When Billy Bragg first took on the task of writing the music to the old Woody Guthrie lyrics for his Mermaid Avenue project with Wilco, he was given a T-shirt from Woody's daughter Nora that read "wwwd," which stood for "what would Woody do?"

"If Woody Guthrie were alive today", Bragg said from the stage halfway through tonight's powerful performance, "he'd be playing right here at Irving Plaza -- with Leadbelly!" With Nora Guthrie looking on attentively, Bragg and his band the Blokes took Woody's legacy, as well as some of Bragg's best songs, to a higher level.

Starting out the night alone on electric guitar, Bragg sang two songs from early in his career (one political, one love-lamenting) to an appreciative crowd before bringing out his bandmates. Featuring a drummer who looked like he could have been Bragg's older brother, and one time Small Faces keyboardist Ian McLagen, the Blokes made a tight, musically inventive unit that Bragg clearly enjoyed playing with. They added new twists and turns to the Mermaid Avenue songs, pulling them out of their Americana settings and infusing them with Caribbean rhythms, hopped-up tempos and wild soloing, as Bragg danced around in his strange and rubbery way. "I dance this way because I'm someone's dad," he admitted to the audience, seemingly unashamed.

Between songs Bragg put his hands in his pockets and offered up some quick-witted comedy, riffing on the Clinton scandal, the folks in Michigan (where the band played the night before) and his own over-the-hill fashion sense. These off-the-cuff monologues, combined with the silly rock & roll antics of the Blokes (chasing each other around the stage and fanning down McLagen's keyboards with towels), made for an evening that felt more like a lively corner pub than a concert hall.

After the band had gone off "to check their e-mail," Bragg performed beautifully heartfelt renditions of "Tank Park Salute," "Must I Paint You a Picture" and "A Lover Sings," with McLagen staying on to sweeten the sound. Then the Blokes returned to rip through Guthrie's "All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose", "California Stars," and the new Bragg tune "He'll Go Down."

"My Flying Saucer," a song Woody penned as a "supersonic boogie," was debuted as one of the thirty songs left over from the Mermaid Avenue sessions that may be compiled onto a second album in the future. "This one we were hoping to get on the X-Files soundtrack", said Bragg by way of an introduction, before the band demonstrated just what a spacecraft-inspired supersonic boogie sounds like.

As the music returned to earth, the set closed out with Bragg's signature tune "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward." The song's socially conscious lyrics were given a Nineties' update: Che Guevara becomes Jesse Ventura and Hulk Hogan runs for president with "Impeach Me" as his slogan. Encore renditions of a reggae-tinged "Hoodoo Voodoo" and a hoedown version of "Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key" were clever departures from their more traditional-sounding Mermaid Avenue incarnations.

At the night's close, by virtue of his inspired songcraft and the musical reinvention inherent in his set, Bragg proved to have a pretty good handle on what Woody would have done.

EVAN SCHLANSKY
(December 14, 1998)