Politically charged New York rock group Outernational has enlisted Tom Morello for a new recording of Woody Guthrie’s poignant immigration ballad “Deportees” that the band is making available as a free download in response to Arizona’s recent law targeting illegal immigrants.

The group has put out the song, arranged as a accordion-driven waltz, ahead of a planned protest against the law in Arizona on Saturday, which band members say they will attend.

“We recorded 'Deportees' with Tom Morello and are going down to Arizona on May 29th to stand with all the people courageously fighting back against these unjust and immoral laws,” Outernational’s Miles Solay said in a statement issued this week. “Outernational is about a whole new world, a world without borders and nations. Todos somos illegales. We are all illegals.”

Morello, long known for his own politically provocative music with Rage Against the Machine and the Nightwatchman, said, “Prejudice and ignorance are at the core of Arizona's recent immigration legislation and Woody Guthrie's ‘Deportees’ was written to combat just that sort of prejudice."

Guthrie wrote the song following a 1948 plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon in Central California, killing 28 Mexican migrant workers and four Americans. The New York Times report of the crash listed the names of the three flight crew members and a security guard, but referred to the Mexican workers only as “deportees."

It was originally popularized by Guthrie’s friend Pete Seeger and subsequently covered by numerous artists including Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Guthrie’s son Arlo and Emmylou Harris, Bruce Springsteen, the Kingston Trio, Dolly Parton and the Byrds.

Outernational featuring Tom Morello - "Deportee" [MP3]

--Randy Lewis

The Street Sweeper Social Club's cover of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" contains multitudes. When guitarist Tom Morello tossed off the opening riff of the song, a sample of the Clash's "Straight to Hell," it was unclear where the song was headed. Would it go to Joe Strummer's "If you can play on the fiddle" line? Or would it land on MIA's "I fly like paper get high like planes"? It was the latter, and SSSC, the rap rock super group featuring Morello, of Rage Against the Machine, and the Coup's incendiary lead singer, Boots Riley, tore into the song. Morello rode that menacing Clash riff while Riley rapped Maya Arulpragasam's words. As the song moved to the expert shotgun-cracks in the chorus, the guitarist moved his instrument like a weapon, blowing out into the audience.

The Social Club proved something important: that rap and rock, such a treacherous pairing given its history of appealing to the testosterone-heavy, shirtless frat-dudes, can be strong and beautiful, smart and angry. The band drew from the hard funk of Living Color, the rolling funk of Funkadelic, the rhythmic funk of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the angular riffage of the Minutemen, the global fury of M.I.A. and, well, Tom Morello. It was potent, vital, and incredibly powerful.

- Randall Roberts

Photo: Boots Riley, left, and Tom Morello of Street Sweeper Social Club performed on the main stage on Friday, the opening day of the three-day Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival on the Empire Polo Club grounds in Indio, Calif. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Discussing his upcoming solo album, former System of a Down vocalist Serj Tankian drops an unexpected word: "Edit." Mild-mannered and soft-spoken, Tankian speaks about his music with a professorial ease. It's a long way removed from his on-stage and in-the-studio persona, where hard rock is simply the basis for an excuse to take a multitude of left turns, explore orchestral fits and jolt the listener with sometimes frantic changes of pace. 

"Before I would always build, build, build, build, and then be done," Tankian said Wednesday afternoon from his Sherman Oaks studio. "Now, I build in parts. I built the orchestra. I built the electronics. I built the live instrumentation. Then I went back and took things out. It was the first time I threw everything against the wall and then started taking things out."

But if such pruning was the case, it wasn't readily evident in the three songs Tankian previewed from his upcoming solo effort, "Imperfect Harmonies," tentatively tabled for a September release. After announcing that he was halfway through the mixing process for the 11-track album, Tankian unveiled the first finished cut, "Corporatacy."

The title will change, Tankian said, but the near-industrial electronic stomp that opens the song is likely cemented in place. More theatrical than purely aggressive, the song, like much of System of a Down's signature work, soon spins seemingly out of control. Nine Inch Nails-like keyboards drop out, and the verses twist into a jazz-like free-for-all, at least until the guitars arrive in the chorus to remind the listener that Tankian was, indeed, the leader of one of recent history's most successful metal bands.

"I felt so alone until you came in my life stopped the pain," Tankian sings in an unexpectedly quiet bridge. But the earnestness doesn't last, as the lyrics go from love to anger to heartache in moments, capturing the full range of a dead-end relationship in a span of 20 seconds. Or maybe not. "God speaks different in every language," Tankian repeats as the song comes to a close.

