“We were never trying to imitate country,” says Langford. “Fear and Whiskey doesn’t sound anything like country music to me, but there was imagery and osmosis. It sounds like a bunch of punk rockers from Leeds not really knowing how to play country music.”

The Mekons found success in America quite literally sort of playing country music, and soon after touring in the U.S. for a few years in the late ’80s, Langford wanted to move permanently to the States. “We had this reputation after Fear and Whiskey being somewhat influenced by country music,” says Langford, “and what I couldn’t find in Nashville or Memphis or anywhere else, it was in Chicago.”

In Chicago, Langford became pals with one of the last holdovers from the preeminent downtown hillbilly scene, local country institution the Sundowners. It can’t be overstated how important the Sundowners were for keeping the wind in the sails of classic country while almost every other music genre imaginable found its foothold in Chicago. From 1959 to 1989, the trio of Bob Boyd, Don Walls, and Curt Delaney took up residence at the shit-kicking Double R Ranch, which used to be on the infamous Madison Street before it moved to the corner of Randolph and Dearborn in the basement of old Woods Theatre building in the ’70s.

The bar was reminiscent of the city’s old honky-tonks, a respite for both city slickers and southern transplants who wanted a taste of something down-home. Longtime Chicago country singer and guitarist Robbie Fulks played there regularly in the ’80s and recalls that it was “a real pit,” but the music that came out of there until 4 or 5 a.m. was nonpareil.

Four nights a week, the Sundowners would play country, folk classics, and sometimes modern-day radio hits with three-part harmony and an unwavering precision. As legend has it, by the end of their career, when they had moved out from the Double R to their own Sundowners Ranch in the suburb of Franklin Park in the ’90s, the band knew over 25,000 songs. But on his first on his first tour of the U.S. with the Mekons back in 1986, Langford was at a poverty for country songs, so he sat in with the three country icons one night after a Mekons show at the Cubby Bear.

“It was kind of a wild thing for us to do,” recalls Langford. “We weren’t entirely good at it. So I decided I’d go away and learn some of the Cash songs we were involved in, so that the next time I went back I could do something sensible in front of a potentially hostile redneck crowd on a Saturday night in Chicago. That was where the Waco Brothers came in.”

Langford would become a regular with the Sundowners, so much that the trio played Langford’s wedding in 1991. To dive deeper into his love for country, Langford started the hell-raisin’ Waco Brothers as a bona fide county bar band in 1994, while the Mekons continued working outside the status quo for the rest of their career.