By Andrew Bansal
Atlanta GA Southern hard rock stalwarts Nashville Pussy released a compilation called ‘Ten Years Of Pussy’ earlier this year via SPV/Steamhammer, marking a decade on the SPV label and featuring 16 tracks from the last three studio albums, plus a bonus live EP. The masters of unabated rock ‘n roll sleaze, Nashville Pussy are now ready to embark on a US summer headline run with opening act Valient Thorr. I recently spoke to frontman Blaine Cartwright for an expectedly entertaining chat about all things Pussy. Enjoy the conversation below:
Blaine, it’s good to have you on Metal Assault. First of all, I believe you guys returned from Europe not too long ago. How was that tour?
It was really good, and a whole lot of fun. Bigger crowds and better audiences, you know.
Your style of music is best described as Southern rock and it’s such an American thing. How differently is it perceived over there? I guess they enjoy it more because it’s a little foreign to them.
I think so too. They don’t get a lot of this there, so we’re basically presenting some of this stuff for them, whereas here, even though there’s not a whole lot of Southern rock bands right now, we definitely still have more here. But Europe is the place for rock ‘n roll. It’s way, way better over there, and has been for a while, at least as long as I’ve been playing music.
Talking of your newest release ‘Ten Years Of Pussy’ which is a compilation of the last ten years of what you’ve done with SPV, how did that come about?
Well, we were trying to figure out a way to put this stuff out. I’ve been wanting to put together a ‘best of’ compilation for a while, but we’ve been on so many labels that it was really hard to do. So, since we’ve done three albums on SPV, we’re putting out a ‘best of’ compilation from that. SPV like releasing records. Oli, the head of SPV is like a kid, he just wants to keep releasing records, and he thinks we’re cool and old enough to release a compilation (laughs). And the live EP we’ve got on there as bonus, we’ve been sitting on that for a while. It’s a really good bootleg recording. But yeah, basically when we have new stuff out there, it gives us a reason to go on tour too, you know.
Right, I was going to ask you about that live EP. So that’s a bootleg recording, and not something you got from a festival or anything like that?
No, we rarely recorded anything professionally. We had one tour where we did that. We’ve never really had a gig where we put a bunch of mics up and stuff like that. Sometimes there will be a soundman or someone that gives us a recording, and that’s how we’ve got literally 200 bootlegs over the years. Out of those, there are four that I would put out and go, hey, check this out! And this bonus EP was one of them, from Nottingham in 2009. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in a recording, but that was a great one.
Awesome. As you said, you’ve been on a lot of different labels. Did you think you’d be with SPV for ten years when you first signed with them?
No! When we first signed with them, it was for the album ‘Get Some!’ and at the time we were on Eagle Rock here and SPV in Europe. I didn’t know who they were, but it worked out really well. Our manager at the time scoped them out. We were on a couple of French labels before that, and that was great for France but didn’t really work out so well for Germany and so forth. I like SPV and they’ve got great taste in music too. Oli and those guys like a little more metal than I do. He put the Ace Frehley record. He came and saw us in Berlin and brought us some of the records they were putting out. It was Ace Frehley, Saxon and a bunch of stuff. He also put out Eddie Cochran and bought a blues label. So he’s really got good taste in music, which is good, and they like what we do. He’s a cool dude, I know he’s rooting for us and he’s on our side, for sure.
You have a summer tour coming up in the US, and looking at the dates, it’s quite extensively going through the south this time.
Yeah, that’s what we’re doing this time but then we’ll go back and do more in other areas. We’re trying to re-establish rock ‘n roll here, man. It’s kind of hard. We’re going into the dives, us and Valient Thorr, marching on a holy quest for a holy cause. If America is hip-hop and country then that’s just the way it is, but we have to remind people that there’s nothing as exciting as a rock ‘n roll show. In all history of entertainment, any band and every band that’s been exciting is a rock ‘n roll band. Whatever music might be popular, rock ‘n roll is about creating an atmosphere in which anything can happen and it can totally go crazy. In a rock ‘n roll show, stage-diving, running into people and spilling beer is normal, but you can’t go a pop or hip-hop concert and do that. Rock ‘n roll, specifically hard rock, is probably the greatest entertainment. When I used to go see the Ramones when I was younger, I knew it was going to be fucking crazy. You could expcet anything, but you didn’t know what was going to happen. That’s the kind of thing we want to bring back, doing what we can. If rock ‘n roll is dying, I want it to go out kicking and screaming, with us doing most of the kicking and screaming.
That’s a good way to put it. Talking of the set list for this tour, are you mainly going to focus on what you’ve put in the compilation?
Well, right now we’re in a position where we’re saying fuck it. We’ve started bringing all kinds of stuff up. We usually have kind of the same set list for a year-and-a-half, but I went out on an acoustic tour and I just got better. One of the biggest problems was to figure out what songs I can sing and play at the same time, but I just got better at that on this tour, and now I can do just about anything. So we just kind of call things out. Like, if there’s a Circle Jerks cover on a record and people have forgotten about it, let’s do that! At one point, there was always someone in the band who didn’t want to do certain songs, but no one is doing that anymore and everyone is really excited and we’ll do anything. We’ve got nothing to lose. If nothing else, we just fucking want to have fun, because that’s why we got into this in the first place. So, we’re going to learn as many songs as possible for this tour and may be mix it up and surprise people.
Right, and obviously the lyrics in your songs are just as important as the music itself, and that’s what adds to the entertainment. How do you come up with those ideas in general?
Thank you! Man, you know, that’s the hardest part. I mean, the riffs are hard but it’s just a matter of me sitting around and playing the guitar. But as for the lyrics, anything starts with a good idea. If you have a good idea, the lyrics can develop from there. Having a good title and concept is important. Looking at all the songs we have over drugs, I sometimes think, have I overdone this? (laughs) But I try to find something that sounds cool, and I actually get approval from everybody else. I text them the title, and if they say it’s cool, I say don’t tell anybody because they might steal it. There’s a song on the album ‘Up The Dossage’ called ‘The South Is Too Fat To Rise Again’. I came up with that phrase goddamn three years ago, but I just sat on it. I was hoping no one would steal it. A rap or hip-hop artist could have recorded something in one night and put it up on YouTube, but luckily that didn’t happen. So, I try to find a good title, something that makes me laugh, makes the other guys laugh. You’ve got to realize that you’re going to sing these songs for years to come. So it’s got to be good, or I wouldn’t want to sing it on stage if it’s stupid. So I try to stay true and keep it cool and funny. Once I get a concept down, I can fly. I’m the Bob Dylan of raunchy lyrics. If I had to turn in a 50-page essay about getting a blowjob on a rollercoaster while eating a corn dog, I could do it!
I’m sure you can. And finally, you’ve been involved in a lot of projects over the years. At this point do you plan on doing only Nasvhille Pussy or do you want to do anything else besides this?
Well, my first band Nine Pound Hammer which is still around, we have a record coming out in January. I was working on it for the past year or so. There’s another band called Kentucky Bridgeburners. A lot of members are just rotating between all these bands. I’ve got Ruyter in a couple of bands, the drummer of Nine Pound Hammer is in a couple of bands, the guitar player and so forth. Basically we’ve got a studio down in Kentucky and we go there and fuck around and call it another band. The main thing is the Nine Pound Hammer record coming out in January. I think we planned on touring originally, but I don’t know. If you get a chance to see that band, you should, because we don’t play very often. Aside from that, I’m going on an acoustic thing in October. But it’s not exactly just acoustic. It’s me, and the guitar player from Nine Pound Hammer/Kentucky Bridgeburners playing electric alongside me. It’s really good. We’re opening up for somebody. But right now I’m trying to just do Nashville Pussy. We’ve got a new manager and he seems pretty hell bent on trying to help us out, which is great. All my energy is going into writing the next Pussy record. We’ve always taken a long time between records for various reasons, mostly because we’re on the road so much. But I want to knock one out fast, when people don’t expect it, because there were five years between the last two and there was no real reason for that other than that I got lazy and bored. But I’m ready to do the next one already. We’ll go as hard and fast as we can, while we still can.
Nashville Pussy links: website | facebook | twitter | instagram
Nashville Pussy tour dates w/ Valient Thorr:
8/07: Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
8/08: Nashville, TN @ Bicentennial Mall Park Ink-N-Iron Festival
8/09: Birmingham, AL @ The Nick
8/11: Knoxville, TN @ The Bowery
8/12: Asheville, NC @ Mothlight
8/13: Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
8/14: Greeneville, SC @ Gottrocks
8/15: Charlotte, NC @ The Chop Shop
8/16: Jacksonville, FL @ Jack Rabbits
8/18: Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Monterey Club
8/19: Orlando, FL @ Wills Pub
8/20: Tampa, FL @ Crowbar
8/21: Gainesville, FL @ Looseys
8/22: Pensacola, FL @ Vinyl Music Hall
8/26: Houston, TX @ Scout Bar
8/27: San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
8/28: Austin, TX @ Red 7
8/29: Dallas, TX @ Gas Monkey Bar N Grill
8/30: Tulsa, OK @ The Shrine
9/01: Kansas City, MO @ Riot Room
9/02: Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room
9/03: Des Moines, IA @ Vaudeville Mews
9/04: Rock Island, IL @ Rock Island Brewing
9/05: Springfield, IL @ Donnies Homespun
9/06: Lombard, IL @ Brauerhouse
9/08: Newport, KY @ Southgate
9/09: Louisville, KY @ Headliner Music Hall
9/10: Cave In Rock, IL @ Hogrock Campgrounds Full Terror Assault Festival
9/11: St. Louis, MO @ Old Rock House
9/12: Carbondale, IL @ PKS
9/13: Memphis, TN @ Lafayettes Music Room