Were you a teenager, or middle-schooler, or did you have an older sibling around that age in the mid-’90s? Then you probably don’t even need us to tell you who Graham Coxon is.

You probably know him best from Blur — “Song #2,” “Coffee & TV” et cetera, et cetera. But Coxon’s pretty much always been a solo artist, in a sense. The son of a British Army bandleader, he grew up learning multiple instruments. He joined college to study arts and continue making music, he just happned to meet Alex James and Dave Rowntree, and bring along his childhood friend Damon Albarn. The rest is band-drama history.

He’s also a solo artist in the sense that he’s always gone his own way. His first official solo record came in the late ’90s, while he was still officially a member of Blur. Critically panned, he released a few more before finally striking gold with Happiness in Magazines. He’s back with Blur now, having publicly patched things up with Albarn and company and come back on board for their 2015 hit, The Magic Whip. He’s collaborated with an absolute ton of his fellow Brit acts, including but by no means limited to Paul Weller, Robyn Hitchcock, and Pete Doherty. More recently, he wrote the score for Netflix’s The End of the F***king World.

All told, Graham Coxon is kind of a rare case study of when just doing your own thing actually works out. Though he’s associated with one of the most larger-than-life bands of our demographic’s existence, Graham Coxon, just like the rest of us, is just seeing where time and his talents take him. And on September 30, they’ll take him to August Hall for an evening of solo work, with local Travis Hayes opening. Get your tickets below.

Graham Coxon
August Hall
September 30, 2018
8pm, $29.50

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