Cole Quest and the City Pickers
Woody Guthrie’s Grandson and his NYC-based Bluegrass Band
Woody Guthrie has a strong legacy in American music. Part of the reason is obvious—the music and the lyrics speak for themselves. Additionally, musicians such as Bob Dylan, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Woody’s son Arlo, and others, have praised Guthrie as an influence and mentor and they continued to sing and promote his music after Woody’s passing in 1967. Another less public, but equally significant, reason that Woody Guthrie’s legacy is strong today is his daughter Nora Guthrie’s tireless work over 30 years, starting around 1992, to produce and promote projects that have helped bring Guthrie’s music to each new generation.
The list of record albums, books, collaborations, celebrations and performances that Nora has initiated, produced and followed through to completion is impressive. She has also been the head of the Woody Guthrie Foundation, founded in 1972, and she compiled the Guthrie archives, which are now part of the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Quoting from Wikipedia’s Woody Guthrie Center page, “The Woody Guthrie Archives, which is the world’s largest collection of material relating to Guthrie’s life, are housed on-site in a climate-controlled facility that is partially visible through windows from the public museum area. The archives contain manuscripts, lyrics, correspondence, artwork, scrapbooks, musical recordings, books, and photographs, and are open to researchers by appointment.” Nora Guthrie started the archive from a collection of material that her mother had set aside in a closet. She organized what was there and built it into the vast collection that is the formalized archive found in Tulsa today.
Nora Guthrie, the youngest child of Woody & Marjorie Guthrie, retired in 2024 and handed the running of Woody Guthrie Publications to her daughter Anna Canoni. Anna worked with her mother for over two decades prior to Nora’s retirement. While Anna continues with her mother’s work, Nora’s son, Cole Quest Rotante—son of Nora Guthrie and Ted Rotante—has followed Woody’s example and become a talented musician and songwriter. Today Cole sings lead and harmony vocals and plays Dobro in the New York City-based band Cole Quest and the City Pickers, a bluegrass-centered band that performs at various venues and festivals around the country.
Background
Having Woody as his grandfather and Arlo his uncle, it is not difficult to imagine Cole being involved in folk music. But, Cole’s musical life did not start out with folk music, and when he did venture into acoustic music, it was bluegrass that caught his ear. Cole explained that when he was young, his father would play the guitar and sing to him as he fell to sleep at night. He said, “My father was a passionate music fan and he would play Woody songs and Dylan and Arlo songs, and Albert King and B.B. King because he liked the blues.” When Cole was ten, his father bought him a guitar. But, instead of learning Woody Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger or Lead Belly songs—although he had heard those songs his whole life—Cole gravitated more towards Hendrix, Clapton and Led Zeppelin. He said, “I would go to a lot of conferences with my mom and work the merch table and meet people and talk to them, so Woody’s music had always surrounded me. But, I didn’t become deeply interested in acoustic music until twelve to fifteen years ago. At that point I started rediscovering Woody as a fan of music, not just as a familial figure in my life.”
When asked what it was like growing up surrounded by Woody Guthrie’s music, Cole said, “For the first eight years of my life my mom was a stay-at-home mom. She was working with Woody stuff, but not really that formally. Once I got to an old enough age, she started working and building up the Woody Guthrie archive and she spent 30 years building that up. We would see Arlo play all of the time and there was always music in the house. We were also being educated on our family, so of course we were listening to Woody’s material and also a lot of Pete and Lead Belly and those kinds of things were always around and surrounding me as a child. It was like growing up with something that you were kind of paying attention to, but it was not the main focus of my life at that point. When you are a kid, you are just kind of growing up.”
