I don’t do too many standing shows; my flat feet, even with supports, don’t hold up too well. But it was worth the pain that lingers there to finally see Billy Bragg at his recent performance in The Atlantis on his Roaring Forty Tour.
Billy didn’t make it easy on my feet, as he certainly gave the audience at the sold-out venue their money’s worth. He started playing about 8:30pm, and he didn’t finish until 11pm, over which time he played songs from across his long career, and offered stories and commentary in his wickedly barbed, dry British sense of humor.
At The Atlantis on Oct. 19, Bragg kicked things off with “The Wolf Covers Its Tracks,” followed by a cover of Leon Rosselson’s “The World Turned Upside Down.” Between songs, he talked about his recent experiences touring America, mentioning that the “highlight was four days off in Boulder [Colorado.]” Americans, he said, have difficulty differentiating between Australian and English accents, especially London accents. “How do you tell the difference between an Australian and an Englishman?” he asked. “Australian people have really nice teeth, and English people have teeth like a Dickensian graveyard.”
The set continued with “She’s Got a New Spell.” Recently, Billy said, he’s learned from Marjorie Taylor Greene that Democrats control hurricanes and send them to Republican areas. He noted the cognitive dissonance between this belief and the refusal to accept that humans are causing climate change. Introducing “King Tide and the Sunny Day Flood,” he talked about how, in places like Florida, he explained, there are now sunny day floods, where flooding occurs with high tide. “Anywhere else,” he said, “this would be a real canary in the coal mine, but their governor is more interested in checking people’s genitals.”
Stream “She’s Got a New Spell” by Billy Bragg on YouTube:
Next up was “Freedom Doesn’t Come For Free,” a song satirizing the town of Grafton, New Hampshire where, as Billy explained, libertarians found a community based on “reason and logic.” He recommended a book about this experiment, A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear. After the song, he joked about how, recently, someone asked him if he was Johnny Marr, to which he replied, “No, I’m Paul Weller.”
When he wrote “Sexuality” in the ’90s, allyship for the gay community was considered a progressive, even radical position. But now, as someone pointed out to him, it has become the accepted consensus; “we have marriage equality” now, as he said. So he’s rewritten the song to show support for the trans community, which he admits wasn’t a subject he was especially familiar with and he had to research. He noted that the same things said by people who attack the trans community now were said, in previous decades, to attack gay men and lesbians. “The same people who want to erase the trans community want to push gay men and lesbians back into the closet and women into the kitchen.”
Bragg acknowledged that some of his fans have been resistant to his support for the trans community, calling these people “old geezers.” He called them out, saying, “It doesn’t matter how many Clash bootlegs you’ve got in the attic, you’re never going to be hip again.” But there’s “no reason,” he said, “you can’t still be just as relevant.” Introducing “Mid-Century Modern,” he admitted to his own status as a geezer.
“Levi Stubbs’s Tears” was next, then a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose.” Bragg criticized Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” saying “Woody never punched down.” He played his response song, the pro-union “Rich Men Earning North of a Million.”
The Roaring Forty Tour, he noted, is his fourth time in America this year. He played Vegas for the first time, taking part in Punk Rock Bowling, and he went on an Americana cruise — Cayamo — around the Caribbean. To the people who would criticize him for selling out his radical positions to take part in a music cruise, he said they should go to a record store and start buying vinyl again.
The set moved along with “St Swithin’s Day.” Between songs, he criticized Christian nationalism, saying he had a lot of respect for people of faith, who are the ones running the food banks and taking care of people who fall through the social safety net. He played “Do Unto Others,’ a song that celebrates the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. This was followed by “Greetings to the New Brunette,” then “The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here No More.” Before “The Milkman of Human Kindness,” he talked about his first time in the United States, opening for Echo and the Bunnymen in 1984, and talked about how, without college radio, he would never had a career in America.
Watch Billy Bragg play “The Milkman of Human Kindness” live for The Whistle Test on YouTube:
The set was rounded out with “To Have and Not To Have” and “A New England.” Introducing “There Is Power In A Union,” he told the audience, “Music cannot change the world.” What it can do, he said, is motivate people to go out and do the work. (This is a pretty classic echo of the Marxist statement that ideas can’t change the world.) Billy closed his main set with “Waiting for the Greap Forward.”
When he came back for his encore, he played “Way Over Yonder In the Minor Key.” Based on incomplete lyrics from Woody Guthrie, the song appears on the album he made with Wilco, Mermaid Avenue. Before singing “I Will Be Your Shield,” he said, “The currency of music is empathy.” This wasn’t a surprise to me, as I’ve seen the same point made by many other songwriters; Steve Earle and Lou Reed come to mind. Bragg sent the audience home with the beautiful love song “Tank Park Salute.”
I’d never seen Billy efore, and he certainly didn’t disappoint in what was an emotionally charged, passionate performance. With just a few weeks left to go before the presidential election, and with my anxiety over the state of the country and the world at an all-time high, his music served to me give the courage and strength to keep doing the work. He’s right that music can’t change the world, but his songs give strength and encouragement to those who are fighting the good fight for love and justice.