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This year, OffBeat has not one but two covers for the Jazz Fest Bible. Artist/musician Jon Langford of the Mekons and the Waco Brothers will open a show at LeMieux Galleries May 2 at 6 p.m., and he has generously loaned us two images, one of Snooks Eaglin and one of Eddie Bo.
Langford was born in Wales and went to art school in Leeds, but southern American culture became the subject matter for his art, particularly after he visited the States with the Mekons. “A lot of the little paintings that I did were actually little tributes to music that wasn’t there when I came to America,” he says. “I had this vision of America that was so shattered by actually moving here, and thinking that you could actually find these things if you just dug deep enough, but finding other things. Going to Nashville and looking for the spirit of country and western music.”
He has, however, found pieces of that original vision, whether it is Al “Carnival Time” Johnson in New Orleans or the country band the Sundowners in Chicago. “They’ve been there for 35 years, and never been anything but a blip in the radar doing what they do,” he says. “I’m thinking this is like being in the presence of nobility.”
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Langford’s particularly interested in the place where business and commerce meet, largely because of his own experiences. “We signed away our names (to A&M) and we made an album called Rock and Roll, which was about the rock ’n’ roll business,” Langford says. “We thought it sold great, like, ‘Wow, 25,000. That’s brilliant!’ They said that’s nothing and we were like, ‘Really? It seems like a lot of people to me.’”
That fascination has made Nashville and now New Orleans ripe subjects for study. “I was painting pictures of Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash and people like that, having read a lot about their lives and their stories, but really they were autobiographical pictures. The first pictures I did were people signing contracts, which I have always seen as a great fulcrum moment when they were pursued and captured, and it was all in that moment. These radical artists morphed into corporate employees. We did it three times and it was never good on any occasions. We were better off living in the woods hand-carving our own CDs.”
Langford and LeMieux Galleries have also created a limited edition poster of the Danny Barker piece on page 32. The poster sells for $150 from LeMieux, and proceeds go to Sweet Home New Orleans.
