Battle Hymns of The Nightwatchman

"I'm sad not to be playing T in the Park this year," Tom Morello confides. "I've always had great shows in Scotland, the fans have been awesome from the Barrowlands on up and the Nightwatchman looks forward to haunting the moors there soon."

It's more like glens up here, Tom.

"Oh boy, whatever you say. Well wherever, there's hauntable territory, that's where I look forward to."

All current affairs considered, Morello has bigger issues than running around a heather-clad valley to keep himself busy this summer. The Skinny catches the recently reemployed Rage Against the Machine guitar maverick in jovial mode as he outlines the premise behind his new alter-ego, the reasons for switching his Digitech Whammy for an acoustic and addresses that slight niggling issue of questing for radical socio-economic and political change on a global scale…

Until recently, Nightwatchman gigs have mostly taken place at open mic nights in and around Los Angeles and very little has been heard anywhere else. Would you care to unravel some of the myth?

"I started writing and playing these songs almost five years ago now, as an outlet to let my shadowy world view of politics loose on an unsuspecting world, one coffee house at a time. There was Audioslave on the one hand and then Axis of Justice - my non-profit political organisation - on the other, but for me something was missing which I came to realise was me using my voice and my creativity as a musician to get my two cents out there. It was actually the day after the 2004 election when Bush was re-elected that I decided at some point there was going to be a Nightwatchman album because somebody's got to start hitting back."

You've been hitting hard lately, given that the staggering comeback of Rage Against the Machine and your biggest festival performance as the Nightwatchman both took place at the Coachella festival on the same day. Does it feel good to be back?

"Yeah, both shows went great. For the Nightwatchman show on Saturday I didn't know if it was going to be all Rage Against the Machine fans ready to mosh but there were thousands of kids packed into that tent. It was about 107 degrees in there and they seemed to be hanging on every word so I think that was a good sign."

You've been playing guitar and doing so in front of huge crowds for years but this is the first that you've stepped into the limelight as a singer-songwriter in your own right. After all this time standing at the right of the stage, do you now have a lot to unload from the centre of it?

"It's very liberating; it really is a one man revolution. If there's a benefit concert, a protest or a peace rally, all I need to do is pick up my guitar and go. We don't need to have any band meetings; we don't need to have any tour managers or anything. It feels very do it yourself and it's very empowering in that way and it's making music for the right reasons."

Speaking about the music, lyrically, the new songs are very specific in their address of quite contemporary political and social injustices but your sound is akin to the classic rebel song, what made you step back from the wah-wah pedal?

"I've played so many of these protest shows, union rallies and anti-war rallies… a lot of the time, the songs that are sung at these events are songs from the sixties or even earlier and I thought 'we need songs for now, we need songs that are unblinking in their standing up to what's going on' and so the Nightwatchman is at your service."

Since this genesis of the Nightwatchman and the return of Rage Against the Machine was quickly succeeded by the demise of Audioslave, what's your vision for the future?

"I've got much extensive Nightwatchman touring to do and I've got a catalogue of about 55 Nightwatchman songs that I feel really good about, so there's going to be many more Nightwatchman albums, that's the plan. I really love doing this music and I love the fact that it feels like a mission as much as it is a career and that feels really good, and to have that independence too. I just wrote a song for Michael Moore's new movie Sicko which is coming out pretty soon and the freedom to express myself anywhere anytime, whether it's an anti-war rally or whether it's for a movie that I believe in or whether it's for people at a club show or a huge festival, it does feel like this is what I should be doing right now."

And in terms of Rage: do you see life beyond the upcoming gigs with Wu Tang Clan later on this month and the one-off with Queens of the Stone Age in August?

"Right now, we only have plans to do those shows. But, that's not to say we won't play more beyond that..."

For all his revolutionary intent, it seems that the skillful art of diplomacy is not lost on Tom Morello. Whether or not Rage Against the Machine can stick around remains to be seen, but, with The Nightwatchman now on shift, it seems clear that Morello's eye won't be slipping from that Utopian prize anytime soon.