Jon Langford

Roger Knox and Jon Langford were interviewed and  performed on ABC TV in Sydney Australia in April.

Watch it here. It's beautiful & insightful and a good laugh

Seething with envy that you don't get to see the bounteous music and depravity of South by Southwest this year?  Pissed that you can't partake in all the Bloodshot-friendly events in the warm weather of Austin TX?  Tired of the drabness of late winter Chicago?

Fear not, we're bringing some of the action to you right HERE, friends!

THE DETAILS

Chicago SXSW Send-Off Party!
Sunday March 3rd, 7pm at Cobra Lounge

Featuring:
JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound
Jon Langford & Skull Orchard

plus eats by ManBQue

RSVP for entry:  Do312.com/Bloodshot
RSVP is subject to capacity.

We shall see you there as we get our livers into fighting shape.

For an entire week, No Depression helped us tell the story of the remarkable new album by Roger Knox and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts Stranger In My Land.

This album features the talents of Sally Timms, Kelly Hogan, The Sadies, Jon Langford, Andre Williams, Charlie Louvin, Dave Alvin and many more and each day ND posted a story by these artists on the recording.  They also posted a stream of each song.

HERE are the stories and streams in their entirety

Read all about the how Roger's story and his music affected all the incredible talent Langford was able to pull together for Stranger In My Land and we hope you'll support this once-in-a-label's-lifetime project.

Also:  Here's a short (5 minutes) documentary piece that Chicago filmmaker Scott Alexander made on Roger.  Features interviews with Roger and Jon Langford and some live footage featuring the Sadies and Sally Timms

The long-time-in-the-making Roger Knox & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts album Stranger in My Land is being released on February 12th. This is a very dear record to us and one of, gasp, cultural significance, so please PLEASE give it a listen!

To whip you into a state of frothy excitement, we're entering all pre-orders into a drawing to win two Jon Langford prints.

Also, you can read an early chunk of praise from acclaimed Canadian First Nations' writer Richard Wagamese HERE.

Some highlights:

"When it’s released in early February, this will become the most important country music release of 2013. Why?…This is country music wrought bruised and aching from the dustbowl that is Australia’s Outback.  This is Roger Knox bringing an Aboriginal voice to what amounts to Jimmie Rodgers, Lefty Frizzell, Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson gathered at the billabong singing protest tunes.

These are down-under songs of racial alienation, displacement, the march to civil rights and a collective voice in the wilderness proclaiming that they will not be moved. It is vintage Nashville sung like it should be; honestly, matter-of-fact and evocative as hell...Elegant, suffused with meaning and essential."

HEADS UP!

Roger Knox, the Black Elvis, the Koori King of Country, has his visa in hand and is coming to the USA from Down Under to play a few dates. The last time he tried to come over a few years ago, the US government denied him entry.

This may be the ONLY CHANCE you'll get to see the man, so DON'T MISS IT!

Read all about his collaboration with Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts HERE. It features Will Oldham, the Sadies, Kelly Hogan, Dave Alvin, Andre Williams and many others.

This is an important record, friends and we want you all to welcome Roger to our land.

Oct 5th in SAN FRANCISCO at Swedish American Hall a special acoustic performance at Swedish American Hall at 8:30 with Jon Langford, Sally Timms and Walter Salas-Humara of the Silos

Oct 6th in SAN FRANCISCO at the HARDLY STRICTLY BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL at 11am Star Stage w/ The Sadies, Sally Timms, Jon Langford

OCT 10TH in MADISON WI at The Frequency w/ the Waco Brothers, Sally Timms

OCT 11TH in CHICAGO at Old Town School of Folk Music w/ The Waco Brothers, Sally Timms

In late July, Bloodshot turned 18!!  In that hazy, crazy summer of '94, we put out a little compilation to alleviate our boredom (Angry Birds hadn't been invented yet...I know...it was like the Stone Age) and try and get into to shows for free.  It features the first widely available recordings of Bottle Rockets, Robbie Fulks, The Handsome Family, and provided Jon Langford with more opportunities to make music...