Getting Into Bluegrass
In 2012 Nora Guthrie was producing the Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration (Woody Guthrie was born on July 14th, 1912), which included a series of concerts. Cole said, “At the time, I was listening to music a lot and playing acoustic music and trying to expand my musical horizons. I was passionate about it and trying to get further into it and I coincidentally had a conversation with Ketch Secor of the Old Crow Medicine Show. They were playing on one of the shows. I was talking to him about how he got started playing violin. He told me that he went to a pawn shop, bought a fiddle and started teaching himself. For me it felt like a feasible thing to go into a new direction by trying a new instrument. The day after, I went home and went to Guitar Center and said, ‘I want to learn the mandolin.’ Someone had told me about this little song called ‘Woody’s Rag,’ which is a little mandolin ditty. So, I bought a mandolin and spent a week or two learning two finger chords.
“At the time, I had just moved to Astoria, Queens, after graduating college. I went to a bar, The Quays, across the street from my apartment on a Sunday night, just to check out the vibe. There was a group of guys playing ‘Going Down The Road Feeling Bad,’ which is a song that I was familiar with as being in the Woody catalog. After they finished the song, I called out for them to play another Woody Guthrie song and the leader yelled back, ‘This ain’t no jukebox!’ But, the leader, Dave McKeon, came down afterwards and introduced himself and said, ‘Hey, I appreciate the call out, but this is jam, not a show. This is an open bluegrass session, so if you have a bluegrass instrument you are more than welcome to go get it and come and play with us.’ So, I said, ‘Actually, I just bought a mandolin last week.’ He told me to go get it and so I went home and got it and I fell in love with the music. I went there every Sunday for three years learning how to play the mandolin and learning the basics of bluegrass. I also met a bunch of the people who are now in the band. Christian, our guitar player, is one of those guys. I met him within the first two weeks. We both showed up at the same time.”
Learning his mandolin chops by playing at the jam session every week was Cole’s main focus until someone brought a Dobro to the jam. Cole said, “One week a guy brought in a Dobro and I said, ‘What is that thing! I’ve got to learn how to play that!’ The guy said, ‘Sure, I have an extra one. I’ll let you borrow it.’ He let me borrow it for a few months and three months later I bought the Dobro that I’m still playing today.”
When asked about how he began to learn how to play the Dobro, Cole said, “At that point, I had learned how to play guitar and I had been on my journey to learn to play the mandolin for a few years. So, I knew the kinds of sounds that I wanted to make and it was just a matter of learning how to physically make it. I always do best by just putting in the hours, and so I put in the hours. Of course, going to the jams was a huge help because sometimes the other Dobro player, Jesse Friedberg, would be there. He was such a great player and I really loved learning from him. We would do these challenges like, ‘OK on the next break, only use the bottom three strings.’ Or, ‘Only used closed bar positions. No open strings.’ I remember having these games with him and asking him questions along the way. It was a lot of just experience learning for me. Now, it is a little different. I like taking pieces and slowing them down and learning things that are not in the bluegrass realm at all. I’m currently learning ‘Spain’ by Chick Chorea on the Dobro, which is a really fun adventure.” Cole said that he also took “one off” Dobro lessons from some of his favorite Dobro players like Todd Patrick Livingston and Mike Witcher, and he has had some correspondence with Andy Hall.
Regarding his Dobro influences, Cole said, “In the beginning I was super heavy listening to Jerry (Douglas) a lot. Then, as I was learning the history, going farther and farther back, I discovered Uncle Josh and I’ve been kind of stuck on Uncle Josh for the last several of years trying to get really close to his sound and technique. What he is doing does not come naturally to me and so it is really interesting to me to get in there and figure out what he is doing with his slants, and attack and the rolls. I’m definitely a huge fan of Uncle Josh. On our last record I wrote an original song called ‘7-11’ and we incorporated ‘Foggy Mountain Rock’ in there. But, I also admire everything that Jerry has been doing with the Celtic sessions and Strength in Numbers and everything in-between. I love all of it. Josh and Jerry are definitely the two largest influences.”
