The revolution of man

CAMBRIDGE -- Woody Guthrie, the godfather of activist folk singers, adorned his guitar with a hand-written slogan: "This Machine Kills Fascists." More than a half century later Tom Morello, a rock-guitar god turned protest singer who says he would like to be the black Woody Guthrie, has scrawled his own battle cry on a scuffed six-string: "Whatever It Takes."

At sound check before his show at T.T. the Bear's Place in June, Morello is wearing an IWW baseball cap, to show solidarity with the Industrial Workers of the World union, and a faded Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. He isn't new to radical politics, but performing in coffeehouses and clubs is a radical change for Morello. As virtuoso shredder for the outspoken leftist band Rage Against the Machine and rock supergroup Audioslave (whose fate is unclear since Chris Cornell left earlier this year), the guitarist is accustomed to playing packed arenas. As alter-ego the Nightwatchman, Morello makes his Newport Folk Festival debut tomorrow, on the second stage, performing acoustic anthems from his debut album, "One Man Revolution."

"The whole journey for me has been like Dylan in reverse," says Morello. "He began as an acoustic protest singer and then developed as an experimental electric musician. I've spent a number of years as an experimental electric musician and now I'm going to reclaim Newport."

Rage has reunited after a seven-year hiatus to play a half dozen or so festivals, and while more touring and recording may be on the horizon (Morello pleads ignorance), the 43-year-old musician's mind -- and clearly, Morello's heart and soul -- is on the Nightwatchman. When it's suggested that the no-frills solo act must be easy to fit between the cracks of his other projects, Morello explains that the paradigm has shifted, and that from now on whatever else he does will be peripheral to the Nightwatchman.

"This is literally a one-man revolution," he says. "I can go anywhere and sing anything. I don't have to wait for anyone else to write lyrics that express what I feel, or have a band meeting about whether or not we do something." That means Morello is free to play at demonstrations and rallies; he estimates the Nightwatchman has appeared at several hundred. On occasion he's been tear-gassed, and was once, Morello proudly reports, arrested for civil disobedience. He's toured with punk rockers Anti-Flag, politically conscious rappers the Coup, and like-minded troubadours Billy Bragg and Steve Earle. Morello was the opening act on one of filmmaker Michael Moore's speaking tours, and the Nightwatchman song "Alone Without You" is featured in Moore's new film, "Sicko."

Newport Folk Festival senior producer Bob Jones predicts that the Nightwatchman will make a splash at this year's event; he specifically booked Morello onto the smaller stage to maximize his connection with the audience.

"He'll have that place packed and the people will be a handshake away," says Jones. "Lots of people in our audience listen to the words, and Tom will have them listening, that's for sure. I would hope he'll have them on their feet."

The seeds for the Nightwatchman were planted four years ago at Hollywood's Covenant House, a homeless shelter for teens, where Morello hosted a Thanksgiving Day talent show. He watched a 19-year-old street kid sing two songs with as much conviction, Morello says, as anyone he'd ever heard. The proverbial light bulb went off. What, he wondered, was keeping him from doing the same?

That night Morello went home and wrote two songs. Soon after, he accompanied friends to an open-mike night at a local club, and he signed up as the Nightwatchman, "so that people wouldn't expect a Tom Morello set, which carries a whole different set of expectations."

Performing solo was mind-blowing.

"I felt not the least bit nervous about stepping out on a stage as an electric guitarist for a crowd of 50,000, but playing anonymously in front of 12 people and a latte machine was terrifying," Morello says. "I had the words written on my arm. On some nights it felt like everybody's soul in the room was at stake."

Morello traces his political awareness back to a childhood spent in Libertyville, Ill., where he was the only black kid in town. Morello was bullied, and twice woke up to find nooses hanging in his family's garage. His father, a guerrilla rebel, fought in Kenya's Mau Mau uprising; his great-uncle was Kenya's first elected president, who led that country's independence struggle against Britain. Morello's Irish-Italian mother, who was active in the civil-rights movement, ran Parents for Rock and Rap, an anti-censorship organization.

"The history in my house stood in stark contrast to the conservative community I grew up in," says Morello. "I was in this Midwestern high school where kids were just worried about getting on the wrestling team, and I'm thinking, 'Maybe there's more.' " He credits his discovery of the Clash and work at an underground newspaper for jump-starting his own lifelong pursuit of activism.

"Tom is everything a citizen of a democracy should be," says Steve Earle in an e-mail. "He will always ask tough questions and he will never accept pat answers because he was raised that way. Trust me -- I've met his mother."

Morello arrived at Harvard in 1982, where he became involved in the campus divestment movement, practiced guitar six hours a day, played in a different cover band every year, and graduated (with honors) with a degree in political science. He then went to Hollywood, where he worked as an aide for Senator Alan Cranston while scouring the city's music scene for a radical singer who liked heavy metal and Public Enemy. He found Zack de la Rocha, and Rage Against the Machine was born.

Rage's political agenda was as aggressive as its music; when the band split up in 2000 Morello stayed involved through the Axis of Justice, a nonprofit he founded with System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian that supports grassroots activism, and formed Audioslave with two of his Rage bandmates (bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk) and Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell.

But Audioslave's comparatively mild political stance didn't slake Morello's thirst, and by 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, he needed a new musical outlet for his anger. That fall he dreamed up the Nightwatchman, and the next year -- the day after the 2004 presidential election -- Morello decided he would make a Nightwatchman record.

"We literally have a war criminal in the White House," he says. "That's not hyperbole. The fact that there aren't riots in the streets is something I find surprising. But there's a riot in these songs."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music visit boston.com/ae/ music/blog.