[NEOPAL]Jon Langford exhibit

Sat Apr 15 04:51:30 PDT 2006

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Jon Langford comes to the Arts Collinwood Gallery 
Thursday, April 20 6:00pm

  Please join us for a wine and cheese reception.  Langford will play at the Beachland Ballroom later that same night, for a true multi-venue, mulit-media arts collaboration!
  To see a great review of Langford's recent exhibit, you can check it out here:  http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/columnists/dan_deluca/14209399.htm.  

  ---------------------------------------------------

  NASHVILLE RADIO 
  An Art Show by Jon Langford
  presented by 
  THE BEACHLAND BALLROOM
  in conjunction with 
  ARTS COLLINWOOD 
  THURSDAY, April 20, 6-9 pm 

  Chicago based artist/musicianJon Langford will perform at the Beachland on April 20 with a tour entitled Jon Langford’s Ship and Pilot.  He will also present  a three week gallery show featuring his original artwork beginning April 20th and running through May 13th. The opening reception will be held on April 20th  from 6-9pm at the Arts Collinwood Gallery located at 15605 Waterloo Road 216-692-9500. 
   Jon Langford is a founding member of the legendary British band the Mekons. A native of South Wales, Langford now lives in Chicago. He continues to play with the Mekons, as well as Chicago band the Waco Brothers. 

  His multi-layered paintings borrow imagery from old country music publicity photos and sheet music.   Langford reinterprets these images with a haze of ironic nostalgia. “I’ve been trying to set up this show with Jon for several years,but we never had enough room at the Beachland to do it, “ said Cindy Barber , owner of the Beachland, “ But, now with the Arts Collinwood Gallery in place down the street, we are able to bring Jon’s amazing artwork to Cleveland .  We hope to do more shows in conjunction with the Arts Collinwood Gallery.”

  Beyond his work as a musician, Jon Langford has attracted ever-growing attention as a visual artist in recent years. He's had art shows all over the country, including an ongoing exhibit at the famous Yard Dog Gallery in Austin, designed CD art  for  The Sadies, Wacos, Sally Timms, Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Wanda Jackson, and others.
  This spring Jon releases GOLD BRICK (ROIR), his third solo CD, and
 NASHVILLE RADIO a book of his artwork, lyrics and writing and an 18-song CD.  Nashville Radio is the first collection of his acclaimed art. It reproduces 215 paintings and etchings, along with song lyrics and autobiographical writings. The book also comes with a specially recorded exclusive CD of Langford performing 18 of the printed songs.

  "Langford’s 'song-paintings' fuse publicity-shot portraiture with imagery derived from folk art, Dutch still life, classic Western wear, and the cold, cold war—all instilled with sharp, sardonic wit and a Constructivist sense of the power of language. He applies his completely distinctive style to the depiction of American music giants such as Bob Wills, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash, and also to more ghostly, marginalized figures — blindfolded cowboys, astronauts, and dancers — jerked around by the forces of success and exploitation, fame and neglect.
  It’s a style supple enough not only to express the artist’s deep regard for his musical heroes, but also for him to comment on the death-dealing tendencies in the culture of his adopted homeland, from the killing off of authentic popular music by homogenized, mass-marketed drivel to the embrace of capital punishment as a response to social ills. The woman twirled around by a skull-headed figure in the series 'Dancing with Death in a Dollar Dress' stands not just for country music, but for America itself.” Bloodshot Records
  For more information please contact Katherine at  Beachland Ballroom at 216-383-1124 or Sarah Gyorki at Arts Collinwood Gallery at 216-692-9500.
  For tickets to the Jon Langford concert www.beachlandballroom.com

  -----------------------------

  Rock artist on a roll: A night of Langford  By Dan DeLuca  Inquirer Music Critic    

  Original artwork from the book, Nashville Radio: Art, Words, and Music by Jon Langford. PICTURED: IMMORTAL HANK (Hank Williams)
  More photos

