“Nice place you got here,” said Steven Page to the crowd at Massey Hall on Friday night, wryly adding, “Perfect place to tear down and turn into a spa … We’ll build a tunnel.”
Making a political joke that took a shot at Premier Doug Ford’s obsession with spas, underground tunnels, and tearing down Toronto institutions (alongside several trees), Page fit right in with the modus operandi of headliner Billy Bragg, who is currently touring behind his latest release, The Roaring Forty. And while it was a good joke, let’s hope that Page didn’t give Ford any ideas … though I wouldn’t be too mad if Massey Hall adopted Ford’s abandoned ‘buck-a-beer’ policy at their bars.
Accompanied by Craig Northey on guitar and Kevin Fox on cello, Page played an entertaining set for a hometown crowd that leaned pretty heavily on hits from his days in Barenaked Ladies but also featured a few from his post-BNL repertoire such as “The Golden Age of Doubling Down” off his latest album Excelsior.
Reminiscing about seeing Billy Bragg back in the late ’80s, not too long after Barenaked Ladies first got their start, Page remarked that seeing the Bard of Barking in action back then solidified the idea that playing music would be what he’d end up doing for a living, though maybe not as well as Bragg does it, he added.
And Billy Bragg does indeed do it well, playing a career-spanning set that lasted a little over two hours, featuring plenty of banter, commentary, and storytelling throughout.
Since he’s touring behind an album celebrating 40 years of his music, Bragg took some time during his set to look back on some of his earliest shows in Canada, remembering venues like Larry’s Hideaway and Mississauga’s International Centre (not one of his favourites) as well his first time in Toronto playing a brief 20 minute slot opening for Echo and the Bunnymen – a gig he apparently got largely because the Bunnymen’s manager wanted to see him get the Americans all riled up.
Bragg also spoke of a much more recent Canadian show, specifically a Vancouver gig at the start of his current tour where he found himself playing the city at the same time as both Johnny Marr and Paul Weller. He followed that story up with covers of both The Smiths’ “Jeane” and The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment,” ending off the latter with the exclamation, “Once a busker, always a busker!”
Another highlight of the set came in the form of “Rich Men Earning North of a Million,” his response to Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a song I admittedly kind of forgot about after Anthony’s 15 minutes of viral fame last year. In his intro to the song, Bragg spoke of how, when he first heard Anthony’s original, he detected shades of Woody Guthrie in its tales of a downtrodden working class, though he noted that Woody wouldn’t have punched down at those on welfare like Anthony did in his lyrics. He also noted that one thing he saw as missing from Anthony’s song was any sense of hope. And so, in Bragg’s answer song, that hope comes in the form of a suggestion that won’t be at all surprising to any Billy Bragg fan: join a union.
Yes, anyone who’s followed his career even a little bit is aware of Bragg’s strong support for unions, both in his songwriting and in his day-to-day life. In fact, a quick look at the merch table would reveal that Bragg is currently selling a t-shirt which proudly sported the slogan “Union Made” on its front. According to Bragg, he was also selling tea towels, though I didn’t happen to spot any of those upon first glance at the merch. Still not sure if that was a joke or not, but if there are, in fact, official Billy Bragg tea towels, I’m sure they’re also union made.
Perhaps surprisingly for someone who’s built his career around protest music, Bragg mentioned at one point that music doesn’t have the power to change the world. But, he added, it does have the power to make you believe the world can be changed. He later spoke of the importance of empathy, especially “in a world where there is a war on empathy in many ways.” He followed that up by playing “I Will Be Your Shield” off of 2021’s The Million Things That Never Happened, a song that speaks to the power of love, understanding and, yes, empathy.
