A Conversation with Luther & Cody of NMA (cont.)

PM: I mean, Polaris is going to far eclipse the first two records.

LD: I hope so.

PM: I mean, I think you believe that. I certainly do.

CD: I'm excited, man.

LD: We're excited. It's from the heart, man. It's a great collaboration.

PM: What's going to help that record take off? Is it a college thing? Is it a Triple A thing, or how is that record going to really get propelled to where it's got to be? Who's working radio?

CD: That's the stage we're in right now. And my opinion is, without a doubt, the press was a huge part of our success with Shake Hands With Shorty.

PM: Right.

CD: The media coverage, like I said earlier, was just unbelievable. I couldn't believe it--I still can't believe it. Especially when it was happening, I was like, "What the hell?" But anyway, I think Polaris is going to be driven more by--it's not a critic's record, it's people music.

PM: Right.

CD: It's for people who like to drive to work and listen to a new song. And I think the radio is really important on this one. I'm really counting on some of these tunes getting on the radio and having new people get to hear our music that way.

LD: All along it's just peripheral, though, because we just live on the road. Bottom line, it's about the shows--

CD: Exactly. Regardless, we'll take it to the people for sure ourselves.

LD: Yeah. Like the two years that we spent on the road before Shake Hands With Shorty came out, they helped us enormously. When the record finally came out there was already an audience there for it.

PM: Oh, you were already hitting it for two years before.

CD: Yeah, there was a nice little anticipation, yeah.

LD: Our first tour, we started touring off and on in '98, and through '99 we were recording it, and it came out in 2000.

CD: But hopefully Polaris will liberate us to where we can have the freedom to make whatever kind of music we want to on record. I know that's really not, by definition, what a record is, but--

LD: Actually, that's what Polaris is.

PM: Yeah.

LD: We're going to do whatever we want to do.

PM: [laughs] Yeah, what is that--

CD: It says, "This is a psychedelic sex machine."

[laughter]

PM: We're talking about the washboard. By the Maid-Right Washboard Company of Columbus, Ohio. [laughs]

CD: Thank God for this thing, man. It's literally changed my life.

PM: What do you play it with, thimbles or--

CD: Yeah, exactly.

[laughter]

PM: Unbelievable!

GN: It's full body, like they've got in New Orleans.

CD: Oh, right, the Zydeco style? Yeah. Those are real instruments.

LD: It's an old Memphis jug band tradition style.

GN: You could still wash clothes with that one.

[laughter]

CD: Exactly, yeah. We bought this here in Nashville yesterday. And there was this cat who was saying, "I didn't know they still made washboards."   continue

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