Jonathan Denis Langford (born 11 October 1957) is a Welsh[1][2] musician and artist based in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

[3] Langford is a founder member of the punk band The Mekons, the post-punk group The Three Johns, and the alternative country ensembles The Waco Brothers and Pine Valley Cosmonauts.

[4] When he was young, Langford would visit his grandparents in Croesyceiliog, whose family friend ran two pubs, the Cambrian Arms and The Six in Hand.

In a 2010 interview, Langford said his earliest influences were Tom Jones, Slade, T. Rex, The Kinks, Johnny Cash, Man and Black Sabbath.

[14] The "Waco Brothers" make country-punk music, and are a Chicago-based amalgam of players from the Pine Valley Cosmonauts family and others, who have been recording since 1995, as of 2021.

For their first albums, they included Dean Schlabowske (guitar/vocal), Tracey Dear (mandolin/vocal), Alan Doughty (bass/vocal), Mark Durante (pedal steel guitar), and Mekons drummer Steve Goulding).

The "Wee Hairy Beasties" were a children's music group based in Chicago, composed of Jon Langford, Sally Timms, Kelly Hogan, and Devil in a Woodpile.

Ever since releasing the original 2008 album, Langford continued to intermittently use the "Skull Orchard" band name, usually when recording or performing live with accompanying electric instruments.

[22] In 2010 and 2011 for example, frequent members also included Joe Camarillo (of the Waco Brothers), Jim Elkington, Jean Cook, and Tawny Newsome.

The album Skull Orchard Revisited (credited to Jon Langford and the Burlington Welsh Male Chorus) was released on 3 June 2011 by Bloodshot Records.

Ship & Pilot also included Tony Maimone, Jean Cook, usually Sally Timms, and on drums variously Steve Goulding or Dan Massey.

[34][35] The band, described as "socialist voodoo space boogie",[36] featured Alan Doughty and Joe Camarillo from the Waco Brothers, Phil Wandscher from Whiskeytown, and Martin Billheimer from Chicago's former Devil Bell Hippies (and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library).

[40][41] "Jon Langford & The Bright Shiners", with Tamineh Gueramy (fiddle), Alice Spencer (Mellotron), and John Szymanski (guitar) - and all on vocals - was formed circa 2022.

[42][43][44][45][46][47] Aside from the above-mentioned bands, Langford has performed with many different musicians over the years, but his most constant live collaborator has been singer and fellow Mekon Sally Timms, ever since they both moved to Chicago.

Langford has painted portraits of famous and forgotten figures from the dawn of country music, such as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and "The Cuckoo", many based on classic photographs.

[67] Their artwork was then adapted for the album covers of the 2015 double-LP compilation Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City and of the 2016 triple-LP Trio: Farther Along by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris.

Since 2015, Langford has designed covers for a series of novels by author Jay Spencer Green, including Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's and Ivy Feckett is Looking for Love.

[71][72] For over 10 years, Langford illustrated the pop-music parody comic strip Great Pop Things under the pseudonym Chuck Death with a friend from his hometown, Newport, Wales, Colin B. Morton, who wrote the text.

[73] The cartoon strip was published in music and alternative weekly newspapers in London, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and was a pen-and-ink history of rock-and-roll.

[4] In 1988, Langford co-produced (with Mark Riley) a Johnny Cash tribute album, 'Til Things are Brighter...,[84] to raise funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust.

He and his fellow musicians have done many other musical fundraisers to support various causes, including striking British coal miners and Doctors Without Borders (The Mekons); and the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (Freakons).