   Music clips from Gold Brick 

  AUSTIN, Texas - Stroll into the Yard Dog folk art gallery during the annual South by Southwest Music Festival, and you'd think Jon Langford owned the place.
  The walls are hung with images of country-western singers painted on distressed plywood by Langford, a punk-rock renaissance man who brings his multimedia performance piece, The Executioner's Last Songs, to Thomas Great Hall at Bryn Mawr College tonight [Wed., March 29]
  At Yard Dog, Gold Brick, the latest solo album by the leader of the storied British band the Mekons - and of country punks the Waco Brothers - is prominently displayed by the cash register.
  As is Nashville Radio, his new paperback coffee-table book, which collects art of luminaries such as Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn as well as, Langford says while munching on chips-and-salsa at a Mexican restaurant, "unknown foot soldiers in the music business wars."
  And if you were to follow your ears to the Yard Dog backyard, you'd find the ruddy-faced Welshmen up on a stage, cracking wise and cranking up one bracingly intelligent rock-and-roll salvo after another.
  He could be fronting the Wacos - raucous working-class heroes whose impassioned attack has been described as Clash-meets-Cash - or mining his subtler solo work alongside soulful vocalist Sally Timms and violinist Jean Cook, both of whom will join him in Bryn Mawr tonight.
  Langford's manic adventures are such a staple of SXSW that this year the alt-weekly Austin Chronicle asked him to keep a diary. Alongside two Yard Dog shows he packed in a recording session with Cook, a book signing, two showcase events, and a guest spot with Austin roots-rocker Alejandro Escovedo.
  But rather than play it straight for the alt-weekly, he told tales of meeting David Bowie on the plane, and agreeing to collaborate on a forthcoming Tin Machine project. "Lies," he says, with a devilish grin. "A pack of lies."
  Teaming up with Bowie might be too mainstream for Langford, who has a sideline skewering superstars (under the alias Chuck Death) in the syndicated weekly comic Great Pop Things, and who, on 1989's great The Mekons Rock 'n' Roll, lampooned Bono as "the Dublin Messiah, scattering crumbs."
  Instead of pursuing the pop charts, Langford, 48, has forged a brilliant under-the-radar career marked by artistic restlessness, left-leaning politics - manifest in Executioner's anti-death penalty stance - and a protean drive to create.
  It all started at Leeds University in 1976, when the Runaways came to town.
  "It was four women in their underwear playing really loud rock music," he recalls. "I wanted to be one of the Runaways."
  The Sex Pistols soon followed, and before he knew it, Langford had given up art school for the Mekons, whose single "Never Been in a Riot" was a high-water mark of early punk.
  "I'm quite proud of what we did. It was all about questioning... . The formula was that there was no formula." The Mekons were signed, and dropped, by a major label. By 1979, after Langford and bandmate Tom Greenhalgh were unable to get jobs as bus conductors in Leeds, they went back to art school.
  Those early Mekons were lionized by excitable rock critic Lester Bangs, who called them "the most revolutionary group in the history of rock and roll,... the finest artists to have graced this admittedly somewhat degenerate form with the grace of their aesthetic sensibilities, rarefied as a glimpse through a butterfly's wing."
  In the 1980s, the Mekons regrouped as a country-punk outfit with 1985's masterful Fear and Whiskey, but critical hosannahs never turned into commercial success. In 1991, again without a record deal, Langford moved to Chicago with his wife.
  The lover of American roots music experienced what he calls a "real road-to-Damascus moment" that year at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville, once frequented by Hank Williams. "There were all these yellowed and grayed publicity photos of people who had been chopped up and spit out by the music industry. People from 50 years ago, with big smiles on their faces staring out optimistically. It was just so sad to me."
  Ghostly C&W stars, sometimes with skulls instead of faces, became his subject matter, and he thrived in Chicago's fecund alt-country scene. In 1995 he formed the Wacos, and he's been on a winning streak ever since.
  Gold Brick is his third solo album. It's more polished and less garage-rock than 1998's Skull Orchard, and less country than 2004's All the Fame of Lofty Deeds. "These songs are about displacement, being in exile, and an economic refugee in some ways."
  One high point is an epic rocker called "Lost in America." It was commissioned by Ira Glass of Public Radio International's This American Life. "We went on the road with the radio show, like Paul Shaffer. We were the surly and incompetent sidekicks."
  Onstage at SXSW, Langford and the Wacos come off as an unrepentant, hard-partying bar band. But no man could live that hard and be so prolific. "I realized that hangovers had to be removed once I had a kid," says the father of two boys, who juggles his touring with the schedule of his wife, an architect who travels frequently.
  His attitude toward the music business ranges from disinterest to contempt. "This one will probably sell about 200," he says, pointing to Gold Brick. It's his folk-art success - most of his paintings sell in the $1,000 range - that pays the bills.
  "I actually think artists should be like workers with day jobs," he says. "I have no time whatsoever for the inspired artist starving in a garret. I like getting up at 8 a.m., cleaning my brushes, and getting to work."
  Recently, Langford says, "somebody asked me to paint Hank Williams dying in the back of his Cadillac in the style of David's Marat. I was like, 'Yeah, I'll try.' It's hanging in their house, and they paid me to do it."
  That work ethic applies to music, too. There's talk of a Waco follow-up to last year's Freedom and Weep, a new Mekons album is half-done, and a new disc by Langford and Cook's side project, Ship & Pilot, is due later this year.
  Langford's energetic commitment to his art is the envy of whipper-snappers not half his age. And after three decades, it shows no signs of flagging. How long can he keep it up?
  "I've never really thought about it," he says. "There always seems to be something interesting to do. You're born, you die, and you try to fill up this space in the middle, and try not to be an ass.... That's about it, really. The only thing I've learnt is to try and do the best you can."

