(SAUGERTIES, N.Y.) – Roots scholar/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Michael Eck brings My Name Is New York: Woody Guthrie’s NYC Songs, a new one-man celebration of Woody Guthrie’s New York days, to Kiersted House (119 Main St.) in Saugerties on Sunday, September 15, 2013, at 3pm, in an event sponsored by Heritage Folk Music.

Woody Guthrie — America’s balladeer — hit The Big Apple in 1940 and immediately started adapting his well-honed Okie persona to fit the East Coast’s big city ways. He also exploded creatively, penning his book, Bound for Glory; instigating the Almanac Singers; and dreaming up more than six-hundred songs while scattering his homespun philosophy across the five boroughs.

Eventually, Guthrie would be scattered himself — almost — his ashes tossed into the Atlantic off of Coney Island; with typical Guthrie humor, the can sank before fully releasing its contents.

My Name Is New York explores Guthrie’s most stable and prolific period, and includes classic songs such as “This Land Is Your Land,” “Hard Travelin,” and “The Sinking of the Reuben James;” as well folk tunes recorded for Moses Asch; and later lyrics, like “Deportees” and “This Morning I Am Born Again,” set to tunes by contemporary songwriters.

Michael Eck — who has performed alongside American radical icons Pete Seeger and Patti Smith — is most frequently seen as a member of Ramblin Jug Stompers and Lost Radio Rounders. With My Name Is New York, Eck will perform a solo selection of classic Guthrie songs, relate anecdotes from the singer’s life and display how Guthrie’s influence still drives American music.

Woody Guthrie was born July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma. He was shaped by a hardscrabble life riddled with devastating fires, dust storms and a family history of Huntington’s disease. But he rose above his difficulties through a combination of wit, wile and fierce determination. Adapting old folk melodies, Guthrie was on fire himself, with the urge to express not only his own thoughts, but those of his people — the downtrodden, the desperate and, disenfranchised. He died October 3, 1967, leaving an indelible mark on American culture.

Michael Eck has previously performed Guthrie-related programs — including “Bound for Glory: 100 Years of Woody Guthrie” — for historic Caffe Lena, Old Songs, Inc., Heritage Folk Music, The Beacon Institute, The Valatie Community Theatre, The Saratoga Acoustic Blues Society and The Guilderland Public Library.

Eck discovered Guthrie’s music as a youth, pulling a vinyl copy of “Dust Bowl Ballads” — re-issued in the year of his own birth — out of a bin at the Bethlehem Public Library. It was, he says, “a lightning rod.”

Tickets are $10; call 845.594.4412.

Heritage Folk Music, Inc. is a non-profit tax-exempt 501 (c) 3 corporation. Its mission is to collect, preserve, document, display and interpret the regional and historic folk music, folklore and oral history of New York State, including specifically the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley.