Seasick Steve

Strumming on his three-stringed guitar and stamping on his ‘Mississippi Drum Machine’ (ostensibly just a microphone in a box), Seasick Steve sings the blues. He has plenty of experience to inspire him, many of his formative years were spent as an American hobo. His first solo album, Dog House Music, has made him a recent phenomenon: an appearance on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny in 2006; winning the 2007 Mojo magazine Breakthrough Act Award; as well as playing more UK festivals than any other artist. No wonder his catchphrase is “It’s all good”.

Your name. Do you really get seasick?
Oh man I get real seasick. That’s a bad thing for me going on a boat.

Do you always take a plane?
Every once in a while I take a ferry but then I got to take a lot of pills.

Why do you think the people of the UK have taken to your music so well?
That’s a wonderment to me too. I have thought about it lately because a lot of people ask me what I think. There’s two things I’ve come up with: people are a little bit hungry, I thought that when I went to all these festivals, I see it in their eyes that they’re hungry for some primitive music. Everything is so fancy, all the bands come with the amazing equipment and all the roadies and all the fancy this. That’s all good and all that but then some guy just come up there and bang on the floor and take a pick on a guitar. I think there’s a lot of people who have never seen that before. They just seem like hungry for it. I also think that I play songs about things that just happen to me.

Tell me about these instruments you make - the ‘MDM’, the ‘three-stringed trance wonder’, the ‘one-stringed diddley bow’…
I made the drum machine, all it is is a box with a microphone in it. The three-stringed guitar I just got it like that from a friend of mine down in Mississippi. He got it at a junk store and then sold it to me for an extortionate price of $75. I just told him at the time that I was going to take it all over the world to play and tell everyone where I got it, who ripped me off, y’know? It was just a joke at the time. I didn’t think I was going play for anyone, anywhere. So I just started playing it, I brought the three-stringed guitar home and I started playing and my wife, she don’t say too much to me about what I do play, but she just turned to me and said ‘that guitar gunna make you famous’ (LAUGHTER). This is way before I even made the record so I said ‘You’re crazy, woman’, and she was like ‘you can say what you want, but you wait’.

You presently only have one solo album - Dog House Music - but there are some rumours that you are going to be recording again soon.
I have another record that I made three years ago. It’s the same songs, kinda like me, but I had a bassist and a drummer, that record is called ‘Cheap’.

With the Level Devils?
Yeh, yeh. And now I’m going to make a new record probably starting in November.

And is that just a solo project?
Yeh. I might have kinda maybe some drums maybe once in a while. I thought about maybe singing some tunes with maybe or two other people, just a little bit different but still pretty raw.

And are you going to take that similar simplistic approach to recording that you’ve used before?
Yeh, I am. I’m going to try to make a little bit different but it’s still going to be pretty simple. There might be a couple of songs on there that might be a little more complicated but I’m going to stick with the simple thing for the most part.

And what does that entail?
Not getting too busy, y’know? I don’t know yet. I made that last record on a four track tape machine with just two microphones in my kitchen. So I think I’ll do some recording in my kitchen again but if I want to use some drums on a song too I might go somewhere else and record, in a house or something. It’s not totally planned out yet.

So this solo venture of yours, how does it differ in the sound from what you did with The Level Devils?
When I did that record that was kind of a little band so that’s mainly how it’s different. I had a recording studio we did it in and on this record I didn’t even know I was making a record I was just recording in my kitchen because my wife told me to. I didn’t have no plan to put out a record, it happened after I recorded it that people wanted to put it out. She just kind of wanted me to record some songs like I do when I sit around the house and play, y’know?

You’ve had some tough times in your past, to what extent do those experiences creep into your music and your lyrics?
Oh, they don’t creep into it, they stamp all over it. That’s all I sing about is what happened back then. That’s all it is. I just write songs about things that happened to me, good or bad. I try not to make it too horrible every now and then. I just write about stuff. I just write what make me feel good but most of the things I write about are things that happened to me a long time ago. I got a song about my dog that died last year, so sometimes I write songs about things happening now but mostly a long time ago.

You’ve worked with a number of musical heavyweights, as a producer and as a session player, who were the most satisfying in terms of the end product that you made?
Shit, I don’t know. I like recording with all the young bands because they’re so excited about what they do and they think they just invented a new wheel, y’know? There’s a lot of energy. I got tired of it after a while but a lot of them young bands out there in America, it was real fun to see them come up with all their stuff and some of it was real original. It kept me kind of young. So working with these real young kids, even though it was kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, they keep you on your toes.

Is it right you once knew Kurt Cobain?
Yeh, I knew him. He lived in Olympia and he lived in Olympia and pretty much everyone around there knew him. It was no big deal to know him.

Who are you listening to at the moment? Which bands are you into at the moment?
I just listen to old music now. I listen to old Mississippi Delta music a lot like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Charlie Patton, Son House. I listen to that stuff a lot. The older I get the more I want to listen to old music. I like some of the old vocal groups like the Milder Brothers and Inkspot, old Nat King Cole Trio.

So how do you feel about bands such as Jon Spencer, The Black Keys and The White Stripes?
Oh yeh. I really like some of the stuff the Black Keys did. Also when Jon Spencer was doing that stuff with RL (Burnside), that’s what kind of got me going again. RL was doing that stuff with Jon Spencer and then he thought it’d get popular then they asked me to come and open some shows back in 96 and 97. So that sort got me playing again. So through Jon Spencer I kind of got going again. I really like the White Stripes and The Black Keys. I like some of these punk bluegrass bands, like how Black Keys are doing it. I like that stuff a lot, to me that’s the future. A lot of those kids really do understand what that old music is all about. They kind of jumped over all the boring blues that’s been going on for the last 20-30 shithole years. They pick up that raw delta element and then they rock it up into their own thing.

These gigs that you’ve got coming up in London, tell me a bit more about those.
The London ones are just the last ones of my tour. I’m going on a tour starting in Scotland. I was only going to play one at the Scala but it sold out right away so they booked another gig at the Scala and that sold out too.

And you’re playing again at the Astoria in January?
Yeh, maybe then all the people can come that didn’t get to go to them other ones. I’ve got a booking agent and they’re just trying to put me wherever they can put me. It’s just gotten more and more crazy though because the people wanna come so I’m all happy about that getting me a job.

So maybe by next Xmas you’ll be playing at the 02 arena?
(LAUGHTER) It’s funny, I played at a festival over in Holland in front of 85,000 people.

How did that go?
Yeh, it was all good. It doesn’t matter to me if there’s eight people or 85,000. I play the same. It’s just kind of funny to walk out onto a stage that big with that many people there and you’re all by yourself. I’m all good either way. I like kinda playing for a lot of people just because it gets around a lot more quicker. I like playing small places but you’ve got to play an awful lot of small places to get in front of 20 or 30,000 people. The festivals have been real nice like for me to get a lot of people to know about me just over a few months.

Good exposure?
Yeh, yeh, yeh. It’s all good, it’s all good.