OKEMAH – Arlo Guthrie drove into town by himself in a pickup truck. Before he appeared on stage Wednesday night here at the Crystal Theater, Woody Guthrie's younger sister, Mary Jo Edgmon, insisted the audience sing "Happy Birthday" to him, his 54th birthday having been Tuesday. Like a good relative, he grinned and bore it, waving to the crowd.

A young woman behind me sighed and chuckled, "It's a family affair tonight."

And every night this weekend.

That comment nailed the overriding spirit of this year's Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, the fourth annual folk music celebration in the late balladeer's hometown organized by the intra-state Woody Guthrie Coalition. It's all about family -- immediate, extended and created.

The first two rows at Wednesday night's tribute concert were full of Guthrie relatives. Don Conoscenti and Ellis Paul shared the stage that night, and Conoscenti ribbed Paul about his new haircut; they've spent the week tagging around town together as if they were actually brothers. As fans arrive in the campground and at the various Okemah venues, there are numerous jubilant reunions of old friends, many of whom see each other once a year -- at this festival.

Larry Long, who is scheduled to perform on the main stage Saturday night, said in a conversation earlier this week that this family feeling is exactly why this festival has remained successful in these early years. Long, an Iowa native, struggled with a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in 1989 here in Okemah, when the town was still somewhat divided over honoring its hometown hero (a dispute that arose because of the communist company Guthrie sometimes kept in the 40s).

"This festival has a great capacity to do good work and honor the place that Okemah is," Long said. "When we were trying it, that's what we wanted to achieve: to make this a celebration of the traditions that nurtured Woody, his sense of love of community and place and the family traditions that make places like Okemah so delightful."

A sense of community and a laid-back spirit made Wednesday night's tribute concert all the more enjoyable. For the first time in the festival's four years, though, the Wednesday night show had a handful of empty seats, largely because previous kick-off shows have featured big- name talent. This year the Wednesday fund-raiser was the annual tribute concert modeled after the bi-coastal tributes following Guthrie's death in 1967. Nearly two dozen performers cycled through the show, performing Guthrie songs between readings of Guthrie's prose.

But the lack of mega-commercial giants on the historic Crystal stage hardly dampened the energy or worth of the ticket. Instead, performers and audience were able to let their hair down and experience the occasional magic that occurs when everyone laughs and thinks, "Well, we're all family here."

Of course, when a reviewer begins carping about the laid- back spirit of a performance, that usually means the sound system was bad and the performers forgot some words and there were some production mistakes. Some and maybe all of these things were true Wednesday night. The crucial difference is that nothing seriously derailed the show -- or the moments of magic -- and if there's somebody out there complaining I'd be real surprised.

The first magic moment came early, on the fourth song. Conos centi and Paul together sang Guthrie's eerie portrait of a Vigilante Man, accompanied only by Conoscenti's Kokopeli-painted banjo. He played the song with a ghostly tension and foreboding, and Paul's piercing harmony gave it an unearthly feel. The song marched like a posse through the darkness, evoking Stephen Stills live performances of "Black Queen." They kept their eyes locked on each other from start to finish -- who knows if they'd ever performed this together before? -- and the audience barely breathed.

The second breath-taker was nicely balanced, the fourth song from the end. Mary Reynolds, a native of Oklahoma City, played and sang "Hobo's Lullaby." It's not as important to say that she played the song as it is to say she sang it. Reynold's voice is a clarion call, a beautiful and controlled birdsong, and with the help of two friends backing her with harmonies, the performance was as if three angels were hovering over a lonely hobo in a dank boxcar, their voices alone filling him with hope.

Those were the jaw-droppers. Other great moments included Slaid Cleaves' chilling reading of "1913 Massacre," a festival repeat that never gets old; a fiery (but not brimstony) run through "Jesus Christ" by the versatile and spunky trio Still on the Hill; and the playful -- and only barely cheesey -- dialogue between the Farm Couple on "Philadelphia Lawyer."

After the all-star finales -- with every performer from the night crammed on the stage for "Hard Travelin'" (jumpstarted by Paul, who belts it out with gusto), "Oklahoma Hills" and "This Land Is Your Land" -- half the audience hung around chatting and meeting the musicians. The theater sweepers eventually had to shove people out the door. There was no boundary between star and fan, no rushing off to an ivory tour bus. This is folk music, after all, and the folks gathered here this weekend are one big family.

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Thomas Conner, World entertainment writer, can be reached at 581-8473 or via e-mail at thomas.conner@tulsaworld.com.