Bragg brings pop and politics back to Christchurch

The Bard of Barking is back, his first trip to Christchurch since a post-quake fundraiser in 2012.

British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg has made many visits to Aotearoa, home to his highest ranking chart success when his album Talking to the Taxman about Poetry climbed to number six on the Kiwi charts in 1987.

Bragg will perform a one-off show at the James Hay Theatre in Christchurch on Friday night. He is on a nationwide tour, with the Christchurch gig featuring his current set, the latest album, and selections from the past four decades.

An Orientation Week lack of PA systems means Dunedin has missed out on Bragg this time.

A three-night Wellington engagement barely scraped the surface of the more than a dozen studio albums, another dozen compilations, numerous live albums and EPs and 20-some singles.

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Who attends such an extravaganza – the lifelong obsessives, or attendees dabbling based on their favourite Bragg epoch?

“All I can tell you, is the second night always sells out first,” he said, pointing to those who have been on the ride since those early punk influenced albums burst onto the scene.

After one Wellington show, Bragg appeared at a protest held by locked out staff from Calendar Girls campaigning for better contracts.

He gives “geezers my age” a gentle nudge at shows to encourage them off the fence.

“If you stood with gay and lesbian people back in the day, be true to yourself and do this now …”

He says the struggle for transgender rights and recognition may be what thrusts him into the consciousness of a new generation.

“It’s the new front line.”

His pandemic album The Million Things That Never Happened was recorded under lockdown, without the benefit of the usual process of working on new songs from the road.

“It’s about an acceptance that things fall apart, that love isn’t all ‘a pint of beer and a new tattoo’, it’s also about being there when things fall apart.”

Bragg’s fervour hasn’t faded, but he has never resiled from his stance that music in itself can’t change the world.

In recent weeks, he’s hit the picket lines with striking teachers, nurses, ambulance drivers across Britain. A founding member of Red Wedge, a collective of musicians campaigning for the Labour Party,, he’s made documentaries with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, played fundraisers for every cause, pushed back against neo-fascism, and lobbied for protections for music venues crowded out by gentrification and rising costs.

“If I don’t do this, I’m just singing about it, it’s just cos-play. When you’re singing these songs, you have to be careful you’re coming up with the actions that match that.”