Jon Langford

Jonathan "Jon" Denis Langford (born 11 October 1957) is a prolific Welsh musician and artist based in Chicago. He is one of the founders of punk band The Mekons, post-punk group The Three Johns and alternative country ensembles The Waco Brothers and Pine Valley Cosmonauts. He has worked actively to campaign against the death penalty in Illinois.

Langford was born in Newport, Wales, the youngest son of Kit Langford and Denis Langford, an accountant for Lloyd's Brewery. Langford's older brother is science-fiction author and critic David Langford, who lives in Reading, England.

When he was young, Langford would visit his grandparents in Croesyceiliog, whose family friend ran two pubs, the Cambrian Arms and The Six In Hand. He attended Gaer Infants School and Gaer Junior School, then Brynglas Primary School, the Newport High School middle school, before Queen's Hill. In 1972-1973, after playing rugby and football, at the age of 15 Langford decided he liked playing music better. He played a lot of David Bowie and was listening to a lot of Man.

Langford attended art school at University of Leeds as a painter. He left school temporarily when the Mekons were founded, but later went back to college and finished his degree.

Since the mid-1980s, Langford has been one of the leaders in incorporating folk and country music into punk rock. He has released a number of solo recordings as well as recordings with other bands outside of The Mekons, most notably the Waco Brothers, which he co-founded after moving to Chicago in the early 1990s. He is involved with the Chicago-based independent record label Bloodshot.

In a 2010 interview, Langford said his earliest influences were Tom Jones, Slade, T. Rex, The Kinks, Johnny Cash, Man and Black Sabbath.

The Mekons

Langford was originally the drummer for the punk band The Mekons when it formed at the University of Leeds in 1977, but he later took up the guitar as other band members left. The Mekons were signed to Virgin Records but according to Langford they "got fired." They played their first U.S. appearance on New Year's Eve in 1980, gave up live performances for a while, and released 1982's The Mekons Story. They began performing again in public in 1984, playing their first shows as benefits for the British miners' union. After being signed by major American label A&M Records in the late 1980s, label shuffling resulted in the band trying to leave the label. In response, they gave the label, The Curse of the Mekons, which became only available overseas as an import. They continue to perform live today. A documentary called The Revenge of the Mekons was released in 2014 by director Joe Angio.

The Three Johns

With John Hyatt and Phillip Brennan, Langford released several albums of drum-machine-fueled punk between 1982 and 1987. A retrospective box set was released in August 2015.

The Waco Brothers

The Waco Brothers make country-punk music, and are a Chicago-based amalgam of players from the Pine Valley Cosmonauts family and others (including Dean Schlabowske, Tracey Dear, Joe Camarillo, Alan Doughty, Mark Durante and Mekons drummer Steve Goulding), who have been recording since 1995.

Pine Valley Cosmonauts

Langford initiated another project, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, which performs the music of other country music groups. Several alternative country musicians have guested alongside a revolving assortment of Chicago musicians who have backed both Langford and other musicians such as Kelly Hogan.

Solo and Skull Orchard

Langford's first official solo album, Skull Orchard, a look back at his hometown of Newport, Wales, was released in 1998. He followed it with All the Fame of Lofty Deeds, in 2004, Gold Brick in 2006, Old Devils in 2010 and Here Be Monsters in 2014.

In the late 2000s Langford came into contact with the Burlington Welsh Male Chorus based near Toronto, invited them first to accompany him at a CeltFest in Chicago in 2007, then to re-record the whole of the Skull Orchard. The album Skull Orchard Revisited (credited to Jon Langford and the Burlington Welsh Male Chorus) was released on 3 June 2011 by Bloodshot Records.

2010's Old Devils is a follow up to the first Skull Orchard album.

Men of Gwent

Men of Gwent (aka Jon Langford and His Men of Gwent) are a group of mainly Newport-based musicians, including members of Give Me Memphis and The Darling Buds. Previously known as LL, the group have written and recorded intermittently for over 20 years, and have been playing live since 2007. As LL, their only release was a demo track ("Rechem") on the 1999 compilation Fear of a Red Planet. Debut album The Legend of LL was released in 2015 and included reworkings of several songs from the same LL demos, as well as a new version of "Pill Sailor", first released on Skull Orchard in 1998.

Bad Luck Jonathan

Langford debuted Bad Luck Jonathan at the 2014 Hideout Block Party in Chicago. The band, described as "socialist voodoo space boogie", features Alan Doughty and Joe Camarillo from the Waco Brothers, Phil Wandscher from Whiskeytown, Martin Billheimer from Chicago's Pritzker Military Museum and Library.

Langford is a prolific and respected visual artist best known for his striking portraits of country music icons including Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley. His paintings appear on bottles and other items for the Dogfish Head Brewery.

Langford is an accomplished artist and is renowned for his multi-layered paintings of famous and forgotten figures from the dawn of country music. His artwork is available from the Yard Dog Art Gallery in Austin, Texas. Nashville Radio, a collection of his artwork and writings, was published in 2006.

