billy bragg & the blokes

Billy Bragg is a British singer songwriter who first came to prominence in 1983 with his debut album Life's A Riot. Since then he has become one of the country’s best known and best loved popular musicians. Dubbed Britain’s finest rock poet by the British music paper, NME, Billy’s high quality songwriting shuns the glossy values traditionally associated with pop music.

Billy spent the years between 1983 and 1993 touring extensively across the globe, much of the time as a solo performer. During those years he released several Top Ten albums and numerous Top Ten singles in many territories. He has collaborated with The Smiths ‘s Johnny Marr, Natalie Merchant de 10.000 Maniacs, Pete Seeger and REM. Those who have recorded songs written by Billy include Kirsty McColl (“A New England”), Paul Young (“Man In The Iron Mask”) and Dubstar (“St Swithins Day”).

Apart from his music and sense of humour, Billy is also well known for his personal commitment to political and humanitarian issues. He says he was politicised by Margarte Thatcher, and his experiences while actively supporting the British mining communities during the miner’s strike of 1984/85 proved a strong influence. This later led him to create a coalition of musicians, “Red Wedge”, that included Paul Weller, Junior Giscombe and Jimmy Sommerville among others, which offered critical support for the UK’s Labour Party during the 1987 General Election. He has been a longstanding and vociferous campaigner against racism and has lent his solidarity to many international issues in many ways, including performing to raise funds.

While his musical career is the most important aspect of his work, he manages to find time to work as a broadcaster and writer discussing social and political issues which are close to his heart. He has written extensively on such subjects as Englishness and the reform of the House of Lords, for both broadsheets and broadcasting media.

In1996, Billy was invited by Woody Guthrie’s daughter, Nora, to visit the Guthrie Archive in New York where she showed him thousands of unpublished lyrics that her father had written. The songs had never been recorded, as the original tunes, carried in Woody’s head, had been lost when he died. It was Nora’s hope that Billy would take on the task of writing new ones. The resulting album, Mermaid Avenue , was recorded in Dublin with US country rockers Wilco. Following its release to worldwide acclaim in 1998, Mermaid Avenue was nominated for a Grammy Award and included in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the most influential albums of the ‘90s. To date it has sold over 500.000 copies worldwide, and the follow-up, Mermaid Avenue Volume II, was released in the summer of 2000 to critical acclaim and another Grammy nomination.

Bragg embarked on a world tour in 2000 backed by his band The Blokes (former members of 3 Mustapha 3, Fairground Attraction and The Small Faces). He also released Reaching to the converted, a compilation of his all-times hits, and co-edited You Can Call Me Cupcake, a live album only available at his concerts.