BILLY BRAGG and JOE HENRY

Shine a Light – Canberra Theatre

(20 April 2017) (Live Review)

“Shine a Light” is the Billy Bragg and Joe Henry collaboration, recorded in train stations across America as a tribute to rail travel and the train songs that grew up around the folklore of riding the rails. In many ways it is also a tribute to the likes of Jimmy Rogers and Leadbelly and of course Woody Guthrie.

The comparisons between Bragg and Guthrie were rife, even before Bragg recorded Mermaid, an album of Guthrie’s unreleased material with alternative country counterpart Wilco. Bragg is something of a folk hero, status he achieved through his highly politicised songs of the 1980s and 90s and in many ways is the natural successor to Guthrie, probably more so than Dylan, despite Dylan’s idolatry of Guthrie and the mythology that has grown up around the time the two spent together prior to Guthrie’s early death.

Billy Bragg and Joe Henry, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Wednesday 19 April 2017

Joe Henry is probably less well known in Australia and his songcraft definitely manifests in a more personal rather than political way. Having said that, Henry is deeply political and his work looks to the personal within the political rather than distancing one from the other.

Onstage, there is clearly a rapport between two that comes with years of genuine friendship. Henry’s singing voice is technically a much prettier sound than is Bragg’s, but for fans of Bragg and his music that’s never been the point. In fact the absence of what would traditionally be considered a “singer’s” voice is part of the tradition. Such is the case with Dylan, Guthrie and countless other folkies. Henry certainly adds a harmonious element to the final sound, but it is Bragg most people are here to experience.

He plays very few of the songs for which he is best known, including New England and Way over Yonder. He does however play tracks like Midnight Special, from which the title of the record is taken and In the Pines, made famous as Where did you Sleep Last Night by Nirvana on their MTV Unplugged record.

Billy Bragg @ The Gov 24/04/17 – Photo – Kerrie Geier

The show makes room for both artists to perform a solo set and it is at this point that Henry really shines. He tells stories and is pensive and philosophical and at one points sits and plays the beautiful Steinway and talks of his time with Allen Toussaint. He adds a sort of gentle grace to the show that offsets Bragg’s laddish, brittle persona.

When Bragg plays on his own he is his usual bolshy and political self, playing a version of Dylan’s Times They are a-Changin’, which he updates to something far more pessimistic than the original. He talks with genuine dismay about Theresa May and Brexit and Trump and refugees and all the things you might expect of the stubbornly committed socialist.

When Henry returns to the stage they play and talk wistfully about the romance of rail travel and the songs that defined their youth and the lasting impression the idea of trains as a metaphor for freedom made on both of them.

I’ve made note of this before, but the Canberra theatre is the perfect place for these kinds of gigs; more designed for an evening with than a show by, the room creates an opportunity for intimacy few crowds ever really get with an artist.