Hay Festival 2012: Woody Guthrie, a visionary folk artist in his own right The more I explored, the more I discovered a rich musical heritage of 20th century America that still resonates with artists such as Dylan (still), Springsteen, Steve Earle and for those lucky enough to be present tonight, Billy Bragg and Wilco. Guthrie's lineage also led to more cult figures familiar to "folkies" - the likes of Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Ramblin" Jack Elliott, and Phil Ochs. These were Guthrie's musical and cultural descendants; singers with a social conscience protesting against the Vietnam war and the iniquities of capitalist America. Guthrie is quoted as saying "you can only write what you see." There is no doubting that Guthrie saw a lot and lived a lot. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma to a family made comfortable by the oil boom. But Guthrie and his family did not enjoy their money. A series of tragedies beset them over the years. After one of his sisters died in a house fire, his mother was sent to an insane asylum in Norman, Oklahoma and as Guthrie put he and the rest of his siblings (another sister and two brothers) found themselves "scattered and adopted." In the asylum his mother later died of Huntington's chorea, a hereditary degenerative disease that would eventually claim Guthrie and some of his eight children. Guthrie ended up in Pampa, Texas where he married and became the father of three children. But in 1936 he left his family and started on an odyssey physical and musical that lasted until his death in 1967. Most famously he joined that Dust Bowl Oakies heading west to the fertile fruit growing valleys of California having given up on their own barren lands - the same journeys John Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath. In songs such as So Long it's Been Good to Know You, I Ain't Got No Home in This World Anymore, Talking Dust Bowl Blues, Pastures of Plenty, Guthrie chronicled the hardships of the men, women and children who had lost everything but the will to live. He headed to New York in 1940. Home maybe, but it wasn't his last port of call. He married twice more and served in the merchant navy in the Second World War. It was in Mermaid Avenue New York that he penned many songs that he himself did not record or perform. Billy Bragg and Wilco brought but 30 of these to the world thanks to the opening up of the Woody Guthrie Archives in 1998. These are unique recordings: they are melodies composed by Bragg and the then members of Chicago-based band Wilco to lyrics written by Guthrie in his latter years, when he had stopped performing. Guthrie is, of course, irreplaceable. Who could not be moved by This Land is Your Land, America's second national anthem and Guthrie's most famous song? But both Mermaid Avenue albums (released in 1998 and 2000) stand as testament to reach and influence Guthrie has on musicians of today. Anybody wanting to explore Woody's songs in a modern context could do worse than start here. Alan Lomax, the great American folklorist, who chronicled many thousands of songs, including Guthrie's for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, said: "Steinbeck did a great job, but Woody did a job that was just as important and lasted longer." The man from Okemah kicked up a storm, a real dust storm that is still blowing through music today. Billy Bragg sings Woody Guthrie at 9.30pm on the Wales Stage [Event 247]