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Songwriters' Circle

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Music: Classic Pop & Rock

Singer-songwriters get together to perform their own classics, chat and collaborate

Singer-songwriters get together in intimate venues to perform their own classics, chat about their work and collaborate musically

Steve Earle

Tom Morello

Diana Jones

Songwriters' Circle: American Folk

American Folk

11/03/2012

BBC Four - Songwriters' Circle, American Folk

Steve Earle, Diana Jones and Tom Morello perform songs and chat about their work.

American folk/country singer-songwriters Steve Earle, Diana Jones and Tom Morello take to the stage at London's Bush Hall to perform, collaborate and chat about their work.

Distinguished American singer-songwriters Steve Earle, Diana Jones and Tom Morello kick off a short run of Songwriters' Circle recorded at Bush Hall in London, with songs that deal with the experience of the common man and woman in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
 
Since his Guitar Town debut in the late 80s, Steve Earle has been equally famed for his political activism and former life on the edge, but his music alone would have ensured star status. Here, the master craftsman shares paeans to the oppressed and the overlooked with The Mountain and This City and nods to his own gun-toting past with The Devil's Right Hand.

One Man Revolution, Tom Morello, steps outside his career as lead guitarist with rabble-rousers Rage Against The Machine to wield a mean acoustic guitar as agit-folk alter-ego The Nightwatchman. He's an upbeat, likeable presence, with songs ranging from the righteous anger of No-one Left to the sensitive articulation of doubt, The Garden of Gethsemane.

Holding her own between the two is Nashville resident Diana Jones, channelling the Appalachian mountain music of her forebears, in the tradition of the likes of the Carter Family. She performs her sparse, beautiful songs of love and loss, from the revenge fantasy of If I Had a Gun to the heart-wrenching Henry Russell's Last Words and Pony.

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