Ballads played by wandering troubadours, sung around campfires or harmonized on front porches have told our stories since ancient times. Grand or small, romantic or sorrowful, from the medieval lamentation "Greensleeves" to "Alice's Restaurant," tales set to music have been passed down from one generation to the next. Now, in an era when we tell stories in 5K ultra-high definition with surround sound — or on the phone in our pocket — the storytelling traditions of the ballad can feel like an art form out of time, its practitioners better suited to an earlier age. But for younger generations of uninitiated Vermonters, those traditions are on full display in the work and biography of storyteller-musician Tom Banjo — or Tom Azarian, if you must. While not quite older than the hills, the diminutive 88-year-old balladeer is a living encyclopedia of songs and tales from the American folk canon, collected over a lifetime as an antiestablishment storyteller who has used his art to entertain, protest injustice, preserve vanishing folk ways or just earn some beer money. As a performer, he's been a fixture on Vermont stages, large and small, since the early 1960s, though you're just as likely to have seen him busking on street corners from Burlington to Montpelier. He and his five-string banjo have been a common sight at political rallies protesting one injustice or another. In the 1980s, he even made at least a half-serious bid for governor. Azarian has never tasted fame or fortune, but his youthful musical wanderings placed him alongside the likes of Judy Collins and Taj Mahal long before they became household names. His closest brush with renown is being name-checked in a Grateful Dead song — probably. But in Vermont Azarian has achieved something like folk legend status, thanks to his accomplished banjo work and a reedy, high-lonesome tenor that seems to have drifted in from the mountains of Appalachia. He embarked on a bohemian rural life here years before the arrival of hippies and back-to-the-landers, but his kinship with them — especially over populist politics, a shared mistrust of authority and, of course, music — cemented the Tom Banjo persona, as did his working-class background. Those countercultural leanings and love of storytelling also show up in what are probably Azarian's best-known creations, his offbeat "Cranky Shows," in which he sings the narration of tales told in cartoon form on hand-painted…