Y
our dial code suggests you’re in London at the moment, is that right?
Yes, I’m in London at the moment; I’m staying here until my visa expires. I’m gonna be in Toronto in a couple of weeks, after my European tour. I just go back and forth.
Have you gotten used to that nomadic experience? I’ve sort of had to get used to it because of all the touring that I’ve been doing over the last year – it’s been hectic. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a song. It’s just airports in and out of towns; play a show, pack up, move on to the next one.
So it was Jim Anderson that drew you to London initially – do you remember the night you arrived? Yeah, it was April 12th 2010; I flew in and got in to Gatwick. I remember taking a cab to my aunt’s house in West London and I think I just slept! Te cab ride was really terrifying, because I realised very quickly that I was on the edge of the horizon to a very large city, but it was fine!
We’ve really adopted you in this country, I think from the moment we saw you on Jools Holland we were sold. Were you aware, before you went on that show, the momentum it could have on your musical career? No, I wasn’t aware of the effect it could have. Before we even played, we hadn’t even mastered the album, we’d only played two or three shows and it was all very new. As you can tell from the video, I’m absolutely terrified! Tere’s a lot of twiddling of the thumbs and a couple of visible shakes! I’d heard of people playing in the middle of the stage before, who weren’t really well known and I remember seeing Bon Iver’s video where he played in the same spot, which was fantastic.
Listening to ‘I Predict a Graceful Expulsion’ is like listening to the absolute ideal conclusion to 100 years of gospel music, 100 years of blues and 60 years of soul. Not to say it’s any one of these things at all, but you can follow your finger along the dusty paths they wove to where Al Spx, aka Cold Specks has taken them now. As touching and full of the weight of cautionary tales of blues ballads come before, the album is a reconciliation of those elements that Al Spx has been much quoted as calling Doom Soul. And joy of joys, she’s bringing her grand culmination to our city…
26 /October 2012/
outlineonline.co.uk
You took great influence from the American South, but now you’ve had the chance to travel to those areas, have you been able to immerse yourself in that musical heritage? Erm, as much as I could… I did a tour in May, a 35-day tour on a bus with a band from Toronto called Great Lake Swimmers. We covered a lot of the South and spent a lot of time in Texas and met a lot of interesting characters. We also made a point to go to record stores and pick up some stuff. Te Deep Allum part of Dallas is really interesting; they’ve got stuff written about blues legends and all the walls are covered in descriptions on how these people came to be. Tere were a lot of interesting
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