Welcome to The Set List. Here you'll find the latest concert recaps for many of your favorite, or maybe not so favorite, artists. Our bloggers will do their best to provide you with every detail of the show, from which songs were on the set list to what the artist was wearing to which out-of-control fan made a scene. Hey, it'll be like you were there. And if you like what you read, we'll even let you know where you can catch the artist on tour. Feel free to drop us a comment and let us know your concert experience. Oh, and rock on.

By Randee Dawn
New York

A Billy Bragg show is never just about a man, his guitar and his songs. A Billy Bragg show is equal parts music, banter and sociopolitical advocacy. And at City Winery New York — a beautiful, yuppie venue that provided a strange contrast to the singer/songwriter's traditional working-class stance — Bragg was fully revved for both music and progressive polemics.

And he had the ideal backdrop; the Sept. 17 concert fell on the eve of Scotland's vote for independence, a topic the UK musician had a lot to say about both in a Sept. 16 column for The Guardian and onstage. This led to extended banter, during which Bragg explained his support for the country's vote either way, and why his belief in unions is not the same as a love for the UK (cue his stirring, strident "There Is Power In A Union"). Later, he offered up a mournful cover of Dick Gaughan's "Both Sides The Tweed," a song that looks back at the more than 300-year-old Treaty of Union that linked the two countries.

Along the way, the audience was treated to old and newish songs, most flanked by some sort of commentary — ranging from Bragg's tongue-partly-in-cheek desire to talk about "the crisis in masculinity" before launching into the countrified, rolling "Handyman Blues," to reminiscences of his first New York performance 30 years earlier, when he played on Danceteria's rooftop and saw the lights come up on the Empire State Building (after which he kicked into the rollicking "Milkman Of Human Kindness").

In his 30-plus years, Bragg has become a confident, well-staged (yet not stagy) performer. He's comfortable in his music and with his fans, who he knows will take the ride with him whether he's discussing socialism or name-checking Rudyard Kipling ("A Pict Song"), Thomas Hardy ("The Man He Killed") or Woody Guthrie. In fact, his two Guthrie covers ("She Came Along To Me" and "Slipknot") were among his most heartfelt; his musically tweaked version of "Slipknot" proved a real throat-grabbing showstopper.

Even his (not-infrequent) "star" moments (in which he complained about the quality of American tea, while sipping it onstage; or insisting on the correction of a guitar delay that to him sounded like "Pink Floyd") were done with genial good humor; one could forgive him his perfectionism: It was just him up there, and he had a job to do and a message to impart.

And quite a message it was. Throughout his career, Bragg has found hundreds of ways to vary his main progressive/socialist talking points. It came out sometimes in his chatter but more often in his songs ("I Keep Faith," "Levi Stubbs' Tears") and he successfully shared this earnest worldview from the stage — as he noted toward the end of the show, he believes power lies in the people, and only people can effect change.

"Cynicism," he told the crowd, "is our greatest enemy."

And more than three decades later, Bragg remains the people's greatest spokesperson.

Opening act Billy The Kid ("the other Billy on tonight's bill," quipped the Canadian singer/songwriter, also known as Billy Pettinger), performed an equally spare and guitar-focused set, offering up heartfelt folk/country tunes with Todd Beene on pedal steel.

Set List:

"No Power Without Accountability"
"A Lover Sings"
"A Pict Song"
"No One Knows Nothing Anymore"
"She Came Along To Me" (Woody Guthrie cover)
"Slipknot" (Woody Guthrie cover)
"Greetings To The New Brunette"
"The Man He Killed"
"Between The Wars"
"Sexuality"
"Handyman Blues"
"Upfield"
"Must I Paint You A Picture?"
"Levi Stubbs' Tears"
"The Milkman Of Human Kindness"
"There Is Power In A Union" 

Encore:
"Both Sides The Tweed" (Dick Gaughan cover)
"Tank Park Salute"
"I Keep Faith"
"A New England"

(Randee Dawn is a New York-based entertainment writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Variety, NBCNews.com, and Emmy magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in 3:AM Magazine and on the podcast "Well Told Tales," and she is the co-author of The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion.)