SATURDAY

“And there on the Texas plains right in the dead center of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed out and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing kind, I seen there was plenty to make up songs about,” wrote Oklahoma-born Woody Guthrie (pictured) in his autobiography, Bound for Glory, recalling his evenings as a 17-year-old playing dances in the Lone Star State. Much of what Guthrie saw and wrote songs about 70 years ago hasn’t changed, and his influence, transmitted via Bob Dylan, remains inescapable in rootsy singer-songwriter circles. The daylong “Woody Guthrie: The Man and His Legacy” begins with an afternoon of Guthrie-related film screenings (at 1, 2:30, and 4 p.m., free) and a panel discussion involving rock writer and Bruce Springsteen pal Dave Marsh; Guthrie’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, who oversees New York’s Woody Guthrie Archives; and a foursome of Guthrie-and-Dylan-influenced Texans—country balladeer Willis Alan Ramsey, ex-Flatlander Butch Hancock, legendary Austin tunesmith Jimmy LaFave, and folk-rocker Eliza Gilkyson (at 1:30 p.m., free). After Ramsey, Hancock, LaFave, and Gilkyson have finished talking about the Guthrie legacy, they’ll pay their musical respects to the man who’s still America’s best-known leftist folk singer with a not-to-be-missed evening concert (at 7:30 p.m., $20). Saturday, June 10, at the National Museum of Natural History’s Carmichael Auditorium, 14th and Constitution Avenue NW. (202) 357-2700. (Steve Kiviat)