INTERVIEW

This is the transcript of an interview for radio with Italian music writer Cristiana Santucci. The interview was basically about the new CD "Chosen Ground" but also tried to provide audiences with a little more insight into vintage blues music. The interview was conducted in English... Cristiana is an old friend and fluent English speaker... parts have been translated for various journals. A shorter and simpler version was later done in Italian. Short extracts of the songs were played during the interview.
A.M.

C.S. "Andy, I really love the new CD. The material is great, and its so close to your live sound."
A.M. "Well, it was recorded very simply. I did as much as I could live, including all the vocals, and with as few overdubs as possible."

C.S. "Before you take us through the individual tracks, can you tell us a little more about the music you drew on and its origins?"
A.M. "I guess you could call it the first period of recorded blues music, one step on from the field and prison songs that laid the foundations of blues. The great heroes of that time were people like Charley Patton, Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson,of course, Son House, John Estes, Willie McTell and so on. Guys like that played the real stuff!"

C.S. "Sixteen tracks... including four original pieces of your own."
A.M. "I love recreating the old tunes and playing them my way but I think its also important to try to add to the music with new material."

C.S. "You don't play electric guitar anymore but the record has got a lot of power."
A.M. "Well, I still play a little 1963 Danelectro sometimes, but the CD is completely acoustic. If you get it right and record simply without too much production, acoustic material can be just as strong and compelling as anything else. I was never a very good electric guitarist anyway!"

C.S. "Don't really believe that after 'Proof of Identity'. But tell us about the songs on the CD."
A.M. "As you know,the first is a Robert Johnson song "Last fair deal gone down." I'm always very careful with my choice of RJ songs... he was so special. Think this one's OK... its got a nice groove and is one of his less intense songs."

C.S. "'Special Agent' is a John Estes tune and I know you have a particular love of his songs."
A.M. "Yeah, that's right. John Estes wasn't a particularly good guitarist but he had wonderful musicians with him most of the time... Yank Rachell on guitar and mandolin and the superb Hammie Nixon on harmonica. But he had the most beautiful wistful, plaintive voice and seemed to write about just about everything that happened to him... maybe the greatest blues storyteller... and for me, blues are stories. So many other great blues musicians, from Muddy Waters to Alvin Youngblood Hart drew on songs from Estes across the generations. "Special Agent" is one of his lesser-known songs but a great favourite of mine."

C.S. "'Texas Tornado' is one of my favourites and I know you always play this in concert... I love that line about 'catch a'hold to a man, cut him loose and he can't walk!"
A.M. "You're a bad person! It's a Bill Broonzy song but I can't remember where I learned it... maybe back in London years ago. I play it in a kind of Charley Patton/early Muddy Waters-style... not like Broonzy at all."

C.S. "'Swamp Fever' is great... real atmospheric stuff. Seduction on the Bayou!"
A.M. "Well, I really wanted to call it 'The Woman that Ate Shreveport!' Seriously, when I lived in San Antonio, Texas, I used to love driving long distances. Once I decided that I wanted to go to Louisiana and learn more about cajun music and meet with the great cajun accordion player and maker, and cajun historian Marc Savoy. Travelling through Louisiana swampland at night is a powerful experience... strange night noises, snatches of music, fishermen calling to each in patois. The song was derived from that trip... although I wrote it just recently. Marc made me the accordion I play on the album."

C.S. "And 'Jitterbug Swing'?"
A.M. "This is the great Booker White's slide guitar tour-de-force, a challenge to any slide guitarist, because its fairly fast fingerpicking and slide at the same time. I recorded this completely live, vocals and all, with my Tricone, which is really the only way to do it. This piece is a real tightrope walk... it can so easily go out of control! But if you get it right you can get the whole guitar trembling and shaking like a wild beast... very exhilarating."

