Review: Billy Bragg, Fiddlers

Welcome to the Billy Fest, a Bragg Pop-up, the Bragg retrospective. And, if you will, Braggrospective (I know, I know…)

Three nights of all things Billy Bragg in South Bristol. For ageing Lefties of this parish, it’s as if a whole heap of Christmas mornings and the inevitable downfall of capitalism have all come at once. Our Billy is going to be his own tribute act.

How it works: night one he’ll do his current set, some new, some old, all quite topical. Night two, the first three albums. Night three, the next three. One step forward, two steps back.

So here we all are again with the bard of Barking, mixing pop and politics. Not just folkie punk, a songwriter and activist but also a writer of learned books on national identity and skiffle, regular talking head, festival-field curator, politico pamphlet writer and, whisper it, a bit of a national treasure. Genre fluid, he says.

Night one, July 10

A skip through some greatest hits. Billy’s bangers. New England, Levi Stubbs’ Tears, Sexuality.  Cue lots of community singalongs. These songs mean a lot to people.

Woody Guthrie’s Ingrid Bergman is deliciously smutty. The Man He Killed is Thomas Hardy’s verse set to an old, old folk tune, delivered acapella, on the futility of the slaughter in the Great War. A moment’s gentle silence marks the end. Leading into the alternative national anthem of Between the Wars.  Not a dry eye in the house.

Between-song chat is delivered with the easy charm of the gig-hardened raconteur. A fiery intellect is gently demonstrated, a consummate communicator. The anti-Jim-Davidson.

Issues on the agenda are Morrissey, accountability (see the new pamphlet), the perils of global warming, Windrush, poverty as our greatest enemy, a crisis in masculinity, the importance of empathy and community singing, fighting cynicism, encouraging activism and more Morrissey (he’s not happy with him). At no point did he enquire if we felt alright or where the party was at…

He encores with The Times They Are a Changin’ Back; protest Dylan that inspired the young Bragg. The first verse is left intact as God and Bob intended, the rest of the lyrics rewritten to reflect the risks of populism as the victories of the left in identity and equality politics are slowly eroded in these troubled days.

Night two, July 11

Revisiting an act that sat somewhere between The Clash and Max Miller, the chop and clang of those early records, with a third chord sometimes viewed as a bit surplus to requirements. Back to mid-80s and the start of his recording career. There is nothing Princess Di or Duran Duran about this flat top, DMs and a copy of the NME version of those days. We are revisiting a different country here.

He’s never slick but this was more hesitant, none of the pacing or balance of the first night, repartee not so easy. He’s walking a bit of a tightrope away from the safety net of his usual setlist.

Reconnecting with those older, simpler songs. More two dimensional than later work. He’s older, better read and a wider thinker now. The spectre of Thatcherism and the miners’ strike looms large. A time of politicisation for many in the room.

There’s some brief thoughts on Labour’s current troubles with accusations of anti-Semitism. There is conflict with a heckler. A hate-filled comment from the floor is effectively dealt with. The row seems to empower Billy. The rest of the gig moves from the somewhat ragged nostalgia of the early part to something more angered and engaged. These songs serve those emotions well.

It Says Here, Man in the Iron Mask, St Swithins’ Day. He did them great. We all sang along again. As the man said, it felt like being in a big, lovely bath together.

Night three, July 12

There’s a very different feel to tonight. The writer is a few years older. He’s become a more gentle, varied and introspective singer-songwriter as we reach the end of the ‘80s. This is about the micro personal and a little less of the macro-political. The narrative arc of this show is from the brokenhearted Workers’ Playtime songs of ’88 to the domestic contentment of the later tunes.

The centrepiece of tonight’s show is a genuinely impassioned, soulful and even harrowing version of Must I Paint You a Picture. Thirty-odd years on, it is still a deeply personal portrait of the end of a relationship. He sang the hell out of it.

Our collective journey reaches contentment with Brickbat. Our man who used to want to drop bombs on the last night of the Proms is now contented to be at home, by the sea, with his newborn son. He reaches an end with an aching acapella Tender Comrade. His passionate support for the activism of striking school kids and Extinction Rebellion leads to a celebratory voicing of Power in a Union that pretty much raised the roof.

It’s been great. He’s been great. A real collective thing. Three nights in a room with a bunch of people who love this stuff, know every word and have mapped much of their lives and their personal and political journeys with the songwriting of this man. Until the next time Billy, keep on keepin’ on.

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