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<DIV>Jon Langford comes to the Arts Collinwood Gallery <BR><STRONG><EM>Thursday, April 20 6:00pm</EM></STRONG></DIV>  <DIV> </DIV>  <DIV>Please join us for a wine and cheese reception.  Langford will play at the Beachland Ballroom later that same night, for a true multi-venue, mulit-media arts collaboration!</DIV>  <DIV>To see a great review of Langford's recent exhibit, you can check it out here:  <A href="http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/columnists/dan_deluca/14209399.htm">http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/columnists/dan_deluca/14209399.htm</A>.  </DIV>  <DIV> </DIV>  <DIV>---------------------------------------------------</DIV>  <DIV> </DIV>  <DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=5><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></FONT></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in
 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">NASHVILLE RADIO <o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></SPAN></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">An Art Show by Jon Langford<o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></SPAN></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">presented by <o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></SPAN></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">THE BEACHLAND BALLROOM<o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></SPAN></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">in conjunction with <o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></SPAN></DIV>  <DIV
 class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">ARTS COLLINWOOD <o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></SPAN></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">THURSDAY, April 20, 6-9 pm <o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></SPAN></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=5><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></STRONG></FONT></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align=left><FONT size=5><FONT face="Times New Roman"><STRONG>Chicago based artist/musicianJon Langford will perform at the Beachland on April 20 with a tour entitled Jon Langford’s Ship and Pilot.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>He will also present<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>a three week gallery show featuring his original artwork
 beginning April 20<SUP>th</SUP> and running through May 13<SUP>th</SUP>. The opening reception will be held on April 20<SUP>th</SUP><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>from 6-9pm at the Arts Collinwood Gallery located at 15605</STRONG><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"> </SPAN><STRONG>Waterloo Road 216-692-9500.</STRONG><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Jon Langford is a founding member of the legendary British band the Mekons. A native of South Wales, Langford now lives in Chicago. He continues to play with the Mekons, as well as Chicago band the Waco Brothers. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt;
 mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">His multi-layered paintings borrow imagery from old country music publicity photos and sheet music.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">   </SPAN>Langford reinterprets these images with a haze of ironic nostalgia. “I’ve been trying to set up this show with Jon for several years,but we never had enough room at the Beachland to do it, “ said Cindy Barber , owner of the Beachland, “ But, now with the Arts Collinwood Gallery in place down the street, we are able to bring Jon’s amazing artwork to Cleveland .<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>We hope to do more shows in conjunction with the Arts Collinwood Gallery.”<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in
 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Beyond his work as a musician, Jon Langford has attracted ever-growing attention as a visual artist in recent years. He's had art shows all over the country, including an ongoing exhibit at the famous Yard Dog Gallery in Austin, designed CD art<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>for<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>The Sadies, Wacos, Sally Timms, Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Wanda Jackson, and others.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New
 Roman">This spring Jon releases GOLD BRICK (ROIR), his third solo CD, and<BR><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>NASHVILLE RADIO a book of his artwork, lyrics and writing and an 18-song CD. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Nashville Radio</I> is the first collection of his acclaimed art. It reproduces 215 paintings and etchings, along with song lyrics and autobiographical writings. The book also comes with a specially recorded exclusive CD of Langford performing 18 of the printed songs.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><STRONG><FONT size=5><FONT face="Times New Roman">"Langford’s 'song-paintings' fuse
