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On this day, 29 April 1997, singer, songwriter, musician, author and political activist Billy Bragg played Cardiff University.
His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that mostly span political or romantic themes. His activism is centred on social change and left-wing political causes.
Bragg released the album William Bloke in 1996 after taking time off to help new partner Juliet Wills raise their son Jack. (There is a reference to him in the track "Brickbat": "Now you'll find me with the baby, in the bathroom.") After the ambitious instrumentation of Don't Try This at Home, it was a simpler record, musically, more personal and even spiritual, lyrically (its title a pun on the name of 18th-century English poet William Blake, who is referenced in the song "Upfield").
Around that time, Nora Guthrie (daughter of American folk artist Woody Guthrie) asked Bragg to set some of her father's unrecorded lyrics to music. The result was a collaboration with the band Wilco and Natalie Merchant (with whom Bragg had worked previously). They released the album Mermaid Avenue in 1998,[33] and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000. The first album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. A third batch, Mermaid Avenue Vol III, and The Complete Sessions followed in 2012 to mark Woody Guthrie's centennial.
A rift with Wilco over mixing and sequencing the first album led to Bragg recruiting his own band, The Blokes, to promote the album live. The Blokes included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who had been a member of Bragg's boyhood heroes The Faces. The documentary film Man in the Sand depicts the roles of Nora Guthrie, Bragg, and Wilco in the creation of the Mermaid Avenue albums.
Setlist
She's Got a New Spell
The World Turned Upside Down
(Leon Rosselson cover)
Goalhanger
The Man in the Iron Mask
To Have and to Have Not
Levi Stubbs' Tears
Accident Waiting to Happen
The Boy Done Good
Greetings to the New Brunette
The Saturday Boy
Brickbat
Upfield
Sexuality
Between the Wars
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards
There Is Power in a Union
A New England
(Father's version)
