The Sherpa Of Heartbreak

Nearly 20 years have now passed since UK singer-songwriter Billy Bragg was approached by Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora about writing some music for the vast collection of completed Guthrie lyrics that she had in her possession following his passing in 1967. History shows that Bragg tackled this task with passion and vigour, dragging in US alt.country outfit Wilco to help him craft what would eventually amount to three volumes of the Mermaid Avenue project (the initial album was released in 1998, Vol II in 2000 and Vol III in 2012 as part of Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, released this year to mark the centenary of the folk legend's birth).

Obviously this milestone has found Bragg spending a lot of time this year helping to fan the flickering Guthrie flames and as he prepares to head down to Australia to continue the celebration, he admits to have been enjoying the experience, even if he's planning on peddling his own wares as well while he's here.

“It's been really, really good,” he enthuses of the experience. “People loved that Mermaid Avenue album anyway – particularly in Australia, it's the one place where I got a gold record for it – so this year with the re-release of The Complete Sessions I wanted to do gigs celebrating Woody, because this year's also the centenary of his birth, but it seemed a shame to come all of the way down to Australia and not play any Billy Bragg songs. So I've developed a set where the first hour is Mermaid Avenue stuff and I'm talking about Woody and the second hour is Billy Bragg stuff and I'm talking about me. I did it in North America and at some of festivals here in the UK; it's more of a theatre show than a stand-up, crash and bang kind of show, but it works really well I think.

“The first half pitches the second half really. The first half allows me to relax a bit more; with the Woody stuff I'm sitting down and playing with an acoustic guitar, I'm talking about Woody and trying to put him and his music into a bit of context, because not everybody knows who he is. By the second half I'm well into my stride and in some ways the two [halves] work together really well. I think if anything it allows the shows to be a little more personal, a bit more intimate than the usual just going out, plugging in and blasting out. I'm enjoying it anyway and the audiences seem to be too – in the States the audiences seemed really into it and it was something that they hadn't seen before and I'm hoping that the Australian audiences will get that same connection.”

Bragg's last studio album proper was 2008's Mr Love And Justice, although since then he's written songs for the politically-charged play Pressure Drop and also released Fight Songs (2011), a collection of contemporary protest songs. While renowned for his fiery political polemic, true Bragg fans realise that it's in the realm of the love song where he truly shines, which makes his admission really special that this is where his writing has been taking him recently.

“I'm going to make a new Billy Bragg album for next year and I think I might load it with love songs – that's my feeling,” he reveals. “I think I need to remind people that I write love songs. Not that there won't be any songs about issues on there, but I think these last couple of years have been political with Fight Songs and before that Pressure Drop, so I think I might need to remind people that I also write good love songs.

“I think there's plenty of people out there now trying to write songs that engage with what's going on in the world. It's not all politics. Somebody tweeted last year – and I just happened to see it because my name was in the tweet – and they were talking about getting over a break-up and they were listening to Billy Bragg, 'the Sherpa of heartbreak'; I was helping them carry the load of heartbreak! I liked that and I thought that I need to remind people that I am the Sherpa of heartbreak. That's as important as changing the world I think, helping them get over their heartbreak – in my book anyway.”

Bragg recently admitted of his songwriting in an interview that he wrote about “things make you angry – whether it be the government or a girl”, which put his hitherto divided realms of political and personal writing in a new light.

“I think that's really what a lot of what I write about comes down to – I think a lot of my love songs are about my own frustrations,” he muses. “When you think about something like [1986 single] Greetings To The New Brunette, the guy is trying his hardest to keep up to speed there; he tries to commit himself to something that he hasn't done before that he thinks he can do. It's partly dwelling on my own personal failings and I'm hoping that when I do that people connect with that, because it's not all Smokey Robinson when we fall in love, it's sometimes much more thorny than that. And I suppose really what I'm trying to do is deal with my own problems by getting them out there – getting them down on paper and singing them.

“When I go out and sing them in front of an audience and everybody applauds, it's kind of affirmative. I don't feel so bad, you know? I think to myself, 'Maybe I'm not the only person who feels like this'. And I think that's what music can do: it can't change the world, but it can make you realise that you're not the only person who cares about this particular thing and that in its own way inspires you perhaps to go and make a difference doing what you're doing.

“The reason I say that is because people try and draw a line between my political songs and my love songs, but really they come from that same place. They come from that same place of frustration and anger and disappointment – whether it be about the Tory Government, the Labour Government, about the war, about my relationships, about myself, about my own behaviour, it's not really that different a place where they come from, although obviously they all turn out differently. I think that's the point that I was trying to make: rather than be labelled a political songwriter I should be labelled an 'angry songwriter'. Although maybe 'angry' is the wrong word because it makes it sound like I'm raging. I'm trying to deal with difficult situations and difficult emotions and difficult events – they're the things I want to address.”