Music > Interviews
Billy Bragg
OPEN
21/12/16
Legendary singer songwriter Billy Bragg, author of such classics as Sexuality, A New England and The Milkman Of Human Kindness has made a bit of a different record this year. Along with his mate Joe Henry he travelled for four days along the trainline from Chicago to LA, recording traditional American railroad songs at each station. The result is a raw, rootsy collection of songs that they’ll be performing, along with some of their own works, at Open this month. I spoke to one of the most outspoken, talented and down to earth men in music about Kirsty McColl, Woody Guthrie and singing in an American accent.
You’ve always had a strong interest in skiffle, and there’s a link there with railroads – is that what piqued your interest in making your new album?
Yeah, I’ve been writing a book about skiffle for the last couple of years and that’s what got be interested in railroads songs and why there were so many of them.
How did you and Joe get on with the practical constraints on this project – jumping on and off the train to record?
The trains in America are not the same as trains in Britain – in the larger cities they stop for upwards of 20 or 30 minutes because they have to give way to freight trains. There are many more freight trains than passenger trains – not many people travel that way in America.
You went from Chicago to LA, stopping off at places like St Louis and Tucson on the way. How did you pick what route to take?
Well it’s pretty simple really – that’s the longest route on the whole system and we needed as much time as we could to get these songs recorded. We didn’t want to take a chance in missing them.
You’ve just come back from touring the album in the States – that must have had a certain poignancy to it, playing those American songs to Americans in America.
It gave us a chance to talk about where the songs come from and the role the railroad songs played in American culture. Obviously with the election going on as well it was quite an interesting time to be out there.
Will you and Joe be playing most of the album when you’re here in Norwich?
Most of it, yep. The show starts with Joe and I together on stage, then I take a break and he plays half a dozen solo songs. After an interval I play six or so songs on my own and then we finish together. Everyone gets to do a bit that way. I mean it’s not like a usual Billy Bragg show but I think it’s more interesting, how we talk about subjects and open up debate.
You’ve been a big fan of Woody Guthrie over the years, and were even asked by his daughter Nora to set some of his lyrics to music. That must have been a nervewracking project?
It wasn’t that bad really because there are over 3,000 complete lyrics so it wasn’t the last few scraps. If I messed it up there was plenty of other opportunity for someone else to come along and do it proper!
Political songwriting seems to be coming back in a more obvious way recently – Sleaford Mods for example. Who do you think is particularly good at expressing their political views through their music these days?
Well I like Sleaford Mods, I just wish they were 20! You know, I’m sure they won’t mind me saying that they’re my generation, people whose views about what music should do was shaped in the late 20th century. I think now your average teenager is going to look to other ways of expressing their opinion before forming a band. A band is a big ask – you’ve got to play an instrument, write songs, get up on stage – it’s much easier to sound off on social media and I think that’s where people now vent their anger. In the old days I didn’t have any other way of expressing how I felt about the world.
You’re not afraid to speak out politically – in fact many would say you’re an inspiration. Have you ever been tempted to take up politics as an actual career?
No, I think there’s enough white middle aged men in Parliament already without me adding to that!
You’ve had backing and touring bands, but how come you never wanted to be in a band but preferred to be a solo artist?
I think it gave me more mobility on the road, an opportunity to earn a living what with only having one mouth to feed so to speak, it allowed me to be a different kind of musician to everything else that was happening at the time. When I started out most of the bands were synthesiser duos like Yazoo, Soft Cell or the Pet Shop Boys, so a bloke with a guitar on his own stood out. Alright, it was never going to be massive but there were enough people who were interested to be able to put that across.
How did Kirsty McColl end up recording one of your best known album tracks, A New England?
She came to see me at a gig, said she wanted to do a version of it, and that if I came round her house one morning she’d do me a fried breakfast and we could rewrite the lyrics together. In the end I’d already rewritten them before I got there but I still got the cooked breakfast – it was a fair deal!
Your development as an artist has been interesting – I guess in those first years it was a question of whether or not to go down the pop route, the multi-album deals. Then you became more interested in the roots of English music and although you’ve always been a political creature, it became more poignant to you when you moved to Dorset. More recently your music has been Americana-tinged, most notably on your last two albums. Are there other areas of music that you look forward to getting into in the future?
I guess it’s a progression – you start out in one place but don’t always end up in that same place. I think if I was still playing the sort of music I made back in the day people would be bored of it, and I’d be bored of it. I did a gig the other day, a 30th anniversary celebration for my record label Cooking Vinyl and I played most of Brewing Up With Billy Bragg. I really enjoyed it, it was fun playing those old songs and bashing them out. Having spent six months on the road with Joe Henry playing acoustic guitars and singing in tune it was great to play an electric guitar and singing out of tune in the old Billy Bragg style!
Speaking of singing I found it interesting that you chose to use an American accent on your last couple albums rather than your own Essex one – how did you find that?
It came from making the Mermaid Avenue album really, because it’s so hard to sing those Woody Guthrie songs in an Essex accent! It’s almost impossible, so having discovered that I also realised that my voice had dropped by nearly a whole tone so singing low and in that mid-Atlantic accent makes it easier to sing both the railway songs and Woody’s songs.
You are a legend in British music. What advice would you give to anyone just starting to learn the guitar and write lyrics?
The best way to fin out if the songs work is to get out there and do a gig, so if you can get out there and get up on stage and sing your songs that’s a much better way of finding out if they’re good and if you like doing that than sitting at home and putting things up on the Internet. I think people want to hear people singing their truth. For young artists who want to do what I’ve done I’d tell them not to worry about Politics with a capital P, but to write about the pressures that they feel under – that’s what I want to hear about from 20 year olds, the pressure, because that’s what punk was all about. You’ve got to start from a personal place, that’s where I started and if you don’t start with yourself you can’t extrapolate on anything else.
You played at the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival earlier this year and our reviewer loved it – was that a memorable gig for you?
Oh how can it not be a memorable gig if backstage is where there used to be tigers? There aren’t many gigs I play at where you go through an arch that elephants have walked through! It’s an amazing building, and definitely one of the most memorable gigs of the year for me – playing in that space was just incredible. It was nice to play in the round as well.
Billy Bragg and Joe Henry play at Open on 22nd January. Tickets available from opennorwich.org.uk