District Music Hall weekly round-up: Billy Bragg & Godspeed You! Black Emperor with Alan Sparhawk

District Music Hall weekly round-up: Announced this week Billy Bragg & Godspeed You! Black Emperor with Alan Sparhawk

Don’t miss The Musical Box on June 13th

Billy Bragg
District Music Hall – 71 Wall Street, Norwalk CT 06850
October 15, 2024
Click here to purchase tickets

Billy Bragg

In 2023 Billy Bragg is celebrating a remarkable 40 years as Britain’s favourite folk singer, songwriter and campaigner. To mark this significant landmark, he has released an acclaimed career-spanning box set ‘The Roaring Forty’ and has played to sell-out crowds across the world. In November he performed his most famous song ‘A New England’ on Later With Jools Holland almost exactly 40 years to the day that he debuted the song on The Tube (also presented by one Jools Holland!).

Galvanised in the late 70s by The Clash and an aversion to the austere policies of Margaret Thatcher, Billy set out to inspire political engagement and empathy. He has performed numerous benefit shows for the miners, the Labour party, CND, the jobless and many more, and has run the Left Field political stage at Glastonbury for the last 20 years.

Billy has released 11 solo studio albums, three albums of Woody Guthrie lyrics set to contemporary music by Billy and Wilco (the Mermaid Avenue albums) and one album with Joe Henry. He released a mini album Bridges Not Walls in 2017. His latest studio album, the acclaimed ‘The Million Things That Never Happened’ came out in 2021.

Billy Bragg added best-selling author 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).

Billy won the Outstanding Contribution To British Music Award at the prestigious Ivors Awards in 2018. Born and raised in Barking, East London, Billy has a street named after him in his home town – Bragg Close. This year Billy has been honoured with a pavement plaque on the Camden Music Walk Of Fame (previous recipients include Madness, Amy Winehouse, The Who, David Bowie, and The Kinks)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
District Music Hall – 71 Wall Street, Norwalk CT 06850
November 22, 2024
Click here to purchase tickets

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Godspeed You! Black Emperor released a string of albums from 1997-2002 widely recognized as redefining what protest music can be, where longform instrumental chamber rock compositions of immense feeling and power serve as soundtracks to late capitalist alienation and resistance. The band’s first four releases—especially F#A#∞ (1997) and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000)—are variously regarded as classics of the era and genre. Godspeed’s legendary live performances, featuring multiple 16mm projectors beaming a collage of overlapping analog film loops and reels—along with the distinctive iconography, imagery and tactility of the band’s album artwork and physical LP packages— further defines the sui generis aesthetic substance, ethos and mythos of this group. GY!BE has issued two official band photos in its 25-year existence (the second, below, a 2010 recreation of the first from 1997) and has done a half-dozen collectively-answered written interviews over that same span. The band has never had a website or social media accounts. It has never made a video. Few rock bands in our 21st century have been as steadfast in trying to let the work speak for itself and maintaining simple rules about minimising participation in cultures of personality, exposure, access, commodification or co-optation.

Following a seven-year hiatus that began in 2003, Godspeed returned to the stage in December 2010 (curating the UK festival All Tomorrow’s Parties) and the band’s post-reunion period has now lasted over a decade, marked by hundreds of sold-out live shows and three additional albums, all of which have been met with high acclaim.

Alan Sparhawk (of Low)

Thirty years into a career of music making, 2024 finds Alan Sparhawk entering uncharted territory. Sparhawk co-founded the band Low alongside vocalist and drummer Mimi Parker, who passed away in late 2022. Their music derived elemental power from its fearless exploration of quiet, gentle places. Low released thirteen albums and influenced a movement of spacious, graceful, intimate, and ever-evolving music.

Over time, Low’s anthemic songs heightened in urgency and tone, unearthing new layers of musical exploration and lyrical questioning. Their final album, Grammy nominated “Hey What,” was released in 2021 to universal acclaim and marked a high point in their musical evolution and trajectory.

Sparhawk has recently been playing with various collaborators and projects with friends and family members, including guest appearances with Yo La Tengo, Trampled by Turtles, Peder Mannerfelt, Charlie Parr, and funk band Derecho Rhythm Section. He will perform solo shows in NY in February 2024 and is recording new music for release in 2024.

Don’t miss

The Musical Box on June 13th. Click here for more information.

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