A Conversation with Anne McCue  (continued)

PM: So we spoke a little bit about this at brunch. One thing that distinguishes you from all the other solo acts one can see out there--or most, I should say--is that your songs, at least the ones that I've heard you play, tend to be more firmly rooted in the pop domain, not so much folk or blues based stuff. Is that true of your show today?

AM: I think I'm heading back a bit to the blues roots, sort of being just in my own head. I saw Tony Joe White last year a couple of times at the Byron Bay Blues Festival in Australia. And I just realized that's kind of what I like. I like a simple groove. I want to get back towards that a little more. Every now and then I'll write a pop song. I don't know where it comes from. I have written a lot of pop songs. But, you know, they're not pop like currently popular music, but they're--

PM: More like Adult Contemporary.

AM: Catchy three-minute songs. You can tell I heard the Beatles when I was a kid, sort of thing. [laughs]

PM: Right.

AM: But my new songs, like "Ballad of An Outlaw Woman" and stuff, are more bare, fundamental, almost blues type songs. I like telling stories like that. It's a cowboy story--or a cowgirl story, sort of.

PM: You started the set with that one, yeah. I liked that. There's not enough outlaw woman stories, that's for sure. And by the way, that was a really good version, last night, of "Who Do You Love," with Rick Plant and Bryan Owings, the rhythm section of Buddy and Julie Miller's band. So yeah, you're obviously no stranger to the blues or to guitar slinging.

AM: Well, in Melbourne I was in this band, and it was a heavy rock all-girl band. And we had a fair bit of alternative success. We had a good following. Afterward, it's like when you're in a relationship and it breaks up, you're kind of lost for a while. So I started playing solo, which was really scary, you know, at first. And I didn't know what I wanted to do musically.

I spent a couple of years searching around. And then I started going to blues jams. And I would go every weekend and spend all weekend at blues jams and drinking Guinness, and you know, just playing guitar. And I think that really gave me some direction for my playing. Because I think a great blues solo is just something to be reckoned with. You know what I mean? If you can play a blues solo and make it interesting, then I think you're onto something--you're communicating something very fundamental and important. So I just got right into that scene. And then I went to Vietnam and played over there and played a lot. I played five nights a week over there.

PM: I've heard that a lot of blues players go there.

AM: Do you remember Geoff Achison? He played that night--

PM: Yeah sure. [see our review]

AM: He got me that gig in Vietnam. Geoff's been very instrumental in my story. He got me that gig, which really changed my life. It got me out of Melbourne. I started saying, "Oh, yeah, you've got to make things happen, you've got to get your own gigs," and stuff, because I didn't know anything. I was just in a band. I didn't know anything before that. And I didn't learn that much during that time, about the business or anything. And when I was in Vietnam, I started just being a little entrepreneurial and getting gigs all over town. And I would play blues one night, jazz one night, heavy rock one night, acoustic songwriter one night.

PM: As many musicians as I've known in my life, you're the only one I've ever met that went to play in Vietnam. [laughs]

AM: [laughs] I know.

PM: It's kind of outlandish!

AM: It was one of those things. I was literally starving. I was hungry. I hadn't eaten properly for days--three days, maybe. And I got a phone call from this Irish guy in Saigon saying, "Would you like to come to Vietnam and play? You'll get such and such American dollars a week and free accommodation." I said, "Um, okay." [laughs]

PM: [laughs]

AM: It was winter in Australia, and I'd been like, "God, what's going to happen to me?" And so I had nothing to lose, absolutely nothing to lose by going. I was supposed to only go for three months. I ended up staying almost a year. And I played a lot. And it was the first time I played rock for a couple of years, rock 'n' roll. We played Pearl Jam and Nirvana and stuff.

PM: [laughs]

AM: [laughs] And AC/DC, in a bar called Apocalypse Now.

PM: How bizarre...

AM: I know.

PM: Was that in Saigon?

AM: Yeah. Oh, it was a crazy, crazy time.  continue

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