WOODY Guthrie was a lost soul crying in the wilderness of the great American depression but his voice echoes down the years to this day.

This is partly due to the timelessness of his themes, most of which took the form of providing a mouthpiece for the downtrodden and oppressed. Nevertheless, his enduring legacy is arguably down to Bob Dylan’s early hero worship and his shameless impersonation of the Guthrie persona, unwittingly creating what was probably the first tribute act in popular music history.

Refreshingly, this new homage to the dustbowl bard came courtesy of four remarkable musicians, who – quite amazingly – stayed true to the hootenanny tradition and delivered the repertoire without the aid of any amplification whatsoever.

And most people would probably agree that this is pretty good going in an age of manufactured X Factor pap music and a global mobile phone addiction epidemic.

Our wandering minstrels tramp the heat-seared red dirt roads of Oklahoma and Arkansas, headed for the California Garden of Eden. But as the song tells us in no uncertain terms, believe it or not you won’t find it so hot, for here we encounter the economic tyranny of the company store and the even worse despotism of the vigilante men and other assorted shotgun-toting hired thugs.

However, Guthrie uses the power of words and his beaten-up old guitar as a weapon, fighting not only the exploiters, but also an even greater evil emerging from across the Atlantic as the crisis-ridden 1930s draw to a close.

Woody Guthrie was very much a man of his times and wrote about a world which some might feel has changed out of all recognition. All we can know for certain is that with these fabulous musicians driving the engine, his command of balladry and narrative still has the power of a California-bound freight train to stop you right in your tracks.

John Phillpott