Which of your tracks are you most proud of? axolotly
I really like Bus to Baton Rouge: the lyrics, the recording, the way it came about. I was thinking about the house my mother’s parents lived in. My grandfather was a Methodist preacher and I remember the way my grandmother would throw the coffee grounds into the garden. She made the best banana pudding. There’s a little darkness in there, too. “The sweet honeysuckle that grew all around / Were switches when we were bad” is about the narrow branches they’d use to whip us. We were told: “Pick a switch, child”, and you’d have to go into the garden and pick your instrument of torture.
Your 1988 eponymous album was released by British label Rough Trade, whose other albums at the time were by the likes of Easterhouse, Band of Holy Joy, the Smiths and the Woodentops. How did it feel being a country singer in such company? VerulamiumParkRanger
I didn’t get the chance to meet the Pixies or any of those bands, but at the heart of what I do is rock’n’roll and punk. Hank Williams was a punk, but I have just as much in common with Shane MacGowan of the Pogues. [Rough Trade’s] Geoff Travis still comes to my shows. I had a very different experience on a major label. I told one guy I wanted the producer who did Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and he went: “Is Blonde on Blonde a band?” I hated the way they made my music sound. I went to one guy’s office in Beverly Hills and he was jumping up and down in his Gucci shoes going: “It sounds so good!” And I’m sitting there going: “It sucks. I hate it.”
