Not Just Politics as Usual for Bragg

Ask Billy Bragg why his music has failed to find a large audience in the United States and he answers: “Too English, too political, too tall.”

Back in his native England, the singer-songwriter has chalked up a number of popular albums and singles since emerging as a solo artist in the mid-1980s. The convivial Bragg, who performs with his band the Blokes on Sunday night at the Coach House, is clearly joking about the impact his height has had on his State-side career. But there is little question that his cockney vocalizing and sometimes leftist and English-centric lyrics have made him a tough sell in Yankee territory.

Indeed, some of Bragg’s recorded work is so English in spirit that it underscores just how far some other British pop acts have gone to Americanize their music. Bragg does have his core of loyal American supporters to help him sustain a 13-year working relationship with corporate Elektra Records in the United States.

It’s also probably safe to say that most of his fans share his passion for social justice, which is what led the 41-year-old artist to title his latest album “Reaching to the Converted.”

“Since I’ve always been accused of preaching to the converted, I thought it was quite funny when Gary Stewart, the head of A&R; at Rhino Records, came up with the title,” Bragg said in a recent interview from his east London home.

The album also could have been titled “For Americans Only,” he suggests with a laugh. The 17-track collection consists entirely of Bragg material previously unavailable in the United States. Some of the songs were B-sides to his British singles. A few were actually hits in his homeland.

His version of the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home,” which is featured on the new album, topped the U.K. singles chart for a month in 1988.

Why didn’t Elektra release it, as well as other Bragg U.K. singles, in the United States?

“I think Elektra accepted that there was no way Billy Bragg was going to break into the Top 40 in America with the type of voice I have and the type of songs that I write,” he said. “But that didn’t stop the little college radio stations in your country from finding this stuff. Those stations took their lead from the English music press.”

Elektra also decided not to distribute “Reaching to the Converted,” which allowed Rhino Records to release the collection instead. The convergence of the retrospective-oriented Rhino and Bragg is a natural because both parties are known for supporting progressive social causes. However, the singer is still under contract to Elektra, and he will release his next solo album on that label.

In the 1980s, Bragg was an advocate of English labor unions and a critic of the conservative policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. These opinions inevitably found their way into some of his songs.

Bragg still is known as a socialist singer. But he has become a much less politically charged songwriter in the 1990s. His lyrics took a strong turn toward the personal after he became a father in 1993.

“I write about what I see around me,” said Bragg, who in 1986 took a leading role in Red Wedge, a confederacy of English pop bands supporting Britain’s Labor Party. “In the 1980s, I saw a society divided. All those things like free health care and education were under threat. So I wrote about that. Now I look around me and I see my family and the things that concern me are the things that concern them. Becoming a parent, if you’re going to do it properly, is going to change your perspective on everything.”

Bragg also believes he’d have become a less ideological songwriter even if he hadn’t become a father. He notes that the end of the Cold War and the election of Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair has made England a much less politically stratified country today.

But he continues to express his political opinions on and off stage. On the current American tour, he’ll be supporting various labor unions, one of which is involved in a campaign against Nike’s overseas labor practices.

The next Billy Bragg project is already completed. It’s a sequel to last year’s “Mermaid Avenue,” the critically acclaimed album in which Bragg and the alternative country band Wilco composed music to unpublished lyrics by folk legend Woody Guthrie. All the songs for the upcoming album were recorded during the sessions that produced “Mermaid Avenue.” The release of the album is being delayed so that it doesn’t hurt Wilco’s latest CD, “Summer Teeth.”

Bragg said he has sifted through about 1,500 of an estimated 2,500 unpublished Guthrie lyrics. He said the idea behind the Bragg-Wilco albums is to show the full breadth of the singer-songwriter.

“I was just trying to get into his space and listen to this guy who was sending me these lyrics from 50 years ago,” Bragg said. “I wanted to convey a bit of him: the joy that’s found in the lyrics to ‘Ingrid Bergman,’ a bit of the despair of ‘Another Man’s Done Gone,’ the raucous drunkenness of ‘Walt Whitman’s Niece.’ I wanted to bring all those things together and say, ‘This is Woody Guthrie too.’ Yes, he wrote ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ but he also wrote these other songs.”

Billy Bragg & the Blokes and Freedy Johnston perform Sunday night at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $23.50. [949] 496-8927.