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wrote it on my phone during the Mark Knopfler tour. I’d sing ideas into the phone wherever we were, New York or wherever, just walking down the street or during soundchecks. Very often not on the fiddle, just singing ideas into the phone. I’d go back to it and it would be 90 percent gobbledegook – the noise of a taxi and me singing nonsense. Just little ideas.”
“I
“I remember Mark Knopfler saying to me, ‘All I want to do is make a good record’ but to make a record you are proud of and can stick it on is really difficult. Generally if I hear something I’ve done it makes me want to run out into a field screaming.”
At the end of the day, though, you’re a BBC Good Tradition
Award-winning fiddle player; do you really enjoy accompanying a singer as much as playing a gig?
“It depends. Some people like the chaos behind them, others want it to be very precise. Rhiannon Giddens said it’s like soul meet- ing soul. We played with her on the Transatlantic Sessions. We didn’t know her but she’s a force of nature who carries a band and the energy gets more and more powerful. She draws it from you. It’s something you can’t explain because we’d never met her before in our lives, but we learned the parts to her songs and the energy and passion on stage was incredible. “
So… 25 years… highlights?
“Lots. Meeting Heidi has been the high point of my whole life. Playing in venues I never thought I’d get to play as a kid. The feeling I got the first time I walked on stage at the Albert Hall. That never goes away. It was like a dream, you can’t believe you’re there. Or playing with Bob Dylan at the Holly wood Bowl. You grow up watch- ing these people on telly… those are definite highs. To be on fire from making records. It feels like all the work I’ve done and all the trouble and all the stress and all the stuff that goes with it has paid off because I am where I always dreamed of. I’ve got my own studio and a house and Heidi and the kids and lots of work and lots of things to look forward to.”
And the future? “I don’t plan too far ahead. I like being surprised by people I
haven’t played with before, like Rhiannon Giddens. And Tidow & O’Hooley. I had no idea what they did but they did this thing Ballads Of Child Migration and they were brilliant, they brought the house down. I’d love to play with Natalie Merchant. As a kid 10,000 Mani- acs were a really big band for me. In My Tribe was one of the first records I bought.”
25 years, eh? Are you sure? “Yep…”
www.johnmccusker.co.uk
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