Tankian displays a more vulnerable side in another one of the new tracks, "Beat Us," in which guitars meld with electronics until it becomes impossible to tell which instrument is which. An ornate arrangement carries the song, as if a guitar is being used to mimic a harp, and the song builds to a rather playful, give-and-take chorus with local singer Shana Halligan.

"I always mix the personal, the political, the humorous and the philosophical," Tankian said. "Those are the four different quadrants of what I do lyrically, and it’s no different here. But there is more urgency when it comes to the ‘why are we here and what’s going on?’ There’s also a different intimacy to the personal. ‘Beat Us’ was very personal. It’s a loving, heartbreak song. There’s a lot of heartbreak on this record."

It was no accident that on tax-reckoning day, the same day Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was holding a forum in downtown L.A. to address the Golden State's buckling economy, Bruce Springsteen put a decidedly California spin on his overarching musical message about holding onto hope even in the face of such hard times.

Springsteen invited local political firebrand Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine/the Nightwatchman fame, to join him on stage Wednesday at the first of two consecutive nights at the Los Angeles Sports Arena for a savage duet on "The Ghost of Tom Joad," the Boss' 1995 Steinbeck- inspired treatise on those who've been let down or forgotten in the promised land:

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waiting for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass

He and Morello traded impassioned verses, with E Street Band guitarists "Miami" Steve Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren ceding the spotlight to Morello for a rapid-fire solo that screamed outrage. During the encore segment, Morello returned for a choir-like reading of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More."

Springsteen might have stumped for Barack Obama and played at the White House following his election, but he knows that systemic change doesn't happen overnight and that hope remains a fragile thing in troubled times.

Rifling through his ever-expanding songbook, he stitched together a set focused less on promoting his latest album, “Working on a Dream,” than on shoring up hope while acknowledging how much work still needs to be done to fulfill the American dream.

"We're here with a mighty purpose in mind!" the 59-year-old Jerseyite told a sea of cheering onlookers after the first handful of songs. "We're gonna rock the house! But we're not only going to rock the house, we're going to build a house. We're going to take fear and build a house of love; we're going to take sadness and build a house of joy; we're going to take doubt and build a house of faith; we're going to take despair and build a house of hope."

Prior to Tuesday evening, when Tom Morello was last seen on stage in Los Angeles, he was spearheading a benefit for various homeless advocacy groups at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, performing with the likes of Wayne Krame and Slash. The one-on-one setting Tuesday night at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles was a bit more grown-up than a rock 'n' roll show, but the Rage Against the Machine member stayed on point, and even brought a little unpredictably to the recently opened nonprofit institution.

The Grammy Museum launched with a politics-in-music exhibit titled "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom," and the discussion, led by the museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, neatly tied in with the theme. With a nod to one of the artist's at the centerpiece of the exhibit, the night closed with Morello, who rose to prominence as one of the alt-rock era's most adventurous guitarists, leading the 200-seat theater through a determined take on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Disregarding the nervous glances from the small security staff, the suburban Illinois-raised artist instructed the audience stand and jump through the final verse.

Before the rousing finale, however, Santelli led an engagingly thoughtful discussion through Morello's career, focusing largely on the influence of politics and activism. Everything from schoolyard racism to the music business to Morello's thoughts on President Obama were touched on. As Morello pointed out, there's more than one similarity between the artist and our nation's 44th president. In addition to ties to the Chicago area, both were born to a Kenyan father and white mother, and each did time at Harvard in the '80s.

The musical reach of Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave and now fronting a band called Street Sweeper, is matched only by his political activism.

Tom Morello is perhaps best known as the guitarist for rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, but the politically minded L.A. transplant has recorded as the Nightwatchman and has just created another band, Street Sweeper. His West Coast "Justice Tour," which benefits regional nonprofit PATH (People Assisting the Homeless), stops at the Music Box @ the Fonda on Saturday.

You went to Libertyville High School in the northern  Chicago suburbs. How did you like it?

On the one hand, it was a lovely, bucolic suburb with plenty of grassy fields to run around and play football in. On the other hand, one morning there was a noose in my family's garage. A mixed bag.

That leaves an impression.

It certainly does. And you wonder why the music's loud.

'm impressed with your recession-level ticket prices -- $15! -- of your West Coast tour.

We try to keep the tickets for the "Justice Tour" to the people's price. This tour grew out of shows I hosted at the Hotel Café over the last few years. They're shows that are completely outside of the mainstream of how business is usually done in the music industry. I text the artists on my BlackBerry and ask them to play. One hundred percent of the proceeds go to homeless advocacy. The artists not only perform at the shows but are invited to participate at the homeless shelters as well.

-- Read the full story here.

-- Choire Sicha

(Photo: Tom Morello Credit: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times)

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press