Mekons in the woods

San Diego is in for a treat when cow-punk band the Mekons plays in Escondido on September 25 at the new home of arts collective A Ship in the Woods. Mekons singer/guitarist Jon Langford figures the band hasn’t played a show here since the Casbah sometime in the ’90s.

“I remember just standing outside and watching the planes come in,” he recalled.

Langford has rolled through town with one of his other projects, the Waco Brothers, in the interim. One time, he even elected to visit Mojo Nixon and take part in his politically charged radio program Lyin’ Cocksuckers.

“We did a radio show in his living room, and we both shouted as loud as we could,” was how Langford summed it up.

Mekons tours in the U.S. are few and far between because the band is scattered around the globe. Arranging tours is costly and time-consuming — a labor of love. “For the money we make, you have to really wanna do it, which we do, but it can be kind of crippling,” said Langford. He also said that this may be the last U.S. tour that the band is able to do because “we can’t really afford it.”

If that is the case, the Mekons seem set on making the most of their stay over here. Besides bookending their tour with two festivals, the band is going to attempt to at least begin recording two albums.

The most recent Mekons release is a book-and-CD combo titled Existentialism. The album was recorded live in the summer of 2015 at the Jalopy Theater in Brooklyn.

“The project started in a very positive way financially in that we invited 75 people to come and be involved in the recording of the album,” Langford explained. “So, 75 people paid money and funded the album...an instant crowd-sourcing type of thing.”

One particular song that turned out to be an ominous warning was the dark “Fear and Beer.” It was written about the changing political climate in England and the “Brexit” movement before the vote for it had passed.

Langford, who is originally from Wales but now lives in Chicago, spent a couple weeks in England after the Brexit vote. “Normally when I go over there, people are, like, ‘What the hell is going on in America?’” said Langford. “This time I could actually say, ‘What the hell is going on in Britain?’”

The Mekons play A Ship in the Woods on Sunday, September 25.