Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion are no strangers to Columbia, having lived in the mill village area of West Columbia just below State Street for seven years, so their yearly return to the area should come as no surprise. This time around, the duo have two new album releases to promote: Go Waggaloo, a family album featuring Sarah Lee, Johnny and a cast of kids including their daughter Olivia and several of her cousins; and Folksong, a live CD and DVD combo that showcases the stripped-down acoustic duo format that the husband-and-wife team are most associated with. It’s not the only thing they’re doing, however.

“We just got finished with a new record we did with a band called Vetiver that’ll be out next year,” Irion says. “They’re on the same label as Devandra Banhardt. We did write some of the songs with Gary Louris, who worked on our last full band album, so he’s still involved with this one too.”

For now, the Irion/Guthrie family is focused on getting the two current releases heard, whether it’s at their own shows or on tour with Sarah Lee’s father Arlo Guthrie and the extended Guthrie clan.

“It has been working out well for us on the Arlo and Family tours,” Irion says, “The older generation and their kids are both coming out to the shows, and they’re interested in both records.”

Johnny Irion and Sarah Lee Guthrie

The family album, Go Waggaloo, is a friendly affair that casts Sarah Lee as the lead in a family sing-along on songs they mostly penned themselves.

“All those songs we wrote for the family album were choruses we had been singing to each other around the house or on the road,” Irion says. “When Smithsonian Folkways called us about doing a children’s music album, we got to make them into songs.”

Irion even put his daughter to work on it, co-writing several songs with her and making it a true family affair.

“The kids are excited about the album being out, they have all kinds of ideas about doing T-shirts, the Go Waggaloo character on the cover, and Olivia wants us to make it into a video game,” he says.

The Guthries might not make the Xbox, but Irion says they’re not done with the children’s music genre.

“We’re already talking about doing another one,” he says.

The duo’s CD/DVD combo is something that came about almost by accident, Irion says.

“We saw the footage from this show we did in California last year, and it was such a great show where we played well,” Irion says. “The acoustics were miked, not plugged in, so they sounded like real acoustic guitars.”

With an excellent video and audio mix of the performance, the idea to release it was a natural one.

“Some of our friends had already done bonus DVDs with their albums, so it was an idea we already had,” Irion says. “We took it another step and packaged the whole thing like an old record. It took more effort and cost us more, but it really came out like we wanted.”

Indeed, the gatefold CD is like a miniature double LP from the 1970s, down to the wraparound photos on the inner and outer cover and the paper sleeves that hold the individual discs.

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion could easily be seen as a throwback to a more innocent age in music, when a family could pack up and live on the road playing music. Their continued collaborations with artists like Gary Louris and Vetiver prove, however, that they’re creating a contemporary folk music legacy, one that they’ll pass down to their children just as Sarah Lee’s father and grandfather have passed it down to them. 

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Coffeehouse is at 2701 Heyward St. in Shandon. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 for adults and $7 for students; $10 and $5, respectively, in advance. Grayson Capps opens. Call 888-849-4224 ext. 4 or visit uucoffeehouse.org for more information.