INTERVIEW WITH VERBICIDE MAGAZINE
September 17, 2009
Where do find inspiration for your lyrics?
Usually during the upside down bit, while cartwheeling from town to town. Got a special kinship with the wind, I do, and I ride if it asks nicely. It’s often lonesome, but surefire exhilarating. It’s my thing – all’s I’ve ever done, all’s I know how to do. Inspiration? Songs are born of lost lovers, simple strangers, good food, and light vs. dark in the boxing ring of each doggone day. Time is my teacher. I just show up and pay attention. The lyrics are my homework.
Why did you decide to branch out from artist and photographer to musician?
This lil’ tree needed to root herself in some good old-fashioned Courage. To make music is to disarm fear and release it. It is as brave as brave is for me. It is a celebration of both happy and sad. It is the purest of expression, the complement to depression. Painting and Photography feel safe. Music is skydiving with a piano for a parachute. God’s gotta kick in somewhere to make it work. I like the feel of that boot on my bottom.
What are your main musical influences?
NAMES, I’ll give you folks 4 scrolls long from Nina Simone to Sinead O’Connor to Bubba Jesus Kelly Shawn Baynard Updegrave from down in the swamp. My favorite song at 5 years old was “Desperado”. I thought Don Henley wrote it just for me. How could a pig-tailed 5 year-old feel so lonely? Dunno. Always have. At age 6, I saw Elton John play the piano backwards in a pink mohawk and I loved every second of it. Tom Waits inspired my first public cover song. I like the folks who don’t hold nuthin’ back, come hell’s bells or sweetwater sirens, long as they’re not trying to hurt nobody, and just gettin’ the song sung true.
I am influenced by sudsy sounds in bathwater, by the clickity-clack of my puppydog’s toenails tapping on tile. I am influenced by the grunt of the impatient italian at the post office, the smack of chewing gum in the cheeks of the dental assistant, and the farewell song of the flight attendant. It’s all Music. It’s in the skin. Music is the one thing. It’s everywhere, waiting for translation. And when that message is delivered, boy, that’s pure gold.
What are your future plans for your music?
I will make it honestly. I will walk through the doors that feel right, in the presence of good people who humble me. I plan to play like a child with a new toy, howl like a doomed soldier, purr like a cartoon kitten and to shake my sauce like a wind-blown wild woman. I believe, beyond doubt, that music will carry me home.
How did you develop your storytelling style?
I unlocked all the doors, cut my chest wide open, blew off the roof, and wrote what I saw in the storm overhead.
How did you develop your vocal style?
Shoot, I just feel it. A song might come out different every time. That’s the beauty of live shows. I feed off of the folks around me and there’s no telling what’s about to happen. I surrender control, and let the song sing itself alive through me. I try not to MAKE sound, but just ALLOW it, as if I am the instrument and something else is playing me. The more I give in to the mystery, and the less I force it, the better my music is received. I have to remember that I’m not always captain of a song once it sets sail. My job is to tend the anchor.
How long have you been playing music?
I was involved in some violence a few years behind. The chapter was haunting and incomprehensible, still. After hitting bottom and sitting there, I decided to have a party at the place where the bad news went down. A bunch of folks were invited, many of them strangers to one another, many of them musicians. For several dark hours and long past the dawn, we made magic. MAGIC. I understood then, in every cell of my body, the magnificence of music and its medicine. It changed my life. It gave the ugliest parts of me a chance to be beautiful. I could celebrate the darkness without shame. And I could also be as silly as a sausage, shameless. Days later, I chose to walk across the street where an old fella plays mandolin on a sweet southern porch. He’s a six-foot-five retired CIA agent with a wild shock of white hair and crazy blue eyes. He’s fluent in Chinese, sings like a lost frog, and goes by the name of Gerald Jenkins. He agreed to teach me a few chords and we became the best of friends, harmonizing oldtimey duets around town. Our first gig was at The Cowboy Church, an open-air getup run by a Bullrider Rodeo Announcer/Preacher who’d found Jesus in prison. Gerry and I drank a bottle of champagne that morning and before our first number, “Amazing Grace”, I fell over the speakers. We’ll laugh about that one forever. We were quite the duo. One fine evening, we were invited to a fella’s house to drink some mead and gnaw on some greens. There was this guitar sitting in the corner of the room, covered in dust, been there for seven years, silent. It watched me. Wouldn’t let me leave without asking if I could take her home and show her a good time. Well, I swept that sweet little Hohner up into my arms that night, painted her up all red and pretty, and took her around town singing bluegrass in the swamps with Gerry. Six months later, I delivered a stack of 150 single dollar bills wrapped up in a red ribbon to the mead fella’s doorstep. I earned every one of those bucks playing with an open case. I wrote my first song and hit the road. Been playing ever since. That was near four years ago.
Where do you see your music taking you?
I’ve already been to hell and back. I suppose my music will take me everywhere else.
In a semi-unrelated question, how’d you land a gig at the county jail?
Bad boys got to hear Johnny Cash. Somebody’s gotta be there for the caged ladies.
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INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY GARRETT LYONS, VERBICIDE MAGAZINE
