Jon Langford

Jon Langford  (born October 11, 1957)  is a prolific and well-respected visual artist whose punk rock instincts and unparalleled draftsmanship come together in a painting style that is distinctive, engaging and challenging.  In addition to his paintings and prints, his artwork appears on CD's (his own and other's), book covers, and Dogfish Head Brewery beer bottle labels. His multimedia music/spoken-word/video performance, "The Executioner's Last Songs," premiered at Alverno College in 2005, and has been performed in several other cities, including Austin. He illustrated the comic strip  Great Pop Things  under the pseudonym Chuck Death. Since 2005 he has co-hosted a weekly radio program, "The Eclectic Company," broadcast on WXRT 93.1 FM in Chicago. He has contributed to  This American Life .

Langford is from Wales but has lived in Chicago since the early 1990's. He was originally the drummer for the punk band The Mekons when it formed at the University of Leeds in 1977, but he later took up the guitar as other band members left. Since the mid-1980s he has been one of the leaders in incorporating folk and country music into punk rock. He has released a number of solo recordings as well as recordings with other bands outside of The Mekons, most notably the Waco Brothers, which he co-founded after moving to Chicago in the early 1990s. He is involved with the Chicago-based independent record label Bloodshot.