Mekon, Waco Brother, Countryman: Jon Langford

He's also an activist. The three compilations in his The Executioner’s Last Song series have brought together alt-country gentry like Steve Earle, Dave Alvin, Neko Case, and Rhett Miller, with proceeds benefitting the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Thirty years after their inception, the Mekons remain a loose collective of musicians (eight at last count), all with individual careers, who gather every few years to make new songs that are typically ungoverned by any particular sound or style. Their latest album, Natural, is a collection of haunted-sounding, predominantly acoustic eulogies for a dying world. Prior to that they released Punk Rock, a collection of newly re-worked versions of their earliest, most aggressive music from the late 1970s.

Langford spoke to DCist by phone from Chicago the day before beginning the Mekons’ 30th anniversary tour, which stops at Jammin’ Java in Vienna tonight.

DCist: So, you’re playing at Jammin’ Java Monday night. How’s the band sounding?

Jon Langford: Um, interesting. It’s pretty acoustic, what we’re doing this time. It’s an unusual one. We’re just sitting around Sally [Timms]’s house; we haven’t been to a rehearsal room or anything. We’re just playing the songs without microphones, so I don’t know. It might be horrifying tomorrow night when it’s really loud, but it sounds really nice at the moment. [Laughs]

DCist: The show — at least at the club where I’m going — is being billed as “a quiet night in with the Mekons.”

JL: That’s good. I enjoy a quiet night in.

DCist: So you’re going to be playing the material from Natural more or less much the way it is on the record, then?

JL: Sure. A bunch of it, obviously, it changes, because the way the album was recorded. On some of the songs, we can’t even remember who played what on the record. So some of it’s a bit difficult to recreate faithfully. But we’re not bothered about that.

RIGHT: Hank & Ahab's Harpoon by Jon Langford; etching on paper.

DCist: I read how you went off to a house in the English countryside somewhere and locked yourselves in . . .

JL: Yeah. We weren’t intending on making an album. But we were up in Edinburgh, and we had another gig in Manchester five days later, and nothing in between. We don’t really know anyone who lives up that way, so we went and rented a place. We took a lot of acoustic instruments, and Lu Edmonds, who plays saz and cumbus with us, brought his little Pro Tools setup. Basically we were just making stuff up, off the top of our heads. But the sound of it was very different for us.

DCist: Do you mean you recorded the album in five days, or at least that the basic tracks were done in five days?

JL: The basic tracks were done, yeah. But then [Edmonds] took it away and fiddled with it for about 18 months on his own! He kept sending me CDs.

DCist: When was that initial session?

JL: I think it was in 2004. It was at the end of a tour [for Punk Rock]. And then after that, we had a lot of people scattered quite widely. 2005 was one of the few years we didn’t play at all, because Tom [Greenhalgh] was in China all year.

DCist: Well, I know the material on Punk Rock was just some of your oldest stuff re-recorded. Obviously that’s a more aggressive sound than what’s on Natural. Do you think the more organic sound of the new record is a reaction to having made it right after you got back from a tour where you were playing those harsh songs the way you did them back in the '70s?

JL: I don’t know. Some of the songs we actually gave different treatments to. You know, we recorded them for Punk Rock. Some of them, we started out in my basement, just playing them and working them out and seeing what they were like. Some of them I had a feeling were better songs than how we recorded them back in the late 70s. Specifically, a song called “Work All Week . . .

DCist: I love that song.

JL: Yeah, well it was kind of horrible. I always hated the single. It came out in, like, ’79. It was recorded in Stupid Studio, this big rock studio where the Police were recording and the guys from 10CC recorded down there. It was totally overblown and pointless. And we ended up with this horrible-sounding thing. The record company put it out and naturally, we didn’t like it and no one else liked it. We couldn’t even remember why we’d done it! So it was nice to go back and pick up an acoustic guitar and try to play it. Actually, the way it was written, it was quite a good song. It just got messed up.

LEFT: Big Bill Broonzy by Jon Langford; etching on paper.

DCist: I only know the [updated] version on Punk Rock. My collection doesn’t go back quite that far.

JL: Well, don’t bother listening to the single! It’s just horrible. At that stage, we really weren’t even producing our own stuff, so things tended to get out of hand pretty quickly. We were on a major label. You don’t really have very much control over what you’re doing. Now that’s basically all we have: control over what we’re doing.

DCist: Well, about that: You are so prolific — you’re usually good for at least a record a year, whether it’s a Mekons album or a Waco Brothers or one of the Executioner’s Last Song compilations or a solo record. When you write something, do you know right away where it’s going? Which band is going to perform it?

