Music that's always on the move

Given that King spends so much of his time on the road, a travelling troubadour accompanied by only his guitar, it might seem that his new tack on the album I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier isn't that different.

And it's the perfect time to protest against most things, against wars, bankers, governments and much of country music.

But typically, protesting Michael Weston King-style isn't quite what you'd imagine. Not just a guitar, vocals and an attitude. He takes the art form to a new level, still simple but sophisticated.

And while the album does protest against most things, it also rebels against the obvious songs and the artists who don't bother to protest against anything any more.

"I'd started off thinking it was going to be the archetypal one man one guitar thing, just covers," he says.

"But it got me thinking about the songs and I started writing my own. And the songs other people were suggesting weren't coming from the folksy side of things.

"There are a lot of obvious 1950s-1960s protest songs, but there didn't seem much point in recycling them again and I wanted to broaden the spectrum away from just the Woody Guthrie thing anyway.

"It was striking a chord, there's a lot to moan about. The last few years have been difficult, not just economically.

"What worried me was that in the 1960s and '70s the big names of the day still found time to have some social comment in their songs, Lennon, Dylan, whoever.

"But that doesn't seem to have been happening in the past 20 years.

"It's still the same people writing protest songs, Neil Young, Tom Waits, but not anyone who's become famous in the past 15 years. Do we get any social comment from Coldplay?"

The result is an eclectic collection. There's a superb soul-folk cover of Jim Ford and Bobby Womack's Sounds Of Our Time, a pair of protest king Phil Ochs's songs given a rocked-up treatment, the economy angst of Brownie McGhee's High Price Blues, plus the 1915 title track ("although it had an old marching tune, so I gave it a new one.")

King has long written exquisite songs, first for his country rock band the Good Sons then for his elegant solo triumph A Decent Man, as well as country songs and pop songs over a clutch of sassy albums. His protest works follow suit.

"My songs seem to have been anti-war, protesting about the situation if Afghanistan and Iraq," he says.

"In Time is written from the perspective of an ordinary Iraqi having to explain to his daughter what on Earth is going on.

"Hey Ma I'm Coming Home was written from the perspective of a soldier writing to his mum, born out of talking to people who had children in their twenties serving in Iraq and were petrified what was going to happen."

The production is intriguing without being full-on. The result is uplifting, enigmatic and changes constantly - protest songs like you've never heard them before.

"Compared to some of my other studio records it's quite stripped-down," he says.

"But I did want it to be a bit more than just voice and guitar. I've been doing shows with a percussion player and we managed to give the songs a backbeat. It's halfway between a full production and a sparse sound."

Perhaps appropriately, the album was recorded halfway up a Welsh hillside in the bleak midwinter at Bos Studios, owned by Gwyn Jones, who engineered and helped out on bass.

King was persuaded by his chum and sometime touring partner Jeb Loy Nichols, who lives nearby and records there.

It features King's regular sideman Alan Cook on steel and mandolin, Paul Hesketh on guitar and bass, and Nichols on backing vocals.

King is unstoppable when it comes to recording and it often takes time for people to catch up with him.

The album My Darling Clementine, which carries classy modern country duets with real-life partner Lou Dalgleish, is a good example. It was recorded before Soldier, but has still to find a label.

It's extraordinary in that it was the work of Goldtop Studios in north London, where both Nick Lowe and Geraint Watkins recorded their own critically acclaimed albums.

That album features producer Neil Brockbank, a regular with Lowe and Watkins, who worked on Martin Belmont's star-studded The Guest List album, as well as the cream of Brit country musicians including Belmont on guitar, Watkins on piano and one of Britain's top fiddlers in Bob Loveday.

It's an exquisite record and one that should be heard. If you've got a label, start queuing now.

There's also another album, only available from shows or his website Forget Me Knots, which is a collection of odd tracks mostly recorded for other collections.

There's a live Rake by Townes Van Zandt - the pair were great friends and even recorded together - Raindrops On The Window, from an unreleased French Kevin Coyne tribute album, plus a couple of Clementine demos.

King is always someone who's walked his own path, but his classy idiosyncratic work is finally being recognised by more than fans, with a nomination for best Americana act in the British Country Music Awards. It would be a travesty if he didn't win.

The tag Americana is something else that King protests about.

He's right, it does fail to sum up his mixture of intelligent songs, soaring vocals and intelligent arrangements - but no other tag does any better.

This feature appears in the September issue of Maverick, Europe's leading country-roots magazine. www.maverick-country.com