Peter, Paul & Mary's Peter Yarrow will perform at the Tower Theatre on Wednesday with Lonesome Traveler, the band from the off-Broadway show of the same name that chronicled the history of folk music. (Submitted photo)

Peter Yarrow saw “Lonesome Traveler” toward the end of its off-Broadway run in April 2015, and was so moved, he brought his family back the next night for the show’s closing.

The musical, directed and written by James O’Neil and featuring a full band, chronicled the history of folk music from its Appalachian roots in the 1920s to the genre’s revival in the 1960s centered around scenes in New York City and San Francisco. Yarrow, of course, was a key figure in that revival as one-third of folk/pop crossover trio Peter, Paul & Mary, which among other things helped launch Bob Dylan’s career and contributed originals such as “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”

“I said to people, ‘This is the closest you’ll ever get to feeling that spirit that we shared in that time in the early ’60s,” Yarrow said in February from his getaway in Telluride, Colorado. “And I wrote a note to them just telling them how terrific I thought they were, but I also went back the next night to see the show with my daughter and my granddaughter and some of my associates and other friends. It was the last night, and I wanted everybody to see it because it was so beautiful and brilliant. But at the end of it, they invited me to come onstage and I jammed with the whole cast, singing songs like ‘This Little Light of Mine’ and ‘Down By the Riverside.’”

Earlier this year, a concert version of the show, featuring its eponymous band and Yarrow, played select dates throughout the U.S. The Tower Theatre was originally on this run, but the March 4 date was postponed due to a “medical emergency,” according to an email from theater executive director Ray Solley. The rescheduled show arrives in Bend on Wednesday.

Yarrow and his longtime partner in Peter, Paul & Mary, Noel Paul Stookey, helped the show’s director and producer with the publishing rights for the songs in order to bring the concert on the road, Yarrow said. After the concert version debuted in Ventura, California, Yarrow was invited to join a tour.

“I do concerts all the time, and I’m very fortunate people really love the concerts and are very complimentary,” Yarrow said. “But when they see this conjunction of my singing along with Lonesome Traveler, something else is communicated, is felt. There’s a sense of the uniting of the generations in a certain kind of way that has its own quality and is very, very compelling. And also, people are very grateful for it because in this terribly divided time and a very vitriolic time, to have that sense of unanimity in the concert is really just — it’s a balm; it’s a salve. It’s a soothing reassurance of something inside us all.”

Along with Peter, Paul & Mary (represented by songs such as Yarrow’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and “If I Had a Hammer”), the show pays tribute to expected folk luminaries such as Pete Seeger and The Weavers, Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez, as well as digging into the roots of country music (The Carter Family) and Delta blues (Leadbelly).

But Yarrow insists the show isn’t just nostalgic. He performs some of his newer compositions with the Lonesome Traveler band, including “The Children are Listening,” a song with an anti-bullying message that feels particularly relevant in light of the country’s political and social polarization.

“In the same sense that Peter, Paul & Mary was able to be … advocates in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement and the women’s movement and the anti-apartheid movement and the climate movement,” Yarrow said, “now this performance with Lonesome Traveler makes it very clear that there’s that arc whereby music can be a force for bringing people together in the kind of spirit that we desperately need in this country.”

As Yarrow alluded, Peter, Paul & Mary hit the airwaves at a tumultuous time in history. The trio’s honeyed harmonies and polished approach helped elevate politically-minded folk songs such as “Hammer” into the public consciousness, and the group, along with other folk stars such as Dylan, Baez and Phil Ochs, found itself soundtracking a social movement.

Yarrow said he recognizes many parallels between now and then — especially the next generation’s willingness to make its voice heard. He mentioned the student protests and activism following February’s high school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

“What you’re seeing now is a very parallel to the anti-war movement that had its center in college students who were a few years older than these high-school students,” Yarrow said. “But what happened was their lives were in danger. What was happening was that we had a draft, and the body bags and the body counts came back, and this was a war that should not have been fought. … Well, today we have a parallel situation because these kids’ lives are in jeopardy and they know it.

“… So the parallel is there,” he continued. “It was the young people that got us out of the Vietnam War, and I believe it will be these young people that will not only make America abandon the right to carry an assault weapon … but it will also ignite the capacity of young people to address other things that they feel are important.”