root salad f22 Jon Langford
Mr Mekon (not to mention a Lost Soul, Waco Brother and much more) meets Chris Nickson
“He can really dig in,” Langford says. “I’ve been able to do some Three Johns material. But I’ve worked up about thirty- five songs I can do on my own. People have been saying that for the first time, they can hear the words. With the bands, all I ever hear is the monitor mix. I never knew the sound had been that bad!”
The tour has also given him the chance to play shows that seem unlikely for a Mekon, one of music’s perennial outsiders.
“I was asked at to play a little event at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland,” he says in surprise. “Outside it, that is.”
W
the road to Scotland with Mekons 77, the reincarnation of the punk band that first brought him notoriety. Before all this, he’s completed a string of dates across the US with Dave Alvin and iconic Texas singer- songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore. And all that after a long tour with his latest band, Four Lost Souls, and summer shows with his insurgent country outfit, the Waco Brothers.
J
He’s a busy man, and his trip back to the UK is very much a busman’s holiday. A few more days and he’ll be capping it all with a gig in Leeds, the place where his music began. That one is part of his ongoing solo tour playing songs culled from all 40 years of what he calls his “sorry career in unpopular music”.
“It makes sense at this stage,” he
explains. “It’s easy to do. I can get on a plane with an acoustic guitar and I’m all set. I bring along some art to sell as well, so I can make money in small venues.”
For a man who seems to spend so much of his life touring, every convenience helps. When we spoke he’d done around 150 shows in 2018, with more lined up. The last two years have been busier than ever. And it’s brought surprises: the Four Lost Souls
on Langford arrives in Leeds from Newport, fresh from a gig with his hometown band, Men Of Gwent. A few more hours and he’ll be hitting
grouping has taken him in directions he’d never imagined.
“We recorded at Muscle Shoals in Alabama. I’d never have even thought of that, but Norbert Putnam (the producer who was part of the original Muscle Shoals studio band) said we should come down.”
The location, and Putnam’s direction, along with other local session hands, gave the album a very rooted, tight, Southern feel, the opposite of much of Langford’s output. But even writing for the band forced him to think in different ways. “The songs were about situations and things that were more specific, and very American.”
It stretched him as a writer. In the stu- dio, as well as on the band’s tour, Langford became one of four voices, and often not the lead. One lost soul among many.
“We had a writing session recently and came up with twenty new songs. That seemed a lot, too many. I went through them later. Some were band songs, others weren’t. I’m not sure what we’re going to do next. Someone suggested recording at Ardent Studios in Nashville, but that would be like repeating ourselves.”
The Lost Souls have blended into his solo work, as member John Szymanski has often travelled with him, playing guitar and adding a second voice.
hile he’s known to many as a musician, Langford’s reputa- tion as an artist keeps grow- ing. He’s come a long way
from the ’80s, drawing the Great Pop Things comic strip under the name Chuck Death. These days his paintings are instant- ly recognisable, many of them his takes on country music icons; back in 2015, the Country Music Hall Of Fame commissioned portraits from him for their Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City exhibitions, and his prints always sell briskly at gigs. The art degree – and talent – has finally paid off.
‘Solo’ proves to be a very fluid con- cept. For the Leeds shows he’s accompa- nied by a couple of other musicians after a full set alone, digging out old songs and several rarities like Over The Cliff and Lost In America, as well as gems from various of his bands – and there are almost too many of them to mention.
It’s joyous, rambunctious, full of stories and anecdotes; in other words, exactly what any Langford fan would want. Full-throated and heavy on the passion, it rocks, even with just an acoustic guitar. And he’s right, this time around you really can hear all the words.
So what’s in the future? More shows on his own, with assorted bands, and…
“The Mekons, the current ones, are putting out an album soon,” he says. “It’s called Deserted. We recorded it in five days at the studio our bass player, Dave Trumfio, has just outside Josh Tree State Park, but we just finished the mixing and mastering a few months ago.” It sounds different to all the Mekons albums that have gone before. “A friend listened to it and told me it was our prog rock album. We’ve never done one of those, so why not?”
You can find it reviewed in this issue, and
there’s a track on the fRoots 72 compilation.
facebook.com/jonboylangford F
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