Cole Quest and the City Pickers
When asked how his current band came together, Cole said, “We initially recorded in 2016. We had originally formed a bar band called the Idiot Brigade. We were at the Grey Fox music festival playing music with friends to get some bar gigs and then a friend of ours, Steve Rosenthal, came to one of our sessions at a bar and said ‘I have a great recording studio and I want you to come record.’ He invited us in and we set aside some time. I had some original material that I had written and I invited some other friends outside of the bar band to come in with us and we made it a larger band. We recorded a bunch of stuff that we had been playing in the bars and also put in some original material. Once we made the CDs we realized that we needed a new name since it was a different situation than the bar gig. Since I was the one who was organizing and writing the material for the sessions, we made a new identity called Cole Quest and the City Pickers. Once we had the CD, we started playing out. We’ve been playing ever since. A few cast members have rotated, but Matheus and Christian, the harmonica player and the guitar player, are core members who are kind of the driving force.” Cole added, “Part of the existence of the project is to give attention to these guys who are local musicians in New York City who are the heart of good music, in my opinion.”
On the first band recording, they reached back and paid homage to Cole’s family by recording songs by Woody and Arlo Guthrie. They also took a lyric that Woody had written, called “My Name is New York,” and put a melody to it. Since that first project, titled Cole Quest and the City Pickers, which was recorded in 2016, the band next released their 2021 EP, titled Self [En]Titled. That project is mostly original material (see the review in Bluegrass Unlimited, July 2021). The band is currently finishing up a new project, titled Homegrown, with plans for a release date from Jalopy Records in July 2025 and an album release show scheduled in August. One single, “I Ain’t” was released in April and another, the John Hartford tune “In Tall Buildings” was released in May and a third single was released on the 18th of June. Music videos have also been produced in support of the singles.
When asked if there was a theme or concept for the new recording, Cole said, “The music that is on this album is about our roots, about where we come from as a band. I wrote all of the original material and there is a song called “Where I’m From,” and we also have covers of Woody songs and Arlo songs. Our Brazilian harmonica player, Matheus, sings a song in Portuguese. So, we did something to get his roots in there. So, it is an album about where we are coming from.”
Cole wrote four of the tunes on this new album. When asked about his songwriting, Cole said, “My parents were dancers and I was the first child in my family to go to school for computer science and math. I’m a little bit of a black sheep in that way. Everyone else is a heavy creative type. I’ve always been encouraged since I was little to be creative and express myself. Writing has always been a helpful journey for me. At a certain point, it made sense to put the writing to music. Growing up in the family, that is something that everyone does. So, it came naturally. I don’t think of myself as a virtuosic writer. It is something that is just helpful for me to help process the world around. I really enjoy playing music with other people. For me, music is about community. So, having an excuse to play songs with friends is a great thing for me. Being able to share that with audiences and have people tell me that they enjoy or disagree, or whatever it is about any of my writing, helps me feel connected to the world around me.”
Regarding the band’s touring schedule, Cole said, “We play as much as we can make it happen. We generally stick to the northeast for convenience, but we have done a few Florida tours and we’ve done two Germany tours (2023 and 2024) including the 20th edition of the International Bühler Bluegrass Festival in 2024 and shared the stage with the John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band. We did fifteen plus days in Germany, which were super fun. We did really well over there. We sold out of CDs halfway through the tour. We were really pleased.” The band also won the band competition at the Podunk Bluegrass Festival in 2023 and came back to perform at the event the next year, including doing a workshop, Woody’s Bluegrass Connection, with Del McCoury. This September, in support of the new album release, they plan to travel to Lexington, Kentucky, to play Woodsongs and they are hoping to get to New Orleans in January 2026 for the national Folk Alliance event.
Cole Quest and the City Pickers include Cole on vocals, Dobro, pedal steel, and acoustic guitar; Christian Apuzzo on vocals and guitar, Matheus Verardino playing harmonica, singing vocals and flatfooting; Mike Mulhollan on banjo and Craig Akin on bass. Also appearing on the newest recording are Jack Devereux on fiddle, penny whistle and harmony vocals, Wyndham Baird on organ and Konrad Meisser on drums.