 publicity-shot portraiture with imagery derived from folk art, Dutch still life, classic Western wear, and the cold, cold war—all instilled with sharp, sardonic wit and a Constructivist sense of the power of language. He applies his completely distinctive style to the depiction of American music giants such as Bob Wills, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash, and also to more ghostly, marginalized figures — blindfolded cowboys, astronauts, and dancers — jerked around by the forces of success and exploitation, fame and neglect.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></STRONG></I></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">It’s a style supple enough not only to express the artist’s deep regard for his musical heroes, but also for him to comment on the death-dealing tendencies in the culture of his adopted homeland, from the killing off of authentic
 popular music by homogenized, mass-marketed drivel to the embrace of capital punishment as a response to social ills. The woman twirled around by a skull-headed figure in the series 'Dancing with Death in a Dollar Dress' stands not just for country music, but for America itself.” <U>Bloodshot Records<o:p></o:p></U></FONT></STRONG></SPAN></I></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">For more information please contact Katherine at<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  </SPAN>Beachland Ballroom at 216-383-1124 or Sarah Gyorki at Arts Collinwood Gallery at 216-692-9500.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">For tickets to the Jon Langford concert </FONT><A
 href="http://www.beachlandballroom.com/"><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">www.beachlandballroom.com</FONT></SPAN></A></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"></SPAN></B> </DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">-----------------------------</SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"></SPAN></B> </DIV><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">  <H1>Rock artist on a roll: A night of Langford</H1>  <H5>By Dan DeLuca</H5>  <H6>Inquirer Music Critic</H6>  <DIV id=article_related>  <DIV class=photorelated><IMG
 height=251 alt="Original artwork from the book, Nashville Radio: Art, Words, and Music by Jon Langford. PICTURED: IMMORTAL HANK (Hank Williams)" src="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner/My%20Documents/Arts%20Collinwood/Gallery/langford/Langford%20Philly%20review_files/201824058554.jpg" width=150 border=0></DIV>  <DIV class=photocredit></DIV>  <DIV class=photocaption>Original artwork from the book, Nashville Radio: Art, Words, and Music by Jon Langford. PICTURED: IMMORTAL HANK (Hank Williams)</DIV>  <DIV class=photomore><A href="javascript:openSlideshow('/mld/'%20+%20getPublication()%20+%20'/slideshow.htm?content_id=14206958&pub_name=' + getPublication() + '&language=en&palette_name=inquirer&site_name=' + getSite() + '&start=2&component_title=&component_desc=',400, 551);">More photos</A></DIV>  <UL>  <LI><A href="http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/magazine/daily/14207136.htm">Music clips from <I>Gold Brick</I></A>
 </LI></UL></DIV><!-- begin body-content -->  <DIV><B><SPAN class=dateline>AUSTIN, Texas</SPAN><SPAN class=dateline-separator> - </SPAN></B>Stroll into the Yard Dog folk art gallery during the annual South by Southwest Music Festival, and you'd think Jon Langford owned the place.</DIV>  <DIV>The walls are hung with images of country-western singers painted on distressed plywood by Langford, a punk-rock renaissance man who brings his multimedia performance piece, <I>The Executioner's Last Songs</I>, to Thomas Great Hall at Bryn Mawr College tonight [Wed., March 29]</DIV>  <DIV>At Yard Dog, <I>Gold Brick</I>, the latest solo album by the leader of the storied British band the Mekons - and of country punks the Waco Brothers - is prominently displayed by the cash register.</DIV>  <DIV>As is <I>Nashville Radio</I>, his new paperback coffee-table book, which collects art of luminaries such as Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn as well as, Langford says while munching on
 chips-and-salsa at a Mexican restaurant, "unknown foot soldiers in the music business wars."</DIV>  <DIV>And if you were to follow your ears to the Yard Dog backyard, you'd find the ruddy-faced Welshmen up on a stage, cracking wise and cranking up one bracingly intelligent rock-and-roll salvo after another.</DIV>  <DIV>He could be fronting the Wacos - raucous working-class heroes whose impassioned attack has been described as Clash-meets-Cash - or mining his subtler solo work alongside soulful vocalist Sally Timms and violinist Jean Cook, both of whom will join him in Bryn Mawr tonight.</DIV>  <DIV>Langford's manic adventures are such a staple of SXSW that this year the alt-weekly Austin Chronicle asked him to keep a diary. Alongside two Yard Dog shows he packed in a recording session with Cook, a book signing, two showcase events, and a guest spot with Austin roots-rocker Alejandro Escovedo.</DIV>  <DIV>But rather than play it straight for the alt-weekly, he told tales of
