There will always be protest music. As long as there's injustice on the planet, people will be creating their art and music to combat that. You can never squash that. But for his new album, he's gone unplugged to strum some really old protest songs from Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, mixed in with a bunch of his own. It's only a natural extension.
Folk music is akin to punk music anyways.
And the reason I do it is because these songs still make as much sense now, if not more, as they did back then. Look at all the money big banks make. If they paid their fair share there wouldn't be one kid going to school hungry in this country. Watch the entire On The Arts feature on protest music. Bruce Springsteen, famous for his songs about the average working man, has been compared with the likes of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.