Billy Bragg | The Roaring Forty | Portland, ME

Name: Billy Bragg | The Roaring Forty | Portland, ME
Start: 2024-07-24T19:30:00-04:00
Location: Aura

Schedule

Wed Jul 24 2024 at 07:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Aura | Portland, ME

Punk rocker, soldier, Essex boy, folk singer, Skiffle aficionado, protest singers’ protest singer, patriot, optimist, lefty polemicist, author, soul miner, musicologist, champion of the underclasses, Cockney vocalist and all-round decent bloke Billy Bragg has confirmed ‘The Roaring Forty USA Tour,’ set for July, 2024.
Kicking off July 18 in Riverhead, NY and culminating with a July 27 return to the Newport Folk Festival—his first appearance there since 2017—the tour will feature Bragg, along with keyboardist and vocalist JJ Stoney, performing fan-favorites featured on 2023’s acclaimed box set ‘The Roaring Forty 1983-2023.’
Says Bragg, “Ahead of my appearance at Newport Folk Festival, I’m taking a week-long swing through the north east US. Looking forward to playing in some cities where I haven’t been for a long old time.
About Billy Bragg:
Billy Bragg has been a fearless recording artist, tireless live performer and peerless political campaigner for 40 years. He has released 11 solo studio albums: Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy (1983); Brewing Up With Billy Bragg (1984); Talking With The Taxman About Poetry (1986); Workers Playtime (1988); The Internationale (1990); Don’t Try This At Home (1991); William Bloke (1996); England, Half English (2002); Mr Love & Justice (2008); Tooth & Nail (2013); The Million Things That Never Happened (2021); three albums with Wilco – (Grammy nominated) Mermaid Avenue (1998); Mermaid Avenue Vol II (2000); Mermaid Avenue Vol III (2012); and one album with Joe Henry – Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad (2016). He released a mini album Bridges Not Walls in 2017. His performances at the BBC were anthologised in The Best Of Billy Bragg At The BBC 1983-2019 (2019). At their best, Billy’s songs present ‘the perfect Venn diagram between the political and the personal’ (The Guardian).
Billy Bragg added best-selling author/musicologist to his CV with the success of his acclaimed 2017 book Roots, Radicals & Rockers – How Skiffle Changed The World. He has written two books of political analysis - The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging (2006) and The Three Dimensions of Freedom (2019), which has been translated into German and Spanish.
To be expected from a career that has straddled many genres, Billy Bragg has worked with a wealth of celebrated musicians from different musical backgrounds including Eliza Carthy, Norman Cook, Dick Gaughan, Joe Henry, Kirsty MacColl, Ian McLagan, Johnny Marr, R.E.M., Natalie Merchant, Romeo Stodart, Danny Thompson, Robert Wyatt, Pete Seeger, The Philharmonic Orchestra and US alt-Rock band Wilco, with whom he created two critically acclaimed collections setting previously unheard lyrics by legendary American Folk singer Woody Guthrie to music.