GNP is proud to present an evening with Billy Bragg at the Somerville Theatre for one show only Thursday, June 28 at 8PM. Reserved seat tickets are $36.50 & $31.50 (plus $1 facility fee) and are on sale now on the web at tinyurl.com/billybraggtix events and without service fees starting at 4pm at the Somerville Theatre box office (55 Davis Sq. on the Red Line) open daily 4pm-8pm (except holidays). For assistance with handicapped accessible seating please call the Somerville Theatre at 617-625-4088 between 4pm – 8pm.
Billy Bragg, is an English musician known for his blend of folk, punk-rock, and protest music.He was recently described by The Times newspaper as a “national treasure.” In the two decades of his career Bragg has certainly made an indelible mark on the conscience of British music, becoming perhaps the most stalwart guardian of the radical dissenting tradition that stretches back over centuries of the country’s political, cultural and social history. It’s a legacy that’s brought Bragg fans the world over as an artist with a keen sense of political activism as well as a way with a pop hook, all informed with a sense of humanity and humour.
His songs were full of passion, anger and wit, a ‘one-man Clash’. This was not, however, what the major record companies wanted at the time – the punk attitudes of the late-Seventies had long since given way to the escapist rise of the New Romantics. Bragg’s stark musical backdrop – for the most part a roughly strummed electric guitar – and even starker vocals belied a keen sense of melody and passionate, deeply humane lyrics. It was an early indicator that Bragg’s work would be infused with genuine insight and humour, as well as a sustained and personal commitment to political and humanitarian issues.
Woody Guthrie was the dean of American folk artists, the author of such classics as “This Land is Your Land,” “Pastures of Plenty,” “Deportees,” “I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Any More” and “Rueben James.” His giant influence on the entire course of American popular music, not least Bob Dylan’s acknowledgement of his debt to Guthrie, made him one of the seminal artists of the 20th Century. At the time of his death, in 1967, however, Guthrie left behind some 2500 unfinished songs, the lyrics to which were belatedly discovered many years later in the archives.
Guthrie’s daughter, Nora, decided that Bragg was the perfect candidate to set new music to the unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics. There was no record of any music being written, thus Bragg was given the task of ‘reinventing’ original Woody Guthrie songs. The lyrics – about New York City streets, film star idols, drinking, loving, dying and even spaceships – were specifically chosen because they presented a completely different aspect to Woody Guthrie’s public persona. Bragg’s role was to provide the musical platform for a previously ‘unexplored’ Guthrie.
The result was Mermaid Avenue, released in 1998. Bragg’s collaborators on the project were American alt-country rockers, Wilco. Recordings began in Wilco’s hometown of Chicago and then in Dublin, where English fiddler Eliza Carthy and bluesman Corey Harris made their contributions. Natalie Merchant also added her talents when Bragg was finishing the recordings in Boston.
“People tell me that they are inspired by my songs,” Bragg explains “and for that I’m thankful, but I take my inspiration from the only people in this equation who can actually make a difference – the audience. After 25 years of activism, my faith in your ability to change the world is undimmed.”
Links: billybragg.co.uk – Tickets – Theatre Directions