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Pittsburgh is one of only a handful of U.S. cities that will host The Mekons 30th Anniversary Tour.
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Natural's in it: The Mekons celebrate 30 years

Natural's in it: The Mekons celebrate 30 years

After 30 years as a band, the members of UK country/punk legends The Mekons have developed a conveniently informal working relationship. So informal, in fact, that "Natural" -- the recent album they've released on Touch & Go Records and their 16th overall -- wasn't originally intended for public consumption.

"We didn't really know we were making an album," explains frontman Jon Langford. "A good friend of ours, John Gill [prolific folk engineer and producer] died in late 2003, and his friends in Manchester wanted to have a memorial service for him. So we went over to England and tried to cobble together some gigs. Some guy putting on our show in Edinburgh could only do it on a certain day, so we ended up with several days between Manchester and Edinburgh with nothing to do."


The Mekons 30th Anniversary Tour
  • Presented by: The Warhol Museum.
  • Where: New Hazlett Theater, North Side.
  • With: Danbert Nobacon (formerly of Chumbawamba)
  • When: 8 p.m. Sunday.
  • Tickets: $15
  • More information: 412-237-8300

They rented a farmhouse in a beautiful, remote part of England called the Lake District, where Langford and fellow Mekon singer Sally Timms had previously visited on a tour with Langford's roots-country band, The Waco Brothers. Lu Edmonds (a Mekon since the mid-80s, and an ex-member of The Damned) brought in his ProTools rig and some good microphones, and they spent four days holed up with some acoustic instruments, recording in England for the first time in 16 years.

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Then, as Mekons are wont to do, the band separated and didn't see each other for 18 months. Co-founder Tom Greenhalgh moved to China, Timms and Langford played in Australia, and accordionist Rico Bell moved to L.A. "It was a complicated time when it was OK not to do anything Mekons," Langford says. "But Lu worked on those tracks and tweaked them, and every now and then a CD would pop through my mailbox. It dawned on us that this was the next album, and it was different from anything we'd done before."

Ranging from the gothic country of "Dark Dark Dark" to the Zimbabwean mbira (thumb-piano) on "White Stone Door," from the melancholic Timms-led atmospherics of "The Hope and The Anchor" to the reggae-tinged "Cockermouth," the tunes on "Natural" are an organic, yet methodical shift from the earliest days of the band from the industrial city of Leeds, the same scene that spawned both Gang of Four" and anarchist heroes Chumbawamba.

Leeds in 1977 was a grim northern town with a large West Indian and South Asian population. The Mekons' first single, "Never Been in a Riot," was a satirical take on the Clash's "White Riot," and the white art students drew punk fire and inspiration from the black community and the West Indian clubs. "We felt a kinship with them, which we didn't feel with the white working-class thugs who went down the street beating up Pakistanis and gay people," Langford recalls.

In 1984, a revitalized Mekons hybridized punk with British folk and American country. Though it was initially labeled "cowpunk," most music critics have by now settled on the term "alt-country," and the Mekons' 1985 LP "Fear and Whiskey" is often seen as the seminal precursor to that genre.

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Langford, however, claims no responsibility for alt-country. "Cowpunk was a bunch of people blacking out their teeth, putting straw in their hair and going 'yee-ha!' But it wasn't camp or kitsch for us," he says. "I wasn't really interested until I heard the good stuff, then I became soaked in it. We saw people like Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams as documenting life. We felt strangely connected and world-weary, like them. Once you have a few relationships go wrong, and enjoyed a few too many drinks, you can really wrap your head around what they have to say."

Along with the newfound interest in country came interest from a series of major labels. The Mekons linked up with three -- Virgin, A&M and Warner Brothers. Each one was a successively worse experience, according to Langford. "I was sitting in a bar in Hollywood, waiting for someone from WEA Latina to bring me money, and he never came back. Those were the low points of our career when we felt most like giving up. People had gone off and left, not because we were dropped, but because of the actual process of being on the label.

"To me, it's great that CD sales are down, and the Grammy Awards look like a wake for an idea that's well past its prime," he continues. "I can't wait until the industry has crumbled, then we can all get back to handmade records, and making music the way it's been made for the past 5,000 years."

With back-to-basic statements like that -- and the Mekons' political bent rearing its head on "Natural" tracks such as "Burning in the Desert Burning" (about Middle Eastern suicide bombers) and the folky "Dickie Chalkie and Nobby" (a tale of young men going to war, featuring the vocals of Greenhalgh's daughter, Mei Ling) -- it's easy to spot their punk-derived penchant for social change. "If you choose to ignore the state this country is in, with the arrogance and greed of the government," says Langford, "then that's a political statement, as well."

Rather than street activism, he sees effectiveness in working behind the scene for important causes. "We try to get some money into the hands of things that raise people's awareness -- the anti-death penalty campaign, Rock Against Racism in the UK, the right-to-work campaign. We were on an album for AIDS when that was still a very obscure thing to do."

"You know, I never liked Mark Knopfler's music in Dire Straits, but I admire him because he gave half his income to the African National Congress. It was quite a lot of money, and he never told anyone about it," he continues. "I only found out about it because I knew people who played with him. It's a lot better than Sting, covering himself in tribal warpaint while achieving nothing, or Bono and Bush looking like they actually care, when they both just get richer and further removed from reality."



First Published: September 27, 2007, 8:00 a.m.

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Pittsburgh is one of only a handful of U.S. cities that will host The Mekons 30th Anniversary Tour.
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