In keeping with the proletarian leanings of his crypto-Marxist punk group the Mekons and the blue-collar allegiances of his haggard-punk wastrels the Waco Brothers, Jon Langford has been working hard lately, even by his own prolific standards. Last year alone, there was Executioner’s Last Songs (Bloodshot), the jaunty anti-death-penalty benefit CD he helmed with fellow backwoods malcontents the Pine Valley Cosmonauts. Then came OOOH! (Quarter Stick), a superb Mekons record that coincided with the legendary UK punk group’s 25th anniversary and spawned a raucous, celebratory tour. October saw the release of New Deal (Bloodshot), the Wacos’ most vigorous barnstormer yet. On New Year’s Eve, he snuck in one more gig, not to mention one more surprise, with a set of children’s songs at Boston’s First Night. Not that he’s slowing down in 2003: he’s teamed up Bloodshot labelmates the Sadies for yet another album, Mayors of the Moon (Bloodshot). And he’s embarking on a tour that’ll have him playing two sets a night, fronting both the Sadies and the Wacos. (The tour hits T.T. the Bear’s Place next Thursday.)

Langford’s taste for distilled spirits is renowned; is he a workaholic too? "You’d have to ask me wife," says the transplanted Welshman from his Chicago studio, where he also painted the album artwork for New Deal and Mayors. "She would think so, definitely. But I have a rich and varied social life as well."

Rich and varied, too, is Mayors, which finds Langford’s lovelorn laments and caustic cultural critiques getting grand treatment from the Sadies’ supple arrangements. The Toronto quintet — who also served as the backing band on ’50s R&B sleaze Andre Williams’s country album a few years back — fuse Hammond B3s and pedal steel with Johnny Cash riffs and Bo Diddley beats, giving Langford’s lyrics an almost baroque flourish.

"The way they play is very different," he says. "They come from very musicianly backgrounds and have been playing since they were little kids. I didn’t really pick up an instrument until I was 18."

He may not have the Sadies’ chops, but his meat-and-potatoes guitar technique is well-suited to the Waco Brothers, who after six albums and scores of legendarily debauched gigs have far outgrown their side-project status. With the Wacos, Langford continues to enunciate his outsider’s take on American roots music, which he first explored back on the Mekons’ shambling 1985 punky-tonk landmark Fear and Whiskey.

"Punk was about much more than five minutes of anger," he says. "Merle Haggard and Jerry Lee Lewis and George Jones — we’d really never heard them [in England] before. That’s one of the main reasons I’m here. It’s certainly not because I love American foreign policy."

Most of all, the Wacos afford Langford the chance to cut loose without being burdened by the fan hagiography and grad-level critical parsing that tend to afflict his other band. "I couldn’t take the Mekons into any bar in America on a Friday night and have ’em set up and play without all that cool rock-journalism blah de blah. There’s an immediacy about the Waco brothers. I don’t know what the chemistry of the band is, but we just have this need to explode on stage."

Langford was a little more subdued a few weeks ago as he strummed children’s tunes to a sea of tykes at the Hynes Convention Center. He says the experience, even though he has a five-year-old and an eight-month-old of his own, was terrifying. "There were a lot of people there! I did some Burl Ives, I did some stuff off the Bloodshot album [the label’s children’s-music compilation The Bottle Let Me Down: Songs for Bumpy Wagon Rides]. I made some spaceship noises, I ran around, I got the kids to run around and demand things of their parents."

As for Langford’s oldest, Jimmy, "his favorite band is the Ramones, which is perfect. He’s writing songs and trying to form a band. Which is very alarming, because I want him to be a doctor."

Jon Langford plays with the Sadies and the Waco Brothers next Thursday, January 30, at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square. Call (617) 492-BEAR.