A Conversation with Blackie & the Rodeo Kings (cont.)

TW: They're going to be opening these doors for dinner.

CL: Okay. We'll finish up here.

PM: Are you guys going to eat here?

CL: I think I'm going to, probably--

SF: No, I'm going to go for a little walk. I want to get ready for tonight.

PM: Okay. Let me see if I got my tape. Well, what about Rounder? Are they doing a good job on the record, is it getting out there in America?

CL: True North is our label in Canada, which Bernie Finkelstein runs, and he is our manager--it's very incestuous. But True North is distributing our album down here through Rounder. So Rounder has one hand on it, but not both.

PM: Oh. So do they have their radio people on it or True North's radio people?

SF: True North hires radio people.

CL: So basically sales and distribution are done by Rounder, but marketing and promo are done by True North.

PM: Is radio in the States biting on anything from Bark yet?

TW: Yeah, big time.

CL: We're top ten in Triple A, I think.

SF: We're number eleven Triple A.

PM: Oh, amazing. What song?

CL: Mostly "Water or Gasoline."

SF: And "Swinging from the Chains of Love."

CL: Which was really surprising to us. It's really cool for us to have that kind of acceptance. People don't know us here, so it wasn't like we had a track record to go with at radio, and it wasn't like we had a reputation of slugging it out touring America.

SF: We're in the process. There's a certain amount of sluggage going on right now.

PM: Yeah, I would imagine so. Well, it's a phenomenal record. The more I listen, the more I'm amazed. Somehow the sleeve got away from me, but is the authorship of the tunes pretty spread out, who wrote what, kind of thing? Everybody got some tunes on the record?

SF: Tom, Tom and someone else, Tom and I, me and someone else, me on my own, Colin. The three of us are involved in way or the other with each song.

CL: It's pretty evenly split.

PM: Two questions that I like to ask in interviews are really out of context here, so I'll ask them anyway. I'd like to know what everybody's reading, if anything, and if you guys are what you call spiritual guys to any extent or in any way.

SF: I'm reading two books at the same time. One is Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick, which is amazing and wonderful.

PM: A fantastic book.

SF: And then when I feel like I just need to turn it off, I'm reading an Inspector Rebus novel, which I'm a huge freak and fan of. And yes, I think I'm quite spiritual, but I was raised in Ireland as a Presbyterian, which is very strange to be. So religion and I separated sometime long ago.

PM: Yeah, right. Irish as a Presbyterian where?

SH: In Dublin.

PM: Oh, that's twisted.

SF: Yeah. A very, very quiet little tiny group of people in the south. In the north very loud and very bigoted, but in the south, fairly quiet.

PM: A lot of our people come from Dundalk, just up the road.

SF: I know Dundalk.

CL: I just finished reading We Don't Live Here Anymore, Andre Dubus. And I also just finished--

PM: Oh, that the movie came from?

CL: Yeah. I didn't even know the movie was out. But I read the book. And I just finished reading In the Moon of Red Ponies by Andre Dubus' cousin, James Lee Burke.

PM: Oh, wow, that's his cousin.

CL: I read a lot. And I am a God lovin' pig eatin' Hebrew.

PM: [laughs] Really?

[laughter]

TW: He's a Dead Sea pedestrian, as he likes to say.

PM: A what?

SF: Red Sea pedestrian.

CL: Dead Sea--Red Sea, yeah.

PM: How about you, Tom?

TW: I haven't been able to read anything on the road because I haven't been able to concentrate that long. For the last couple years, I find it hard to concentrate on reading. I've been writing a lot, though, which I'm happy about.

PM: That kind of stuff, prose?

TW: No, I've been writing for putting songs together. But I find that my concentration level is really down right now. It's really unfortunate, because I used to love reading. Colin's wife is a writer, and she gave me a copy of her book when we were making this record, and I haven't been able to focus enough to give it a fair chance.

As far as religion goes, I just--

PM: Or spirituality.

TW: Well, I was going to go back to trying to be a Catholic, and then I met this Buddhist girlfriend who said that I had a lot of Buddhist beauty in me. And I think that I'm kind of Buddh-ty.

PM: [laughs]

CL: You have a Buddhist bootie.

TW: That's what she meant, I guess, booty.

CL: I've been reading a lot of southern writers, too. Living in the south is just such a fantastic environment.

PM: Oh, yeah, so many of the great American authors--

CL: Shelby Foote. And I really, really like William Faulkner.

PM: Can we hear--what about your wife's book?

CL: My wife has written almost five novels and a number of short stories. And she's been working on a novella. She also wrote one of the songs on Bark called "House of Sand," the last song.

PM: Now, since house music is coming on, would you allow me to supplement this on the phone with you sometime?

CL: Sure. You got the number? You know where I shop. [Colin mostly resides in Nashville these days, and he and I have often bumped into each other at Wild Oats.]   continue

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