David Rovics

The Portland, Oregon, singer-songwriter may not wear leather but, according to one of his songs, he likes throwing bricks.

Sung in the whiney teenage sneer of Wheatus crossed with The Offspring, it typifies his approach to political engagement.

Committed to the leftist counterculture, to the extent that he's made his extensive back catalogue freely available as downloadable MP3 files, Rovics nonetheless recognises the importance of combining anger with self-deprecating humour.

It's an especially useful tool when performing to the converted at protests and fundraisers such as this one for the Morning Star.

By the time he appears the audience has already been keyed up by a short set from David Broad, who pours the spirit of Woody Guthrie into the impressively finger-picked delta-blues of Saint James Infirmary Blues, and by a motivational speech from Aslef vice-president Tosh McDonald.

If Rovics feels the pressure then it certainly doesn't show over the course of two sprawling sets of highly topical material.

Tackling subjects that are all too often sidelined in popular culture, he uses everyday language to expound on natural gas extraction (No Fracking Way), the redistribution of wealth (Pirates of Somalia) and direct action (Occupy Wall Street).

Wielding his acoustic guitar like Bruce Springsteen putting a wrecking ball through Ani DiFranco's Little Plastic Castle, he uses the hard-edged phrasing of punk poets and at one point gives a reading of Attila the Stockbroker's Asylum Seeking Daleks.

Given this verbosity, it's little surprise that he occasionally forgets the words when taking requests from the floor and delivering a written-to-the- wire new song about the US primaries.

For all his jokes about needing a lectern, there's usually someone in the audience to shout out the words and this forges the true communal spirit of folk music.

This sense of solidarity increases as voices mass in songs of dissent and "oppositional defiant disorder," reaching a climax with a rousing performance of The Internationale to close the set.

It may be a long time before you hear the self-proclaimed "whiney left-wing guy" on the radio.

But chances are you'll be a far better anarchist if you download a couple of his tracks.

David Rovics is touring Britain and internationally throughout the year. For details, visit www.davidrovics.com