A MUSICIAN will bring a "live documentary" about Woody Guthrie to Bridport next weekend.

Will Kaufman will present Wood Guthrie: Hard Times and Hard Travelin' at Bridport Arts Centre - performing the singer-songwriter's work and explaining the context of the American 1930s and the state of popular music itself.

Woody Guthrie is thought to have inspired Bob Dylan with his political and protest songs. This Land Is Your Land, is even considered by many as the United States’ second national anthem, but the stories behind his work and his life are equally captivating.

Hard-hitting Guthrie songs as Vigilante Man, Pretty Boy Floyd and I Ain't Got No Home are brought into conversation with other relevant songs - from Joe Hill's The Preacher and the Slave to Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Altogether, the show highlights the blending of music and radical politics that marks Guthrie's most powerful work.

Will Kaufman is also a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. He has given presentations about Woody Guthrie at major events including Glastonbury Festival, the Bath International Music Festival, the Whitby Folk Festival, the Big Session, and the Piacenza Literature and Blues Festival in Italy. He has also performed at countless European and American universities, folk clubs and union halls.

Will has written a number of books on American culture and in 2008, he was awarded his first Woody Guthrie Research Fellowship from the Broadcast Music Industry Foundation, which enabled him to write the first political biography of Guthrie, Woody Guthrie, American Radical. He won his second BMI-Woody Guthrie Fellowship in 2014 and his is currently at work on a second book, Woody Guthrie’s Modern World Blues.

He was a consultant to Johnny Depp and Douglas Brinkley for the publication of their co-edited edition of Guthrie's 2013 discovered novel, House of Earth.

The performance will take place on Saturday, October 8 at 7.30pm.