John Langford got his start in Leeds, England, in 1977 as co-leader of the Mekons, a punk band who have spent the past two and a half decades changing styles (from punk to reggae rock to proto-electronica to country) and membership. Now firmly entrenched in the Chicago underground scene, Langford divides his time among the Mekons and his alterna-country outfits the Waco Brothers and Pine Valley Cosmonauts. He’s also developed an impressive sideline as a visual artist.

It was a Mekons tour that brought him to T.T. the Bear’s Place a week ago Wednesday. This time the band were celebrating a bevy of Collector’s Choice reissues, including their late-’80s/early-’90s albums The Mekons Rock’n’Roll (originally released by A&M) and The Curse of the Mekons (originally a Blast First import). They were also promoting a new Mekons album, OOOH! (a.k.a. “out of our heads”), which, though advertised on T-shirts they were selling, has yet to be written, let alone recorded.

In the absence of new material, the Mekons treated fans to a set that emphasized recent albums, with tunes from their latest Quarterstick CD, Journey to the End of the Night, as well as a few familiar older favorites (“Hard To Be Human” and “I Have Been to Heaven and Back”). This version of the Mekons was an eight-piece that included long-lost fiddler Susie Honeyman (who was absent from the band’s tours but not recordings for much of the ’90s) and accordionist Rico Bell. Even though Honeyman’s playing was often buried in the mix, she and Bell helped emphasize the Celtic tint of the band’s country-cum-pub-rock sound.

Langford’s riotous color commentary was a highlight. Posing as a carnival barker, he quipped, “Rico Bell plays accordion for a living — pity him!” Later, when one audience member requested “Ring o’ Roses,” an obscure track appended to the Rock’n’Roll reissue, Langford chortled, “Completist!”

For Langford completists, there’s currently an exhibit of the Mekons co-leader’s artwork on display at the Harvard Square indie-record store Other Music. Langford, who under the pseudonym Chuck Death illustrates the satirical rock-and-roll comic strip Great Pop Things, has painted head shots of country-music icons, including Bob Wills, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams, and decorated/defaced them with scribbles, lettering, and graphics (a half-naked visage of Williams, for example, is pierced by arrows) much in the same way that the obscured picture of Elvis Presley on the cover of The Mekons Rock’n’Roll is splattered with Jackson Pollock–style expressionist graffiti. The exhibit is on display through mid May.