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Billy Bragg will play Galtres Festival on Sunday August 26 2012, co-headlining the day with Seth Lakeman and The Men They Couldn't Hang.

Billy Bragg has for more than 30 years expertly married folk, punk, poetry and politics in his unrelentingly brilliant and powerful music. Unafraid of courting controversy, Billy has sided with a number of grass roots political movements while being an unashamedly outspoken opponent of fascism, racism, bigotry, sexism and homophobia.

Headliners for Friday and Saturday at Galtres have still to be announced, but Chris Helme (ex-Seahorses), Martin Stephenson and guitar maestro Jon Gomm are known to be included in the line-up.

Billy Bragg co-headlines with The Men They Couldn't Hang, back for a second time to Galtres, by popular demand, after playing a brilliant set last year just before the Levellers. "We had to stop them doing an encore so we could keep to schedule, but the crowd was going mad for more," explained festival director James Houston. "It was a tremendous show which equalled any band we've seen at Galtres. So we just had to have them back again."

Sunday night's other headliner Seth Lakeman headlines a day of folk and roots music running on the Oxman stage, and was announced in December. 

Festival organisers have booked more big names this year than ever before for the annual festival which takes place in Crayke, near York,  to add to the 100 or so bands and artists performing over the August bank holiday weekend. The event, which started eight years ago as a beer festival at the back of a pub, has grown steadily into a major regional event, aimed largely at families, and including the largest festival of Yorkshire beers and ciders in the world. 

Writes Paul Morley in the Guardian: “I often turn to no-nonsense, nimble witted, worldly wise Billy Bragg for some advice when I am for professional reasons looking into an event, phenomenon, trend, issue, movement, date, personality etc. As a formidable, inquisitive and globetrotting combination of storyteller, historian, activist, father, enthusiast, pilgrim, entertainer, minstrel, humorist, rambler, sermoniser and scholar, he's always got a point of view, a word of wisdom, a rigorous insight, a calming thought, an inspiring idea, a brilliant punchline, whatever it is I'm asking him about. Speaking to him, I am always alert to the transcendent fact that he made a cameo appearance in Bob Dylan's Chronicles, and that this lends a level of the hobo divine to his rugged common sense.” Paul Morley, The Guardian.