Pop Music Review : Bragg Captures the Essence of Guthrie

How could Englishman Billy Bragg sit there with his cockney accent and cups of tea and tell us about Woody Guthrie--at the ultra-American Autry Museum of Western Heritage, no less?

Very well, thank you. Even more than last year’s illuminating “Mermaid Ave.” album, Tuesday’s solo performance and lecture, part of the museum’s current Guthrie exhibit, proved that Nora Guthrie was right to entrust her father’s vast archives of unrecorded lyrics to Bragg. In two-plus freewheeling hours of talk and songs, Bragg showed his kinship to the Dust Bowl balladeer in both social commitment and wit.

If the melodies he’s applied to Guthrie’s words--at the Autry, mostly ones that were not included on the album--aren’t what the late folk activist would have used, Bragg explained, they’re not meant to be. His mission was a partnership, not a tribute. And, he noted, the music he used was often rooted in English traditions--the very origin of the Appalachian music that Guthrie borrowed for many of his songs.

Mostly, he made the case that there was much more to Guthrie than “This Land Is Your Land.” Among the more than 2,000 unrecorded lyrics in the archives, he found “many Woody Guthries,” and Tuesday he evoked often contrasting images--the social commentator and the scatological joker, the rambling rake and the sensitive family man, the cowboy poet and the space-age dreamer. There may be only one Billy Bragg, but he was the right person for this job.