Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl Ballads

The “sepia artwork and lyrical prose” in this graphic novel biography “beat with a love for Guthrie’s music and America’s beauty” (Guardian, UK).

Using the sepia tones of the Dust Bowl as his palette, author and artist Nick Hayes tells the story of world-famous folk singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie. The tale starts in the 1920s when Guthrie was a teenager supporting himself in dried-up, post-boomtown Oklahoma. Picking up a harmonica and eventually a battered guitar, Guthrie finds solace in the ancient lineage of folksong.

Hayes charts the musician’s course from Oklahoma and Texas towns ravaged by dust and the Depression to boxcars, factory farms, and the migrant camps of California, highlighting Guthrie’s dedication to singing American folk tunes and creating his own modern classics along the way. Hayes ends his portrait in 1940, at the pivotal time when Guthrie makes his way to New York and writes “This Land Is Your Land,” his iconic anthem tinged with both optimism and clear-eyed reality.