Technically, Arlo Guthrie is a one-hit wonder. Thus saith Billboard, anyway. The only chart hit Guthrie enjoyed was a still-familiar number called "City of New Orleans." You know: "Good mornin', America, how are ya? Don'tcha know me, I'm your favorite son ... " The catch is it's not a song Guthrie wrote. He was performing in a Chicago bar, The White Knight, when a singer-songwriter named Steve Goodman asked to play for him. Guthrie agreed on the condition that Goodman's performance lasted only as long as it took Guthrie to drink the beer he demanded Goodman buy him. The result was a #4 smash, covered in 1985 to Grammy-winning success by Willie Nelson.

Yet an earlier song has emerged as Guthrie's standout. It drew him from under the awe-inspiring shadow of his legendary father, Woody, the Dust Bowl folk troubador. It inspired a 1969 film starring Arlo himself. That song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," fills the "A" side of Guthrie's 1967 album, Alice's Restaurant. (In Ozark slang, a "massacree" is an occurrence so amazing it can scarcely be believed.) It tells the true-ish story of a Thanksgiving Day debacle in which Guthrie and a friend were arrested for littering. It seems they had tossed bags of garbage off the side of a privately-owned cliff after finding the city dump closed for the holiday. When Guthrie was drafted shortly thereafter, that offense held the weight of a felony, which is how he escaped a tour in Vietnam. The song lasts 18 minutes and 34 seconds - the same duration, Guthrie notes, as one erased length of Watergate tape.

There was an Alice's restaurant, by the way, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Alice's last name was Brock, and her restaurant was called The Back Room. Norman Rockwell's studio was directly above it. The song doesn't have anything to do with the restaurant, though. It begins in Brock's home, a deconsecrated church that served as a beatnik hangout in the early 1960s.

The song appealed to New York deejays, who played it in late-night slots. Its length kept it from the mainstream charts, but many stations play it every year as a Thanksgiving tradition. Its catchy little chorus is supplemented by an extended "talking blues" monologue about the silliness of human conflict and the recurring injustice of American justice. Guthrie rewrote it over the decades to poke fun at Russian spies and the Iraq War. He doesn't play it often now, saving it for 10-year anniversaries and other special occasions. Luckily, this year marks a half-century since Guthrie wrote it, so he'll be playing it at this Friday's appearance in Olympia's Washington Center.

Listening to Guthrie's early albums, it's easy to reevaluate him as less of an earnest folkie and more of a guitar-pickin' standup comic. Indeed, he cops to having been influenced by comedians Lord Buckley and Bill Cosby in addition to Lead Belly and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. He's the kind of guy who doesn't think twice about rhyming "motorcycle" with "pickle" if it gets him a laugh. Despite a reputation as an everlasting hippie, he's a libertarian Republican now. He's voiced support for Ron Paul and disgust for both sides of the current Presidential election. People change over time, and Guthrie has endured long enough to assume paradoxical complexities. Life's a Mystic Journey, as one of his album titles puts it, but one thing remains clear: "You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant."

ARLO GUTHRIE, 7:30 p.m., Friday, April 15, Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia, $19-$68, 360.753.8585