Lach @ King Tut's, 10 Sep

This Wednesday (10 September) sees the living legend of New York’s anti-folk scene Lach appearing at King Tut's in Glasgow. In fact, Lach is often credited as the inventor of the genre, which combines classic acoustic guitar songwriting with a punk attitude. He has very few rules apart from one: 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. The list of performers to 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 (listen here). His new album, The Calm Before, sees collaborations with members of Television and Pere Ubu, and he was recently featured on BBC-2 Scotland’s Real American Folk series.