In addition to the Cole Quest and the City Pickers band, Cole and the band’s guitar player, Christian Apuzzo, perform as a duo called Christian and Cole. Regarding this configuration, Cole said, “We focus on our harmonies. We have an album out and plan to do a second one later this year. We sing classic country harmonies like the Delmore Brothers, Louvin Brothers and even the Everly Brothers.” Their first album is titled Christian and Cole Sing and Play (christianandcole.com). Cole said, “That one was recorded in my living room. We set up three microphones and asked a friend to come over and hit record, so that is pretty earnest and honest, there was no editing.”
Guthrie Family Musicians
In addition to Cole continuing the Guthrie family music legacy, several of his cousins—Arlo’s kids—are also performing music. When asked about his cousins, Cole said, “Arlo is retired at this point, but his kids are still doing projects. My cousin Cathy has a project called Folk Uke with Willie Nelson’s daughter, Amy Nelson…they are great. Sarah Lee has her own stuff going on, she is always playing around and has been living in Austin. Annie, my other cousin, has a couple of CDs out under her own name and Abe has been playing in bands since he was a little kid, so he has always got some band going on. Abe’s son Krishna, has his own project up in Vermont too, the Krishna Guthrie Band.”
When asked if he ever gets the opportunity to play music with Arlo’s kids, he said, “Yeah, we’ve played a festival in Oklahoma called Woody Fest. They are all there and we always do songs together. We’ve done a bunch of playing together over the years either in the house or outside of the house. We are going to play at the Guthrie Center Church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, which is Arlo’s church from the story of ‘Alice’s Restaurant.’ That is the church. We are playing there in the beginning of June. I’m sure I’ll see some family members there and convince a few to get up on stage and play a song or two with us.”
Arlo’s four children all performed with him, to some degree, over the years. In an interview conducted by KDHX in St. Louis, before a Guthrie performance there in 2018, the interviewer asked about touring with his children. Arlo said, “Abe and Sarah Lee have been doing shows with me, off and on, for about 20 years. Annie and Cathy, my two other kids, have also joined us from time to time. For the upcoming show Abe & Sarah Lee will be with me but unlike we’ve done in the past, we’ll be sharing the stage for the entire evening. That’s a first.”
When asked if he ever had the opportunity to perform with Arlo, Cole said, “Not really. Our band wasn’t formed and I was young when Arlo was doing his thing. I would mostly just go and attend shows. There was the occasional end of the set where he would bring the whole family up and we would sing ‘This Land is Your Land’ or ‘Goodnight Irene,’ or ‘My Peace’ or something like that.”
Of Woody Guthrie’s eight children, the three that are still living today are Arlo (born 1947), Joady (born 1948) and Nora (born 1950). All three were born to the second of Guthrie’s three wives, Marjorie, who was married to Guthrie from 1945 to 1953. Guthrie was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease in 1952, a genetic disorder inherited from his mother. Two of Guthrie’s children from his first marriage, Sue and Gwen, also died from the disease. After Guthrie and his third wife divorced, in around 1955, Marjorie re-entered his life and cared for him until his death. Marjorie, a dancer and dance teacher, passed in 1983. Cole’s mother and father were also both dancers. Nora had studied dance with the Martha Graham Dance Company and at New York University. She later started her own dance company with Cole’s father, Ted Rotante. Ted now works as a sculptor.
Woody Guthrie’s music will likely live forever, as will bluegrass music—especially with bands like Cole Quest and the City Pickers helping to preserve the music and exploring and presenting the commonalities between the folk songs of Woody Guthrie and the bluegrass music of Bill Monroe. Do yourself a favor and check out Cole Quest and the City Pickers on your favorite streaming platform or visit colequest.com to find out more about the band and learn if they will be playing at a venue or festival near you.
