THE night before Billy Bragg and Joe Henry shone a light on British and American politics and railroad songs at the Grand Opera House, Bragg had recorded his Trumped-up re-charge of Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' (Back) in his York hotel room for instant exposure on social media.

The times they are a'changin' for protest singers too, once reliant on busking, political rallies and "Pay no more than 99p for this album" marketing ploys.

Ostensibly, Tuesday's purpose was to promote Bragg and Henry's Shine A Light album of Great American rail songs, a set of field recordings from five days of travelling from Chicago to Los Angeles by rail, and they did indeed open and close their acoustic guitar strumming with song selections and accompanying stories from their journey. However, both played solo sets too, Henry closing the first half, Bragg opening the second with his Dylan revamp written in the aftermath of Friday's inauguration.

"These are exciting times," said the Barking bard with a twist of lemon, his tone sombre. “I didn’t see it coming: Brexit, Trump, Leicester City,” he lamented, again taking no joy in a punchline. This was not the time to express his romantic side, save for some of the railroad lyrics about US rail journeys. Instead, Bragg, the turbulent troubadour, felt the weight of his political activism hanging heavy anew on his shoulders, 33 years after his first socialist siren call.

Searching for the right word, he called for "solidarity", an old Braggism maybe, but one that goes beyond any political division to a common human cause.

York Press: Billy Bragg and Joe Henry

Billy Bragg and Joe Henry on their American rail trip

Accident Waiting To Happen was directed waspishly towards Trump's raging intolerance, while the work-in-progress Sleep Of Reason poured scorn on post-truth politics (preceded by a witty dig at La La Land). Most potent of all, his raw anthem Between The Wars struck home like it first did all those years ago: "Sweet moderation, heart of this nation, desert us not," he sang, so gruff but tender. Sweet moderation? Yes, Billy, you're right. That's what we need right now.

If Bragg was more the bludgeon, his friend of 30 years, the elegant, eloquent American songwriter and producer Joe Henry, was more the rapier, an adept raconteur with a musicologist's knowledge (like Bragg and his upcoming book on the 1956 transition from music being jazz based to guitar led).

"This is where we are, but it's not who we are," said Henry, to a round of applause, as he summed up the times. His first solo song, Trampoline, was a particular joy and his tribute to his "teacher", the late Alan Toussaint, whose last recordings he had produced, was heartfelt and moving as he sang Toussaint's Freedom Of The Stallion.

Joe and Billy's railroad recordings were never an exercise in nostalgia, said Henry. What would be the point of merely reviving songs they knew in their sleep, he asked. Instead, they turned a new spotlight on those songs, finding their abiding significance and meaning today, with their American values of freedom, escape and dreams, a world beyond the temporary intemperate thud of Trump, as they told tales of their groundbreaking forebears, Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and Lonnie Donegan.

We look to the arts, to songwriters, playwrights, satirists, filmmakers, poets and rappers, to make sense of troubled times, to be the prophets for change, and here, on a Tuesday night in England's old railway city, Billy Bragg and Joe Henry and their railroad songs were on the right track all night, one still movd to rage, the other sage.