The Nightwatchman

As much as Tom Morello enjoyed his stint with Audioslave, the post-Rage Against the Machine band he founded with Chris Cornell, Cornell’s scorching, introspective arena-rock left Morello hungry for the activism of his previous band. Since Cornell wasn’t providing him with the political material he craved, Morello began writing his own.

Though styled after Woody Guthrie’s acoustic folk, the staid songs that Morello began to churn out with increasing speed were every bit as loaded as Rage’s thrashing screeds. But he knew he couldn’t perform them live under his own name without misleading concertgoers, who would understandably expect a rock show from the notoriously heavy guitarist.

He needed an alias.

“I had to create a firewall between my electric guitar heroism and this new endeavor I was branching out into,” Morello explains. “I wanted to have time for this project to grow without being expected to play a Rage and Audioslave greatest-hits set.”

So Morello came up with a pseudonym, one that doubled as an alter ego: The Nightwatchman, a populist rebel with anti-government leanings. Save for the occasional, perceptive audience member who’d recognize the man on stage, Morello played his first acoustic shows in relative anonymity. Morello’s friend, guru producer Rick Rubin, had suggested the idea as a way to help the guitarist build confidence in his untested singing.

“The first thing I did after I wrote these songs was go over to Rick’s house and ask him, ‘Can I sing?’” Morello recalls. “And he said, ‘You sing fine, but you need experience. You have experience as a guitar player, but not as a singer. Go out and play a hundred shows.’ So I did. I went out and I played every possible opportunity. On nights off between Audioslave arena dates, I’d go to local coffeehouses and country-and-western bars and sign up and play songs.

“At first, performing these songs was a daunting task, but it got to the point where now I’m absolutely fearless about it,” Morello continues. “I’ve sat there with a nylon-string acoustic guitar in front of hundreds of thousands of people at the immigrant rallies here in the United States, or the G-8 protests in Germany, where I was playing my show while there was literally a tear-gas police riot going on, or the Big Day Out festival in Australia in front of five- to ten-thousand people a day, where the competition on the bill was heavy metal bands. Really, there’s no format that can make me blink now.”

Morello has become so self-assured in his new role as singer-songwriter that he attached his birth name to his latest Nightwatchman album, The Fabled City—a follow-up to his 2007 debut, One Man Revolution, a disc that earned more than a few comparisons to acoustic Bruce Springsteen. Like his debut, One Man Revolution reveals Morello to be a surprisingly disciplined songwriter, a surprisingly gripping singer and—unsurprisingly—a livid critic of the Bush administration. Though its most dire songs detail a barren, post-Katrina New Orleans, the bleak mood is lifted frequently by rousing, grab-a-pint sing-alongs in the spirit of The Pogues. Morello’s authoritative electric guitar, boldly absent from the first Nightwatchman album, even makes a couple of cameos.

“It’s no accident that this new album is under my own name as well as The Nightwatchman,” Morello says. “I felt much more comfortable embracing all sides of my playing, from the guitar soloing, to the riff writing, to the acoustic singer/songwriting. That’s why my latest tour is going to be half acoustic, half electric; I’m bringing out a backing band called the Freedom Fighter Orchestra. The show’s template is half Dylan, half Hendrix.”

Tom Morello/The Nightwatchman headlines an 8 p.m. concert at the Turner Hall Ballroom on Wednesday, Nov. 12, supported by Ike Reilly and Boots Riley.