BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. – Jon Langford returns to Bellows Falls on Friday, June 14, with his band The Bright Shiners, for a show at the Ciao Popolo Ballroom. The Bright Shiners have just released a full album, “Where It Really Starts,” a collaboration with Tamineh Gueramy, Alice Spencer, and John Szymanski. Each song is a minimalistic jewel, yet the album is, in the words of The Guardian, “unsparing of aptly astonishing adornment – wonderful harmonies, horns, mellotron, bowed guitar, piano, looped percussion, and more. By our reckoning this is one of Jon’s finest works of art and his best outfit outside The Mekons themselves.”
Jon Langford’s career has spanned his early days with art-punk icons The Mekons, through Delta 5, Three Johns, Waco Brothers, and even Sisters Of Mercy, to more one-off recordings and collaborations than one could ever hope to list in full.
Also an accomplished artist – a Langford work graces the cover of the new Dave Alvin/Jimmie Dale Gilmore album “TexiCali” – as well as musician, Langford brings a spirit of joy and rowdy good fun to every endeavor. “I had a fantastic time in Bellows Falls last year,” he says, “and I am looking forward to returning.”
Welsh punk icon Jon Langford never played Bellows Falls, Vt., before June 2023, but his debut was certainly memorable. In the midst of “Tom Jones Levitation,” his anthemic paean to Welsh independence and its best-known export, the power went out. Undaunted, Langford never stopped playing. Not missing a beat, he stepped down from the stage, climbed a chair in the audience, and finished the song – in which a winged Tom Jones finds himself aloft over the Welsh countryside – vigorously, loudly, proudly, and unamplified.
“It was unforgettable,” says Ezra Veitch of Ray’s the Roof Productions, who found himself suddenly out of a job running sound for the show when the downtown lost power. “If people weren’t fans of Jon’s at the beginning of the show, they certainly were by the end of it.”
Ciao Popolo is located at 36 Village Square, Bellows Falls, Vt. To make dinner reservations separately before the show, email ciaopopolovt@gmail.com, or call 802-460-7676. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., showtime is 7:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at at www.bellowsfallsoperahouse.com, and at the door. For more information about the show, contact RaystheRoofVT@gmail.com.