This Wednesday (10 September) sees the living legend of New York’s anti-folk scene Lach appearing at King Tuts in Glasgow. In fact, Lach
was the inventor of the genre, which combines classic acoustic
guitar songwriting with a punk attitude, and has very few rules apart
from one – to never knowingly be a tedious dick. in the 80s, many of Lach‘s New York peers were blindly
inspired by scene behemoth Bob Dylan’s more worthy traits only,
completely ignoring one of his main strengths – a sense of humour.
After one night too many being bored rigid by their ponderous
bleatings, Lach jumped up and declared “if this is folk, I’m anti-folk!”. He then opened his own illegal after-hours club in the city’s Lower East Side called The
Fort and now runs an open mic night at the Sidewalk Café in Manhattan
and the list of performers who have graced the stage is a testament to
his influence; Jeff Buckley, Beck, The Moldy Peaches, Regina Spektor,
Jeffrey Lewis and up and coming US pop star/graphic designer Alison
Weiss.
The story goes that when Dylan himself came calling outside Lach‘s window asking him to go for a coffee, Lach was so hungover that he could do little but weakly turn him away – there’s few better examples of the stupidity of alcohol and Lach
apparently gave up the booze immediately afterwards. It all worked out
ok in the end though, as the resulting clarity of mind is probably the
main reason why he continues to be both a force for good on the New
York scene and a prolific songwriter. Classic examples of his output
include ‘Drinking Beers with Mum’ which featured on the Rough Trade
compilation Antifolk Volume 1, and ‘Former President Bush’ as featured
recently on the Skinny’s I Hear a New World podcast. His new album, The
Calm Before, featuring members of Television and Pere Ubu, and he was
recently featured on BBC-2 Scotland’s Real American Folk series
Clear-Minded Creative 