Billy Bragg & Joe Henry: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Earlier this year, Billy Bragg and Joe Henry set off on a journey. They boarded a train in Chicago, bound for Los Angeles. Each time the train stopped for more than 20 minutes in cities like St. Louis and San Antonio, they'd grab their guitars, hop off, find the waiting room and record an old railroad song. The result of this journey is an album called Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad.
Bragg has been weaving folk and punk with protest music since the late '70s, when he first started busking around London. You can hear his passion for American songwriters such as Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly on this record. Henry is an American singer and songwriter with 13 albums of his own. He's also produced so many great records for others, including Rodney Crowell, Lisa Hannigan, Bonnie Raitt - and Bragg himself.
This concept record could be seen as a nostalgia trip, but both Bragg and Henry will emphatically say that it's not. These songs and this journey celebrate the modern railroad as a major economic engine and a still-vital form of transportation. The songs are filled with mythic poetry and the metaphoric romance inherent in train songs, but the vitality in the performances keeps the songs current. You can hear that behind my desk as well as you might in a rail station.
Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad is available now:
iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/album/shi...
Amazon: www.amazon.com/Shine-Light-Re...
SET LIST:
"Rock Island Line"
"Hobo's Lullaby"
"Midnight Special"
CREDITS:
Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Niki Walker, Nicole Boliaux; Production Assistant: Anna Marketti; Photo: Claire Harbage/NPR.
For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast: www.npr.org/podcasts/510292/ti...

[@christopherarmitage1030]

Love that Billy had the capo on the wrong fret! So real! Watch the series of videos of them playing these songs in actual train stations. Awesome!

[@alice-es7uv]

i truly love how billy speaks to us as the audience about his thoughts, feelings and lyrics between tracks

[@TommyRobertsMusicChannel]

Just saw Bill and Joe live and was completely and totally blown away, thanks guys for my best gig for years!

[@VioletGiraffe]

Love the Midnight Special song. Great to finally find out more about its meaning!

[@Kalvin5]

Saw this tour in SF. Hella Dope!! These guys know whats up. That was a great show!! Billy Bragg is a HERO to us all!!

[@ShannonKCampbell]

Great Billy Bragg interview on NPR's Fresh Air from WHYY Philadelphia and Terry Gross. So glad to hear Billy again!

[@GreySkyLady]

The were simply fabulous in Seattle. It's great to see Billy and Joe at the Tiny Desk.

[@wexy021]

I've never heard of these guys before, and when Billy started talking it blew my mind that he's British. well done and good music!

[@ibullock]

If you liked this you should check out the albums he did with Wilco then!

[@GreySkyLady]

Weston Schott or any of this solo albums from the 1980s. He's super prolific.

[@racketman2u]

Billy Bragg is more correctly described as a British Legend, and there's a hell of a lot more to him than this cameo shows.

[@s3nsec0rruptr80]

Billy Bragg isn't a British legend. he's simply a legend.

[@joep9759]

great music, thank you for sharing this

[@MrRichDavid]

Joe Henry is a stud!

[@CasabaseRandom]

definetly great!

[@bronyr]

I was there! It was a few weeks before the election. Great performance, and Joe and Billy were lovely gents to talk to about music.

[@josiecameron3395]

Awesomeness!

[@WLOMA]

Thanks for that. Great !

[@oPBo]

Wonderful, it made my day for sure!!!!

[@matchesmon7275]

Great new album by the boys

[@JackBallengeemorris]

AWESOME!!!!

[@bitterbum1]

This was amazing. God, I want a Hiatus Kaiyote or Marrow tiny desk sooooo baaaaaad.

[@cannonw59]

Made me want to hop a freight back home.

[@abara5678]

Awesome!

[@supertramp6612]

The lyric about finding no policemen in heaven is pretty heavy, but sometimes it's hard to dispute - my dad was in the police for 25 years and his views of the world are so twisted. He is incapable of seeing the bigger issues within society and only ever blames individuals for their actions. When he wasn't shutting down industrial protests he was protecting private property. People may join the police with good intentions, but they are trying to fix a broken society with outdated tactics, preventing the seismic change we need to move forward

[@josiecameron3395]

Thrilled to have found this! Fun fact: Joe Henry is married to Madonna's sister Melanie Ciccone. Joe & Madonna recorded a song together many moons ago.....

[@GandalfGreyhame3]

Glad I clicked on this.

[@georgeryan4496]

These songs are from a great album...top notch!

[@bendummitt888]

Acoustic music rules...

[@thomasdungl8493]

Very nice and great session ... second song also for female protagonist of ~"Breakfast at Tiffany" ( Andrey H.) ?

[@barrytcook1]

I've got the vynil .... brilliant concept .... brilliant album

[@blight2796]

Love this shit

[@newtinhobr]

muito bom

[@stringologymchugh4245]

Would love to hear BB sing this

[@stillfamily19]

The Andy Griffith Show taught me Midnight Special

[@dolcedolente]

I don't know... maybe it's just me, but Billy's flub at the beginning of "Hobo's Lullaby" created a really cool dissonant effect that I'd love to hear explored in another context. I hope they don't dismiss it as an oops moment. All in all, a gorgeous set. These two complement each other nicely.

[@timgehrsitz3267]

Dolce Dolente agreed that was really cool soundong

[@tiocoolj]

the dissonance is a major and a minor note of the same chord played simultaneously.

[@dolcedolente]

Tim Hedlund Thanks for breaking that down! I'm gonna have to tinker around with that concept and see where the magic takes me...

[@RobertSlover]

it takes you right where you need to go

[@fenix478]

me too, sounded great! The tones would be fine.

[@richardweil293]

Midnight Special was the best of the three choices, but for riding the rail romanticism give me U Utah Phillips.

[@alice-es7uv]

W O W

[@eleonorabln6294]

these machines kill fascists

[@beetooex]

Perfect

[@audreyreguev2832]

you should get fletcher c Johnson on tiny desk!!

[@dpwilson4]

Weird bit of video editing at 8:08. Billy takes off capo, then they show him tuning with capo on, then they cut back to him with capo off.

[@scottharriman9419]

I just came here to ask whether anyone else noticed that!

[@mawmallmore]

imagine adding howe gelb to the lineup...

[@williamgabriel2286]

trained on skiffle

[@Humanophage]

I wish a day will dawn one day when major media like NPR would also promote hard right and not just hard left artists. Peste Noire concert when?

[@scottharriman9419]

Why? One worldview is inclusive and one isn't. Most media outlets prefer appealing to the widest possible audience.

[@Humanophage]

@@scottharriman9419 Hard left artists are extremely unappealing to about a half of people, depending on the country.

[@jackperal4876]

Stop bashing cops

[@blakedouglass6542]

Jack Peral it's not about bashing cops. If this song were written for mice, the lyrics would reference cats as the antagonist. Hobos and police didn't get along, plain and simple. This is he hobos lullaby, a song to offer solace to a group of people who the world forgot. It's not about hating cops, it's about offering comfort to the poor souls that suffered the fallout of the Great Depression.