by Sam Cannon

Before Billy Bragg will talk about Mermaid Avenue, an album wherein Britain’s “urbane folk” songsmith, Americana superstars Wilco, and a handful of select guest musicians (Natalie Merchant, Corey Harris) put to music never-before-heard Woody Guthrie lyrics, he digs for a dog-eared binder. The binder contains some hundred or so song lyrics written and recalled by Woody Guthrie after Huntington’s disease made it difficult and later impossible for him to perform. Bragg knows what you’re thinking: Why did Nora Guthrie (Woody’s daughter and head of the Woody Guthrie Archives, where more dozens more dog-eared binders are kept) entrust an Englishman to take on an endeavor so purely American? But rather than catalog the similarities between Guthrie and Bragg, of which there are more than you’d think, or cite Bragg’s vast knowledge of American folk history, Bragg pulls out this binder of lyrics. “Take a look,” he says, nodding with his head as he chews on a mouthful of quesadilla.

You thumb through the pages, mostly typewritten in rough dustbowl English and annotated with simple handwritten scrawls, and history pours out. Not to sound corny, but it’s overwhelming. Bragg agrees, “You know, Woody Guthrie never sold five thousand records in his life. And we’re not talking obscure records. We’re talking some of the great songs of the American tradition to ever be put on a record — “Parcels of Plenty,” “This Land Is Your Land"… Nobody bought them in his lifetime. Because he got Huntington’s disease in the mid-50s — in the hospital, unable to speak or move at the time of greatest fame during the folk revival — he couldn’t say, “No, no, no, I’m not some shithead from…”

Bragg pauses, as if realizing all over again the significance of all this. “Had Woody been alive in the ’50s and ’60s, he could’ve played all these songs. He could’ve had recording contracts to make more albums, but he was too ill and by ‘67 he was dead.”

Instead the task was left to Nora and, in turn, Bragg and company to bring this entire period of Guthrie’s life to light. Woody Guthrie, Bragg tells you, is the first singer/songwriter we know and all we have to show for his incredible life is the hobo icon — the Dustbowl Troubadour, the simple Guthrie. For a songwriter who so willingly bore his thoughts, feelings, and passions in his music, it’s seems a crime. With Mermaid Avenue (named after the Coney Island street where Woody spent most of his New York years) you see Guthrie’s activist side, his fatherly side, his husbandly side, his Merchant Marine side, and you learn of his secret obsession with Ingrid Bergman.

Of course, you’ve already heard Guthrie’s post-Plains music ("Bound For Glory” was written in 1942, two years after he moved to New York and as Grapes of Wrath was opening Eastern America’s eyes to the Western Expansion). But there’s much more to him then you know. More to him than Bragg would have known if he hadn’t been handed this project. “Most people who know something about Woody Guthrie know as much stuff as you know, or as I knew before starting this project. That’s why it’s essential to be able to evoke this different Woody Guthrie in these interviews. These interviews aren’t about me — they’re about Woody, who he is and where he belongs.”

You listen. You think, He’s right, I do hear Woody. I know this is Billy’s voice, or Natalie’s voice, or Jeff’s voice, but I hear Woody. It’s in his language, in his phrasing, his heart is all over the page and all over Mermaid Avenue. Just as when you read this passage from the binder in front of you, you can hear Woody speak as if he were next to you:

“I made up these last three verses out of my own head and shoulders but I first heard this down in a Texas panhandle whiskey store where I had me a job as a clerk. It was in 1935, a long, tall Negro shoeshiner from the barber shop right next door where he shined shoes and kept the shop cleaned up. I’d be working in the drugstore and he’d come down and open up the barber shop where he shoed a few shines. It was pretty airish some mornings so he’d need him a few drinks to warm up on. He knew my weakness was him singing and playing that old busted down guitar. So he’d come in and not say much and saunter over and pick up this old git box. Then he’d just play along pretty quiet and I’d quit my work and he’d be all warmed up when he’d sung me out of a few drinks. I called him Spiderfinger because his fingers walked up and down that guitar neck just like a great big hairy tarantula. This was just one of the tunes he sung, I forgot just how it went but knowed it was too good to keep hid out so I throwed some words of my own onto it and whistled on out down the line still a rollin’. And it’s my song now and it’s my version and she’s still a rollin’ just like Spiderfinger sung it and played it and shook half of Texas and Kansas and Oklahoma and New Arizona with it.”

This is the tradition Guthrie came from. Songs weren’t property, they were ideas — meant to be shared, modified, and passed along. And as such, songs are only worth something if they’re being sung and heard and enjoyed. It would seem to be a dangerous notion in today’s world of licensing rights and copyright clearances, but to Guthrie it was how things were done. As if he needed direct authorization to calm his own mind, Bragg points to a quote from that he cut out from the notes to “You Ought To Be Satisfied Now” and pasted beneath a Xeroxed photo of Guthrie on the back of the binder in your hands:

“I made this one up like you see her right here on this auction block and I like her just the way she is. But if you want to take her and change her a little bit for the better then, by Gobs, grab her and make her happy.”

Though Bragg enjoys the autobiographical appeal of these songs, he takes even greater pleasure from insisting that Mermaid Avenue is the album that he and Wilco and the 1940s Guthrie would have made had they all sat down together in a studio. This isn’t just some of Guthrie’s best work, this is Bragg’s and Wilco’s best work and Bragg is awfully proud. He saw her up on the auction block, grabbed her, and made her happy. And Woody’s music is still a rollin’.#