Woody Guthrie was born 100 years ago.His Family has Scottish roots so it was fitting Glasgow would be amongst a few set venues for this celebratory tour.
Billy Braggs first connection with the work of Guthrie was when he was invited by Woody Guthries Daughter Nora.Out of an archive of over 3,000 songs Woody barely recorded a single digit percentage of them , none of them to a musical score.This presents problems and opportunities to would be ressurecters , Bragg resolved this very early on by intimating , with Noras blessing, his own style based mostly of Brit punk and independent acoustic traditions.
The event started with some wonderful songs from an upcoming KT Tunstall Album of which the best was an evocative piece called Invisible Empire:( give it about 30 seconds to kick-in).
The night was designed to showcase the totality of Woodys themes as well as his influences of which Leadbelly was a major inspiration.Paul Robeson also gave Woody many gigs leading to public exposure in the days when there was no such thing like touring as we know today.Almost all of Woodys gigs were free performances at pickets and Strikes in an age when even being suspected Socialist was a blacklisted across the states offence in legal and cultural circuits.
Woody hated Fascists , here is a typical Bragg version of battle cry against the Nazis and their supporters at home and abroad:
In the video below Bragg gives an American audience a British style speech on the NHS and Twitter:
Woody spent some time in Glasgow when having been shipwrecked during the D-Day Landing he awaited transportation back to the US.Bragg performed a World premiere of the song Woody Guthrie wrote about the city and the clyde.You can see it performed in this link
Billy Bragg finished proceedings with an updated version of the perennial Great Leap Forward:
You can get a lot more details of the life times and legacy of Woody Guthrie from his dedicated website.
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