INTERVIEW: The Road to Solid Sound: Billy Bragg

Jun 4

06/26 @ Mass MoCA, North Adams MA

“In the lyric, Woody says… ‘I don't know, I may go down or up or anywhere, but I feel like this scribbling will stay.’ So, we were actually fulfilling his hope in the fact that after he died, these words would still maintain their power.”

In an anecdote from his autobiography, Bob Dylan writes of a time when another legendary folk singer, Woody Guthrie, asked him to reach out to Guthrie’s wife Marjorie to obtain some boxes of song lyrics and poems he hadn’t yet set to music on his behalf. When Dylan made the trip to Brooklyn to inquire about them, there was no one at the house but Woody’s son Arlo and the babysitter, both of whom claimed ignorance of any such contraband. Forty years or so later, the boxes resurfaced in the hands of Woody’s daughter Nora, who endeavored to have the lyrics brought to life. This is where British folk veteran Billy Bragg comes in.

“Nora first invited me, and then I invited Wilco to come and take part,” he told me during our chat. He explained that Woody wrote over 3,000 songs that were archived, but he never wrote any musical notation. As a result, the Woody Guthrie Foundation tasked Bragg, Wilco, and eventually others with writing new music from scratch. It was a daunting, yet exciting task.

“I don't think any of us who got involved in it really understood how it would be received,” he explained. “It was one of those sort of moments where you think ‘No one's ever really done this before.’” The real challenging part of the process, according to Bragg, was determining what to do with the works in the collection that were closer to poems than actual, singable songs. “It was a real challenge,” he said. “The subject matter was so varied in them as well; you could find anything in there and we did.”

One moment that Bragg found particularly memorable was when, during the last week of the group’s sessions in Dublin, Nora cheekily showed up with an entire new batch of songs she’d personally selected for them to tackle. Bragg latched onto one of them right away because he felt that the lyrics he was reading were a perfect match for a unique bunch of chords that he’d be playing around with. After a little collaboration with Wilco’s Jay Bennett on piano, the song began to take shape. It was then that Jeff Tweedy walked in, drawn to the sound from down the hall.

“He said, ‘Mind if I sing a bit of it?’” Bragg recalled. This was a first for their collaboration. Typically, whoever came up with the arrangement went on to sing the lead vocal on the track. In this instance, though, Bragg could feel that his collaborator and fellow songwriter was having a moment of creative spontaneity.

“He began to sing it, and clearly from the way he sang it, he really identified with the lyric. It felt like a genuine collaboration because Nora had brought the lyric, and I'd written the tune, Jay had come up with the arrangement, and Jeff was doing the vocal, and it was really a moment where I felt we touched base with Woody,” he ruminated. “In the lyric, Woody says he's reflecting on his own mortality and says, ‘I don't know, I may go down or up or anywhere, but I feel like this scribbling will stay.’ So, we were actually fulfilling his hope in the fact that after he died, these words would still maintain their power.”

The song in question would become the version of “Another Man’s Done Gone,” which would appear on 1998’s Mermaid Avenue. The collaboration between Billy Bragg and Wilco adapting the lyrics of Guthrie nabbed a GRAMMY nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album. It went on to spawn follow-up releases with Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000 and a third volume released in 2012 in honor of Guthrie’s 100th birthday. In all that time, Bragg and Wilco have never brought the collection of songs to the stage together.

That is, until this June 26 at Mass MoCA.

As part of Solid Sound Festival’s 2026 lineup announcement, it was revealed that Bragg will join Wilco for a special one-night-only performance of songs from Mermaid Avenue to kick off the festival. Bragg told me it’s something they’ve wanted to do for a long time, but has been put off due to Solid Sound historically conflicting with Glastonbury Festival in England, where Bragg and his partner Juliet Wills run a stage. This year, Glastonbury is having what they call a ‘fallow year,’ in which they let the grass grow out and the cows graze the land. As a result, the festival itself will be taking a sabbatical, leaving Bragg with some unusual availability for a live performance — one that’s almost 30 years in the making.

Bragg’s appearance at Solid Sound alongside Wilco comes as part of his 2026 North American Tour, which kicks off on June 17 in Hallifax, Nova Scotia. It will serve as his first extended run through Canada in over a decade. “Although I've sort of included Vancouver and Toronto in predominantly American tour itineraries, I haven't gone to places where I used to go quite regularly,” he told me. “Montreal will be the obvious one, but also Winnipeg, Ottawa, and also in the Maritimes, as well. I used to regularly go to Halifax and I haven't been there for quite a while.”

While Bragg isn’t promoting a new album on this tour, that doesn’t mean he isn’t keeping busy writing. He’s been releasing more one-shot singles in response to current events and social issues, carrying the flame of social justice that has characterized much of his career as a folk artist and activist. “I have been putting out songs in response to things like the Gaza war and ICE in Minneapolis,” he explained. He also revealed that he’s working on another book to join the several others he’s released over the last decade.

And if that wasn’t enough, he also teased a potential special project involving the Mermaid Avenue collection. Later this year, all three volumes will be re-released on vinyl by Craft Recordings. “That’s going to be with some extra tracks as well — some of my demos and, I believe, some Wilco demos.”

Currently, there are no plans for a Mermaid Avenue tour or any further performances by Billy Bragg and Wilco. I suppose that means you’ll just have to find your way to Mass Moca this month to see it for yourself. Don’t worry, you can rest your heavy head on a bed of california stars when you get there.

For more information on the festival, visitwww.solidsoundfestival.com

For more of our pre-festival interviews, visithttps://www.themetroland.com/blog-main/tag/solid+sound+festival

For more information on Billy Bragg’s 2026 Tour, visit https://www.billybragg.co.uk/giglistings/