Skull Orchard Revisited

Nashville Radio, Jon Langford’s first collection of paintings, writing, and music, summed up two decades’ work as an artist and musician. For its successor, Langford has created a highly personal portrait of the South Wales he grew up in and left. The starting point was his long unobtainable album Skull Orchard. For the CD available exclusively with this book, Langford returned to those lost recordings and radically revised them, adding three new tracks. His accomplices in the project were the Burlington Welsh Male Chorus, who contribute a unique warmth to the songs.

Langford illustrated his lyrics for Skull Orchard, at once autobiographical and fanciful, in a set of “song paintings” created especially for the book, which also includes many more paintings, an A to Z of South Walian culture and history (both personal and general) by brother (and acclaimed SF writer) David, photographs by their father, Denis Langford, and Jon’s first published story, a witty, dystopian tale about a whale and a dolphin.

CD track listing:
1 TUBBY BROTHERS
2 VERDUN
3 LAST COUNT
4 BUTTER SONG
5 SENTIMENTAL MARCHING SONG
6 YOUGHAL
7 TRAP DOOR
8 INSIDE THE WHALE
9 I AM THE LAW
10 GREEN VALLEYS
11 PILL SAILOR
12 PENNY ARCADES
13 MY OWN WORST ENEMY
15 I’M STOPPING THIS TRAIN
16 DEEP SEA DIVER
17 TOM JONES LEVITATION
18 THE BALLAD OF SOLOMON JONES
19 MESSAGE FROM NEWPORT