Jon Langford

Early life

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.

Music

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.

Art

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.

Radio

Theater

Collaborations

Activism

Langford considers himself "working class socialist."

Anti-death penalty work

Personal life

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, and Tommy is the lead singer in a band called Five times crazy.

Albums

EP

7 inch singles

Works or publications