 meeting David Bowie on the plane, and agreeing to collaborate on a forthcoming Tin Machine project. "Lies," he says, with a devilish grin. "A pack of lies."</DIV>  <DIV>Teaming up with Bowie might be too mainstream for Langford, who has a sideline skewering superstars (under the alias Chuck Death) in the syndicated weekly comic Great Pop Things, and who, on 1989's great <I>The Mekons Rock 'n' Roll</I>, lampooned Bono as "the Dublin Messiah, scattering crumbs."</DIV>  <DIV>Instead of pursuing the pop charts, Langford, 48, has forged a brilliant under-the-radar career marked by artistic restlessness, left-leaning politics - manifest in <I>Executioner</I>'s anti-death penalty stance - and a protean drive to create.</DIV>  <DIV>It all started at Leeds University in 1976, when the Runaways came to town.</DIV>  <DIV>"It was four women in their underwear playing really loud rock music," he recalls. "I wanted to be one of the Runaways."</DIV>  <DIV>The Sex Pistols soon followed,
 and before he knew it, Langford had given up art school for the Mekons, whose single "Never Been in a Riot" was a high-water mark of early punk.</DIV>  <DIV>"I'm quite proud of what we did. It was all about questioning... . The formula was that there was no formula." The Mekons were signed, and dropped, by a major label. By 1979, after Langford and bandmate Tom Greenhalgh were unable to get jobs as bus conductors in Leeds, they went back to art school.</DIV>  <DIV>Those early Mekons were lionized by excitable rock critic Lester Bangs, who called them "the most revolutionary group in the history of rock and roll,... the finest artists to have graced this admittedly somewhat degenerate form with the grace of their aesthetic sensibilities, rarefied as a glimpse through a butterfly's wing."</DIV>  <DIV>In the 1980s, the Mekons regrouped as a country-punk outfit with 1985's masterful <I>Fear and Whiskey</I>, but critical hosannahs never turned into commercial success. In 1991,
 again without a record deal, Langford moved to Chicago with his wife.</DIV>  <DIV>The lover of American roots music experienced what he calls a "real road-to-Damascus moment" that year at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville, once frequented by Hank Williams. "There were all these yellowed and grayed publicity photos of people who had been chopped up and spit out by the music industry. People from 50 years ago, with big smiles on their faces staring out optimistically. It was just so sad to me."</DIV>  <DIV>Ghostly C&W stars, sometimes with skulls instead of faces, became his subject matter, and he thrived in Chicago's fecund alt-country scene. In 1995 he formed the Wacos, and he's been on a winning streak ever since.</DIV>  <DIV><I>Gold Brick</I> is his third solo album. It's more polished and less garage-rock than 1998's <I>Skull Orchard</I>, and less country than 2004's <I>All the Fame of Lofty Deeds</I>. "These songs are about displacement, being in exile, and an
 economic refugee in some ways."</DIV>  <DIV>One high point is an epic rocker called "Lost in America." It was commissioned by Ira Glass of Public Radio International's <I>This American Life</I>. "We went on the road with the radio show, like Paul Shaffer. We were the surly and incompetent sidekicks."</DIV>  <DIV>Onstage at SXSW, Langford and the Wacos come off as an unrepentant, hard-partying bar band. But no man could live that hard and be so prolific. "I realized that hangovers had to be removed once I had a kid," says the father of two boys, who juggles his touring with the schedule of his wife, an architect who travels frequently.</DIV>  <DIV>His attitude toward the music business ranges from disinterest to contempt. "This one will probably sell about 200," he says, pointing to <I>Gold Brick</I>. It's his folk-art success - most of his paintings sell in the $1,000 range - that pays the bills.</DIV>  <DIV>"I actually think artists should be like workers with day jobs,"
 he says. "I have no time whatsoever for the inspired artist starving in a garret. I like getting up at 8 a.m., cleaning my brushes, and getting to work."</DIV>  <DIV>Recently, Langford says, "somebody asked me to paint Hank Williams dying in the back of his Cadillac in the style of David's <I>Marat</I>. I was like, 'Yeah, I'll try.' It's hanging in their house, and they paid me to do it."</DIV>  <DIV>That work ethic applies to music, too. There's talk of a Waco follow-up to last year's <I>Freedom and Weep</I>, a new Mekons album is half-done, and a new disc by Langford and Cook's side project, Ship & Pilot, is due later this year.</DIV>  <DIV>Langford's energetic commitment to his art is the envy of whipper-snappers not half his age. And after three decades, it shows no signs of flagging. How long can he keep it up?</DIV>  <DIV>"I've never really thought about it," he says. "There always seems to be something interesting to do. You're born, you die, and you try to fill
 up this space in the middle, and try not to be an ass.... That's about it, really. The only thing I've learnt is to try and do the best you can."</DIV><!-- end body-content --><!-- begin body-end -->  <DIV class=body-end>  <DIV class=tagline>  <HR class=tagline color=#cccccc SIZE=1>  </DIV></DIV><o:p></o:p></SPAN></B>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>  <DIV class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></DIV></DIV>
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