Craig Warga/New York Day-to-day News

Jackson Browne and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes carried out in December in Zuccotti Park in support of Occupy Wall Street.

Jackson Browne and Dawes played a brief, spirited acoustic set at the Occupy Wall Street protest at Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park this afternoon, which included this new tune by Browne that expresses solidarity with the Occupy movement.

“It’s really hard to write a song about issues,” Browne tells Rolling Stone. (Watch our interview with Browne below.) “On the other hand, a movement like this doesn’t need every song to be a movement song. Somebody asked me the name of that song, and I thought, well, I’m actually not sure what the title is. Maybe ‘Which Side Are You On?’ That’s, of course, the title of an old Civil Rights marching song that I grew up singing when I was 16, 17 years old.”

“For me, being 26 years old, growing up, there’s always been a negative connotation with the term ‘protest,’” says Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith, who performed a few of his band’s originals alongside Browne at the rally. “Now, for the first time, there’s a pride that goes along with it.”

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When Chris Brown emerged onstage at the Staples Center Thursday night, he appeared to be ready for war, decked out in military green and flanked by an army of soldiers in the form of backup dancers. Whether it’s with himself, the largely unforgiving press (sorry) or the inner demons that continue to prompt negative headlines, the singer is far from leaving the battlefield. And after the year he’s had, it made sense that he treated the sold-out tour stop as a full-on attack.

The 22-year-old’s personal narrative as of late is shoddy, at best. He spent much of last year seeking public redemption for his 2009 felony assault of then-girlfriend Rihanna, an incident that will follow him for the rest of his career, and a greater part of this year making numerous missteps in the media’s eye.

To his credit, Brown has done a great deal to attempt to wipe the slate clean. He released “F.A.M.E.” — an acronym for both “Fans Are My Everything” and “Forgiving All My Enemies,” which was his first album to debut at No. 1. The disc, full of sexually explicit grooves and gritty backbeats, was a clear ditch from the boy-next-door image that was already shattered post-Rihanna.

He’s traded charm for a harder-edged, sexual lothario role, one that’s gotten him headlines for Twitter rants, criticism from GLAAD, a violent meltdown backstage at “Good Morning America” and the leak of nude photo. Misfires that could’ve proved crippling to another performer have only turned out to be only minor for Brown. Read more…