For over 10 years, Langford illustrated the comic strip Great Pop Things under the pseudonym Chuck Death with a friend from his hometown, Newport, Wales, Colin B. Morton, who wrote the text. The cartoon strip ran in alternative weekly newspapers in Los Angeles and Chicago, and was a pen-and-ink history of rock-and-roll. An anthology of the best strips was published in a book of the same name.

In 2015, Langford was commissioned by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to paint a series of portraits for its "Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City" exhibition, which opened on March 27, 2015.

Langford also designed the cover of author Jay Spencer Green's debut novel, Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's.

• Since 2005, Langford co-hosted a weekly radio program called "The Eclectic Company" with Nicholas Tremulis, which is broadcast on WXRT 93.1 FM in Chicago.
• Langford has contributed to This American Life.

• "WXRT – The Eclectic Company". WXRT. Retrieved 28 July 2010. 
• "This American Life". This American Life. Retrieved 28 July 2010. 

• In 2005, Langford's multimedia music/spoken-word/video performance, The Executioner's Last Songs, premiered at Alverno College, and has been performed in several other cities.
• In January and February 2009, Chicago's Walkabout Theater Company and Collaboraction premiered a stage adaptation of Langford's Goldbrick that featured a live band, two actors and video projections.
• In November and December 2009, The House Theatre of Chicago staged a production of All the Fame of Lofty Deeds, written by rock journalist Mark Guarino and based on Langford's art and 2004 solo album of the same name.

• "Goldbrick". Walkabout Theater Company. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 22 December 2014. 
• "All the Fame of Lofty Deeds". The House Theatre of Chicago. Archived from the original on 18 April 2010. Retrieved 22 December 2014. 

• Langford has guested on numerous recordings, including with Dutch punk band the Ex, The Old 97s, Chip Taylor, as well as Austin, Texas legend Alejandro Escovedo, and has recorded joint albums with Sally Timms, Kevin Coyne, Richard Buckner, Kat Ex (as KatJonBand), Walter Salas-Humara, The Sadies and Rosie Flores.
• Langford also contributed and worked with Doorika, a defunct performance arts collective based in Chicago and New York City.
• Langford was Castee #00039 in Cynthia Plaster Caster's plaster castings. The piece is one of the more famous moldings of that project, and was named Long Dong Jon Langford.

• "KatJonBand". Carrot Top Records. Retrieved 23 December 2014. 
• "List of Castees and Failures". Cynthia Plaster Caster. Retrieved 23 December 2014. 
• "Nardwuar vs. Cynthia Plaster Caster". Nardwuar. Retrieved 23 December 2014. 

Langford considers himself "working class socialist."

Anti-death penalty work

• Langford said he became politicized on the death penalty after the execution of John Wayne Gacy.
• Langford is an honorary board member of the Chicago-based nonprofit organisation Rock For Kids.

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Langford is married to architect and jewelry designer, Helen Tsatsos. Tsatsos' jewelry was awarded Macy's "Designer of Distinction" award in 2010 and has a line of pieces that incorporate Langford's artwork. Langford met his wife in 1986 at a party after a gig in her home town of Chicago. They have two children, Jimmy and Tommy, and live in Chicago. Jimmy Langford has a band called the Ungnomes.

Albums

• 1998: Skull Orchard (Bloodshot Records)
• 2003: Mayors Of The Moon (Bloodshot Records) - as Jon Langofrd and his Sadies
• 2004: All the Fame of Lofty Deeds (Bloodshot Records)
• 2006: Gold Brick (Bloodshot Records)
• 2009: All the Fame of Lofty Deeds - The Soundtrack (Bloodshot Records)
• 2010: Live At The Hideout: Jon Langford and Walter Salas-Humara (Bloodshot Records) - digital only
• 2010: Old Devils (Bloodshot Records)
• 2011: Skull Orchard Revisited - debut album Skull Orchard re-recorded with the Burlington Welsh Male Choir; book + CD
• 2014: Here Be Monsters (Bloodshot Records)
• 2014: Choice Cuts: Best of Jon Langford (Bloodshot Records)

EP

• 1998: Gravestone EP (Bloodshot Records)
• 2000: Songs of False Hope & High Values (Bloodshot Records) - Sally Timms & Jon Langford

7 inch singles

• 2012: Drone Operator (Bloodshot Records) - as Jon Langford and Skull Orchard

• Morton, Colin B., Chuck Death, and Greil Marcus. Great Pop Things. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1992. ISBN 978-0-140-17156-3 OCLC 441310470
• Morton, Colin B., and Chuck Death. The Real History of Rock and Roll from Elvis to Oasis. Portland, OR: Verse Chorus Press, 1998. ISBN 978-1-891-24108-6 OCLC 41108753
• Langford, Jon. Nashville Radio: Art, Words and Music. Portland, OR: Verse Chorus Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1-891-24119-2 OCLC 65470084
• Langford, Jon, and David Langford. Skull Orchard Revisited: Art, Words & Music. Portland, OR: Verse Chorus Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-891-24130-7 OCLC 670481762