LEO: Three songs you can’t live without?
JA: “That’s How I Got to Memphis” by Tom T. Hall as done by Bobby Bare; “You’re a Big Girl Now” by Bob Dylan; and “Death or Glory” by The Clash.
LEO: Women are …
JA: … profound and often purposefully unreasonable.
LEO: Men are …
JA: … foolish when it comes to profound and purposefully unreasonable creatures.
LEO: Lyrics or music first?
JA: Music. I usually play chords while smoking cigarettes until a melody line comes to me. Then, I simply start filling in words, skipping as many obvious rhymes as possible.
LEO: Most underrated author?
JA: Don Carpenter, who wrote “Hard Rain Falling,” a 1960s answer to Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not” and Nelson Algren’s “A Walk on the Wild Side.” “Rain” has recently been re-released by the New York Book Review. It’s a book everyone should read.
Douglas Lucas (myspace.com/douglaslucasmusic) enlisted Wallflowers’ drummer Fred Eltringham to produce his new solo album, Handsome Death. Lucas performs July 9 at ear X-tacy, and he joins us. Listen at Bluegrass Catastrophe, bluecat.leoweekly.com.
This article appears in July 7, 2010.