And now we're old enough to do things  like vote, buy pornography and Lotto tickets, get a Sam's Club membership,  get a home loan (and allow banks to screw us), sue somebody (like a bank), get sued, be convicted as adults, buy tobacco, buy Nicorette gum, enter the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes....ah the world is our oyster.....

To celebrate, we're throwing at Party!  5 Bands!  Beer Tastings!

Sounds like heaven to us.

HERE ARE THE DETAILS!

While you're in the festive mood, check out our August sale highlighting artists connected to that very first album.

If you're in the DC area, c'mon out to a staged reading of a new play featuring the music of Jon Langford

Nero/Pseudo is a mash up of ancient Rome and glam rock that features music by punk/alternative country legend Jon Langford (Mekons, Waco Brothers) and acclaimed songwriter/guitarist Jim Elkington (Jon Langford's Skull Orchard,The Zincs, The Horse's Ha).

Langford and Elkingtom will be playing the music at the May 30 staged reading.

The reading is on Wednesday, May 30 at 8 p.m. at Artisphere's Dome Theatre (1101 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington VA 22209

Nero/Pseudo: A Synopsis

A naked fake emperor. Glam rock. A head in a box. That's Nero/Pseudo -- a new play by Richard Byrne.

Nero/Pseudo takes its inspiration from a passage in Tacitus' Histories, in which a man with an uncanny physical resemblance to the emperor Nero (and skill in playing the lyre) took Greece by storm a few months after the real Nero's suicide in 69 AD. Not only did the fake Nero cause mass tumult before he was captured and executed -- but the notion that Nero might actually return to rule again was fuel for apocalyptic writers in Jewish and Christian sects of that era (including The Book of Revelation).

But Nero/Pseudo isn't a period piece. Byrne mashes up classical literature with glam rock, political cults of celebrity, a healthy dollop of sex and a newly-imagined version of Nero's famous poem on the Fall of Troy. All but three lines of the original Nero poem have been lost, so the playwright's new version casts as much an eye on contemporary politics as it does on Trojans and Greeks.

Read about the collaboration in the Washington City Paper HERE.

HERE'S a sneak peek to one of the tracks

Late in 2011, hometown heroes Wilco decided to celebrate the release of its latest album, The Whole Love, by setting up a Chicago residency and playing shows at several of our fair city's lauded music venues. Jon Langford's Skull Orchard was handpicked to open up the Wilco show at The Vic, where he and the band played songs from the 2011 SO mega-reissue, Skull Orchard Revisited. Check out the rest of the pics from the night by Zero Studio here.

Today, January 20th, in 1978, the Mekons released their first single "Never Been In A Riot"  on the indie Fast Records.

That first incarnation of the The Mekons consisted of Kevin Lycette and Tom Greenhalgh on guitar, Jon Langford on drums, Mary on bass and Mark White and Andrew Corrigan sharing vocals.

It was described in NME as "making the Sex Pistols look like Paper Lace.'"

So, in honor of this day in music history, we're offering up ANY Waco Brothers or Jon Langford CD on a buy one get one free basis.  Order any of these fine albums, and then write in the comments section of the order form which freebie you'd like!

Act fast, this is for today only (I'll take down the offer whenever I wake up tomorrow morning, so as to give all you folks in UK and Australia who are already asleep a chance to act on this.)

And keep in mind, this is for CDS ONLY (no books, or LPs)

Check out THIS interview with Jon Langford and Sally Timms regarding the MEKONS new album.

It is full of the self-deprecating bon mots you have grown to need over the years...

Hell, even the title of the article "No One Buys Our Records" ought to be a clue.

A couple of our favorite gems:

"I’ve got teenage kids, and when I talk to them and their friends about issues that concern me they think I’m a paranoid loon. "

"We should have split up for 10 years and gotten back together. Maybe we can still do that."

ST: "Except we’d be dead before there’s any interest in us reforming."

"I do lots of things, but there’s nothing I like as much as The Mekons."