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Friday, November 21, 2008, 11:00
One is quintessentially English working class – even dubbed a "national treasure"; the other is an Indiana-born "dropout" who learned to survive without the home comforts most of us take for granted. It's a great treat, then, to find these two men on the same bill in Exeter next week at a time when many a thought is returning to the grass roots of life.
For Billy, who lives on the Dorset coast and has just returned from an American tour, it will be a welcome return to the city and a chance to air some of the excellent songs on his first studio album for six years, Mr Love & Justice, as well as old favourites from his bulging back catalogue.
The critically acclaimed 12-track album has been produced by Grant Showbiz and features The Blokes, comprising Ian McLagan on Hammond organ and piano, with Ben Mandelson (lap steel guitar and bouzouki), Lu Edmonds (electric guitar and vocals), Martyn Barker (drums) and Simon Edwards (bass).
Billy, a stalwart of the festival scene who turned 50 at the end of last year, has recently been championed by a new generation of musicians. The Mercury Prize-shortlisted Hard-Fi, for instance, invited him to support them for six nights at London's Brixton Academy in May last year. The band later covered his track Levi Stubbs's Tears for a BBC Radio 1 session, while Kate Nash performed A New England with Billy at London's Union Chapel for a show in aid of the Mencap charity earlier this year.
Otis Gibbs, who is opening the evening as Billy's special guest, has been called a folk artist, but with his big growl of a voice and a bucketful of stories to serenade us with, that's an over-simplistic description. He's a man who has planted more than 7,000 trees, slept in hobo jungles, walked with nomadic shepherds in the Carpathian Mountains, been strip-searched by dirty cops in Detroit, and has an FBI file.
Otis, who now lives in Nashville, grew up in the rural town of Wanamaker, Indiana and first stepped on stage at the age of four, when he sang Jimmie Rodgers's Waiting for a Train at a neighbourhood honky-tonk. After high school he stacked concrete blocks, flipped burgers, drove an ice cream truck, pumped gas, and did countless other crummy jobs before taking to the road with his guitar. He's now played everywhere from labour rallies in Wisconsin, to anti-war protests in Texas, Austria and the Czech Republic and in countless, theatres, festivals, bars and living rooms. Much of his work over the past 15 years has concentrated on the characters who inhabit the forgotten underbelly of US and world societies with warmth and much broader appeal than such a notion would suggest.
His latest album, Grandpa Walked a Picketline, is a glimpse inside that America, showcasing Otis's ability to breathe life into those who people his songs. One example is Caroline, a song about a woman who married too young. She finds herself stuck in an abusive relationship and secretly fears that her children will suffer the same fate. The populist anthem Everyday People shines a light on the struggles of his grandparents.
Billy Bragg and Otis Gibbs perform at Exeter's Lemon Grove on Monday, November 24. Note the change of venue from the Great Hall. Box office: 01392 263518 or visit www.exeterboxoffice.com
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Billy Bragg and, top left, Otis Gibbs team up in Exeter next week
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