C.S. "'Theme 4' you wrote for a documentary, I think?"
A.M. "Yeah,I was asked to write some acoustic slide guitar themes for a documentary film. I wrote five themes and this was the one they chose. It was originally recorded with myself and a string synthesiser player but I re-recorded it for the album just with my little 1930 Oahu lap steel. I recorded two versions... one with the slide heavily damped to cut the harmonic microtones and another with them mostly coming through. In the end, I felt that the overtones gave the piece more atmosphere. The problem is that if someone says write an acoustic slide theme for a film you're landing right in the territory of the fabulous Ry Cooder (Paris, Texas etc.). Luckily, between myself and a friend, we had all his recorded work for film, so I tried to carve out some space for myself. He is an enormous presence, though."

C.S. "'Trouble Came Knockin' is another of yours with a great groove."
A.M. "A while back I realised the blues from the north Mississippi hill country area, very different to other forms, was a kind of hole in my blues education. So I began listening to people like Robert Belfour and R.L.Burnside and the influence came out in the song."

C.S. "'Chosen Ground' is a very special song, right?"
A.M. "Well, yes. As you know I was a journalist and musician in parallel for many years. One of my best friends from that period was a wonderful guy, a war correspondent. He died recently and I wrote this for him. Don't really want to say any more."

C.S. "OK... 'Drop Down Mama' is another John Estes song?"
A.M. "Yes, another from old Sleepy John. My take on it is very different but I like the way it worked out."

C.S. "'Grinnin' in your face?'... this is real hard stuff."
A.M. "Normally, I'm not so comfortable with Son House material. He was one of the real greats... rough, primaeval-sounding... one of the founders of Delta Blues. But I loved this song and did my best with it in a church style, with the accordion and mandolin."

C.S. "'Doctor Jazz' is great fun... ragtime style. And "who put the LSD in Berlusconi's morning tea"... wonderful!!"
A.M. "Well, it is a fun song and I changed it quite a bit. There used to be a tradition in London of New Orleans jazz on Sunday lunchtimes in the Thameside pubs. The undisputed king of that scene was George Melly, art critic, journalist and a great trad jazz singer. He always did this song... I hope he's still with us."

C.S. "'Soul of a Man' I know well, because we went to see the Wim Wenders film for Scorsese together."
A.M. "The Rev. Willie Johnson, like Robert Johnson, is sacred ground for me. I could never hope to play it the way he did. But I always saw it as a kind of mantra so I tried to do it that way."

C.S. "'New York City'?"
A.M. "Not terribly well known but I love this song. The musicologist Alan Lomax took the great Leadbelly up to New York for concerts and recordings and this song is his exuberant, wide-eyed discovery of the Big Apple. "I'm up in New York City... even got to know my line." I must say NYC still has pretty much the same effect on me."

C.S. "'One Kind Favor' is just beautiful."
A.M. "Thank you. I think it may be one of the most beautiful blues ever written. Its also known as "See that my grave is kept clean" ... some people say its traditional, others that it was originally recorded by the great Blind Lemon Jefferson. I slowed it right down, changed it around a little, and recorded it completely live with my Gibson, with a passing influence from the style of another of my heroes, Nehemiah "Skip" James."

C.S. "'Goin' to Brownsville' has got a wonderful rhythm for an acoustic track. It demonstrates what you were saying about the power of acoustic music."
A.M. "Well, I'd been listening to a lot of Mississippi drum & fife band music,mostly Napoleon Strickland, and I think some of it rubbed off. Another great John Estes song about his beloved Brownsville."

C.S. "Lastly, 'Kokomo Blues'."
A.M. "Mississippi Fred MacDowell has always been a tremendous influence on me. Like the great Muddy Waters, he only had a few slide riffs but he certainly made the most of them."

C.S. "Andy, thank you so much for talking to us. I love the album and hope that it does really well. Hopefully our listeners now know a little more about the roots of the blues."
A.M. "Thank you Cris... a real pleasure for me. And while I hope your audience liked the album, remember that the original versions of many of these songs are still out there on CD and not so hard to track down."