JL: Well, I never really write anything for the Mekons as such. We just do that when we’re all together. When we decide to do a Waco Brothers album, I usually spend a few weeks just going through seeing what bit and bobs I have. The Waco Brothers I always think of it as a pretty brash, noisy live band. So you always want stuff that’s going to fit in with that set. You don’t want it to be . . . There’s not much soul searching in the Waco Brothers, let’s put it that way. If I write something that’s a good, fast rock song, it’ll probably end up with the Waco Brothers. And then the solo stuff, really, is stuff that I don’t know where it’s meant to be. I only make solo records because I write a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

DCist: Productivity does not seem to be a problem for you.

JL: Well, I can go months without writing anything, and then someone will say, “We should do another Waco Brothers album!” And then we’ll write a ton of stuff really fast. Then with the Mekons, we never say, “Oh, no! We haven’t written any songs!” We just go into a room and we know that by the end of the day we’ll have a bunch of songs.

DCist: With so many albums — 16 or 18, I think, plus compilations and live albums and all the side projects — is there a particular one that you think serves as a good point-of-entry into your 30 years of music in so many different styles? I like to give people Fear and Whiskey or Edge of the World. Sometimes I give them Rock and Roll, too.

JL: Well, the whole thing is, the band has changed so much. People disagree with me, but I don’t really think there’s a Mekons sound. I think there’s a Mekons way of working, and a Mekons stance. But the sound has always changed. I guess Fear and Whiskey is a good one.

RIGHT: Fear and Whiskey, 1985.

I felt that was the most fully realized thing we did in the early years. We spent quite a long time getting to the point where we could make an album that I would want to listen to today.

DCist: Fear and Whiskey came out in 1985, so you had been together eight years by then.

JL: Something like that, yeah. There’s a been a lot of other odd little things I really like. On the second album, the Devils, Rats and Piggies one, we were so exasperated with the music business that we just ran off and swapped instruments, and basically just said, “Screw this punk rock thing! We’ll just do something else.”

DCist: That’s the first one where Sally’s in the band, right?

JL: Sally’s [joined just before] The Mekons Story, which was the third one. I like that one a lot as well, but I think if you gave that as an introduction to the band people would probably run away screaming. [Laughs.] Of the recent ones, I think Journey to the End of the Night is an album I’m really happy with.

DCist: That one’s from 2000, I think.

JL: It was never an album I had problems with, you know what I mean?

DCist: Is there something about in particular, or any specific songs that you think are really . . .

JL: Well, there are a lot of songs I really like on it, but the [whole thing] just seems kind of effortless on one level, you know. It’s just not problematic for me to listen to it now. I don’t think, “Oh God, I wish we’d done that differently.” I just seems to be fully realized. It’s very much itself. I wouldn’t know what to change. When you make something that’s really good, you kind of forget how you even made it. Other albums, I can remember every detail: fighting over bits and bobs, making stupid decisions.

DCist: It’s better when it feels like it just came straight from you subconscious.

JL: Yeah. It’s an odd one. It really was quite an easy album to make. The Curse -- that was quite a difficult album, but I really like that one as well. It seems like there’s a lot going on in the songwriting on that one.

DCist: Do you know what you’re going to be playing — other than the songs from Natural — when you hit the road tomorrow night?

JL: It’ll be a bunch of various ones we haven’t done for a while. We haven’t really done any of them in the States for a while, because this is the first time we’ve toured in the States in three years. So we’re not being particularly picky. It’s not like we’re going, “Aw, well, we can’t do that again.”

DCist: Do you feel like there any songs you have to play?

JL: “Memphis, Egypt.” “Millionaire.” People usually expect you to play those. But I doubt we will.

LEFT: Cyclops I by Jon Langford; mixed media on wood.

DCist: I know when I bought Punk Rock in 2004 it had a sticker on the cover that said it was the Mekons’ 25th anniversary. And now, three years later, I’m going to see you on the 30th anniversary tour ...

JL: Some of it was recorded on the 25th anniversary tour. I think that was the deal. Most of it was actually recorded at a club called the Fireside Ballroom in Chicago by a mate of ours called Adam Jacobs. He just set some mics up, and it just sounded great. We thought, “This should be an album.”

DCist: The show’s on a Monday night. Are you gonna keep us out late?

JL: Definitely.

DCist: That’s what we like to hear!

JL: I think those shows are pretty reasonable, actually. In keeping with the fact that certain members of the band like to play early so they can get to bed, and certain members of the band like to play early so they can go out afterwards.

DCist: You’ll have to drive a bit if you want to go out after that one. You’re kind of on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. But we’ll tell you where you can go.

JL: All right then, Mate. Thanks very much! We’ll see you there!

The Mekons perform tonight at Jammin' Java in Vienna. Tickets are available here.