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant 50th Anniversary Tour Coming to The Newton Theatre

Legendary folk music icon Arlo Guthrie brings his Alice’s Restaurant 50th Anniversary Tour to The Newton Theatre on Saturday, May 7, 2016 at 8 p.m. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Friday, January 22 at 10 a.m.

The tour celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the event that inspired the seminal song, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree. A musical monologue running more than 18 minutes, Alice’s Restaurant has become a Thanksgiving holiday anthem to families across the globe, which originated from Guthrie’s experience on Thanksgiving in 1965. Guthrie will perform his most prominent work in its entirety each night of the tour.

“I didn’t think I was gonna live long enough to have to learn Alice’s Restaurant again,” Arlo Guthrie says with a smile. “It was a quirky kinda thing to begin with. Nobody writes an 18-minute monologue expecting fame and fortune. The initial success of the song really took me by surprise more than anyone else. The fact that I have contended with it for five decades either by having to learn it again or by not doing it, has been an interesting balancing act. I’m surely looking forward to adding it to the repertoire though for the 50th anniversary tour”.

For the last five decades, Arlo has carried on the Guthrie family legacy of sharing timeless stories and unforgettable classics to audiences far and wide. The tour brings together an ensemble of fine musicians ever to grace the stage at one time, including Terry “A La Berry” Hall (drums), Bobby Sweet (guitar, vocals), Darren Todd (bass), and his son, Abe Guthrie (keyboards). Arlo’s youngest daughter, Sarah Lee Guthrie will open the show. Each show is curated with an awe-inspiring light show created specifically for this tour, along with previously unseen images from the Guthrie archives. The images were chosen from more than 75,000 photos that had recently been digitized.