Jon Langford

Jonathan Denis Langford (born 11 October 1957) is a Welsh musician and artist based in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

Langford is a founder member of the punk band The Mekons, the post-punk group The Three Johns, and the alternative country ensembles The Waco Brothers and Pine Valley Cosmonauts.

He has campaigned against the death penalty in Illinois.

Langford was born in Newport, Wales, the youngest son of Kit Langford and Denis Langford, a Registered Chartered Accountant for Lloyd's Brewery.

Langford's older brother is science-fiction author and critic David Langford, who lives in Reading, England.

When he was young, Langford would visit his grandparents in Croesyceiliog, whose family friend ran two pubs, the Cambrian Arms and The Six in Hand.

He attended Gaer Infants School and Gaer Junior School, then Brynglas Primary School, the Newport High School middle school on Queen's Hill.

In 1972–1973, after playing rugby and football, at the age of 15 Langford decided he liked playing music better.

He played a lot of David Bowie and was listening to a lot of Man.

Langford attended art school at University of Leeds as a painter.

He left school temporarily when The Mekons were founded, but later went back to college and finished his degree.

The Sisters of Mercy

Langford was originally the drummer for the punk band The Mekons when it formed at the University of Leeds in 1977, but he later took up the guitar as other band members left.

The Mekons were signed to Virgin Records but according to Langford they "got fired."

Since the mid-1980s, Langford has been one of the leaders in incorporating folk and country music into punk rock The Sisters of Mercy.

They played their first United States appearance on New Year's Eve in 1980, gave up live performances for a while, and released 1982's The Mekons Story.

After being signed by major American label A&M Records in the late 1980s, label shuffling resulted in the band trying to leave the label.

In response, they recorded Curse of the Mekons, which the label refused to release, becoming available in the U.S. only as an import.

With John Hyatt and Phillip Brennan, Langford released several albums of drum-machine-fueled punk between 1982 and 1987.

They began performing again in public in 1984, playing their first shows as benefits for the British miners' union.

He has released a number of solo recordings as well as recordings with other bands outside of The Mekons, most notably the Waco Brothers, which he co-founded after moving to Chicago in the early 1990s.

As Dim Subooteyo, Brendan Croker and Langford released the album Lakeside (1990, SNAT Records).

The Killer Shrews were a group composed of Langford (lead vocals), Gary Lucas, and Tony Maimone.

They released one self-titled album on Enemy Records in 1993.

The Waco Brothers make country-punk music, and are a Chicago-based amalgam of players from the Pine Valley Cosmonauts family and others, who have been recording since 1995, as of 2021.

As LL, their only release was a demo track ("Rechem") on the 1999 compilation Fear of a Red Planet.

They played their first gig together at the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago, and released two albums in 2006 and 2008.

The Men of Gwent are mainly Newport-based musicians, including members of Give Me Memphis and The Darling Buds.

Previously known as LL, the group have written and recorded intermittently for over 20 years, and have been playing live since 2007.

In a 2010 interview, Langford said his earliest influences were Tom Jones, Slade, T. Rex, The Kinks, Johnny Cash, Man and Black Sabbath.

Langford is known for being very funny, and politically left, in his remarks and antics during live musical performances, and in his frequent interviews with journalists.

A documentary called The Revenge of the Mekons was released in 2014 by director Joe Angio.

A retrospective box set was released in August 2015.

For their first albums, they included Dean Schlabowske (guitar/vocal), Tracey Dear (mandolin/vocal), Alan Doughty (bass/vocal), Mark Durante (pedal steel guitar), and Mekons drummer Steve Goulding). By 2015, Goulding, now based in New York City, had been replaced by Joe Camarillo (drums), and Durante had left. Camarillo died in January 2021, and was replaced by Dan Massey.

Langford initiated another project, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, which performs the music of other country music groups.

Several alternative country musicians have guested alongside a revolving assortment of Chicago musicians who have backed both Langford and other musicians such as Kelly Hogan.

The Wee Hairy Beasties were a children's music group based in Chicago, composed of Jon Langford, Sally Timms, Kelly Hogan, and Devil in a Woodpile.

Their debut album The Legend of LL was released on Country Mile Records in 2015 and included reworkings of several songs from the same LL demos, as well as a new version of "Pill Sailor", first released on Skull Orchard in 1998.

The Mekons continue to record and perform live, as of 2019.

Their second album President of Wales was released in November 2019, also on Country Mile.