Timber and Steel

Image Courtesy of Folk Uke

With only three shows announced in their upcoming tour Folk Uke will only be visiting our shores for a very short time over the New Year period so Australian fans only have a handful of chances to catch Cathy Guthrie and Amy Nelson while they’re here. One of those chances is the Woodford Folk Festival. The other two chances are in Sydney. And then that’s it – the girls have to return home to the states to go back to work for their famous fathers, Arlo Guthrie and Willie Nelson respectively.

Phoning in from Asheville, North Carolina Amy Nelson managed to snatch a couple of moments to chat to Gareth Hugh Evans about the upcoming tour, the duo’s work with Sydney based multi-instrumentalist Leroy Lee and living up to the expectations of their famous fathers’ audience.

Gareth Hugh Evans: I’m pretty excited that you guys are coming to Australia again although it’s only for a couple of shows.

Amy Nelson: Yes. It’s a little too short this time.

GHE: You’re doing the Woodford Folk Festival and then just a couple of other shows in Sydney.

AN: Yeah we just have a couple of other shows in Sydney and then we had to both get back. Cathy [Guthrie] and I both work for our dads full time as well so whenever we do a tour together we try and scramble whatever time we can and this time we could only get a week. It’s going to have to be a short one, about 10 days, for the tour but hopefully we’ll be able to do a longer one soon. And we’re really excited about Woodford!

GHE: You haven’t played Woodford before have you?

AN: No we have not. I’ve just heard legend of it.

GHE: It’s a fantastic festival – probably the biggest folk festival in Australia. I think you’re going to have a lot of fun.

AN: I think so too. We’re honoured to be on the list somehow.

GHE: I’m mates with Leroy Lee who I know plays with you sometimes and earlier this year I was chatting to him and talking about his current trip to the US and he let slip that he’d be back at New Year to play Woodford with Folk Uke. As soon as he said it he realised he probably shouldn’t have – it hadn’t been announced yet – so I’ve been holding that one under my hat for a while.

AN: We really love working with Leroy too. He’s a great musician and a great songwriter too. He’s actually helping put together the Woody Guthrie tribute at Woodford as well. We’re going to do a separate little show there, some of us artists, and do some Woody songs for a tribute so that should be fun.

GHE: How did you hook up with Leroy Lee to begin with – it’s kind of weird a banjo player from Sydney playing country music in the states.

AN: Right? When we came out about two and half years ago we were on the same tour circuit as Leroy and Dan Mangan and it was so fun, all of a sudden it was like we’d known each other for ever, it was like we’d gone to high school with those guys or something. It was really cool to hang out with them – we started to feel too dependent on them at the end of the tour. So when we went back last time we looked up Leroy and he wasn’t busy so we asked him to sit with us. Unfortunately Dan Mangan was back in Canada and he’s being a rock star. So that’s how we first met a few years ago and it was a really wonderful, magical tour.

GHE: I remember he said “I’ve always got a place to crash in the US” which blew my mind that that meant he was crashing with The Nelsons.

AN: Yeah, he fits right in with us Nelsons

GHE: So your latest album is Reincarnation…

AN: We put out Reincarnation almost a year ago now, so it’s somewhat new. And we’re also working on our third album but it’s not anywhere close to being put out yet. Except that we have the artwork done. We’ve done it totally backwards this time.

GHE: Get the important stuff done first!

AN: Cindy Bradley our publicist also does the artwork for our CDs and our posters and web site. She’s amazing. When we came up with one of our songs for the next album she’d already come up with the artwork for the cover. And then that inspired us to write towards her work. She’s the third member of the band that doesn’t get mentioned as much.

GHE: If you and Cathy are both spending time working with your respective dads when do you ever find time to sit down and write?

AN: It will usually be in the middle of a conversation or something and then we’ll end up writing a song. The last time we finished a song we were supposed to be practicing for a show that we were about to play in an hour and then all of a sudden the rest of the song came to us. There’s no method to our madness as of yet, there’s no pattern that I can pick out yet. It just happens when it happens. Sometimes we’ll sit down and try to write and we can’t think of anything that way. Usually it has to come out of conversation or has to be some sort of miracle before we can finish something.

GHE: It must be even more of a miracle for both of you to both be in the same place at the same time for long enough in order to record.

AN: Definitely. We’ve been living in different states for so long. Just recently I moved back to Texas so we’re living two miles away from each other now so maybe we can start to do things like practice [laughs]. We could actually get good if we don’t look out.

GHE: One question I did want to ask: Everything I’ve ever read about you guys mentions your famous fathers, Willie Nelson and Arlo Guthrie. And you’ve already mentioned them in this interview without any prompting as well. Do you ever get sick of having to talk about your family? Or is it that you can’t get sick of talking about them because they’re your family?

AN: Maybe if they were bad people [laughs]. I think they’re great guys and we’re really proud of our dads so we’re happy to talk about them. We would only shy away from it if we start to feel we’re giving people expectations that we’re supposed to be as good as them or if people just like us because of them. We don’t every want to come off like that – we’re not anything like our dads except the humour is similar. We don’t claim to be icons of any sort. I don’t think Cathy minds talking about her dad either. And we work for our dads so we have to talk about them in our daily lives – we represent the families whether we like it or not

GHE: Do you ever get people coming to your shows expecting a Willie Nelson show?

AN: We’ve had it before where the crowd will show up and they haven’t heard of us so they’ll be mostly fans of our parents. It depends – it’s a mixed crowd. My dad’s crowds for instance just love him so much that we could do almost anything and they would love us just because they love him. There’s some people that will just be like “oh, that’s sweet”. And then there’s the people who, if they’re expecting something like our dads’ show, they might not come back the next time. We’re a little bit raunchy, we’re not necessarily for kids and we can’t really control what comes out of our mouths or how we play our instruments.

GHE: I was going to mention the rauchiness as well. I’m sure there’s few fans of your dad’s that turn up, not really know what to expect and then are taken aback.

AN: Yeah. And sometimes people don’t expect tones of sarcasm or things in our music – I’m sure people walk away with the wrong idea sometimes.

GHE: So are there any other big plans for 2013?

AN: We do have a couple of videos that we’ve been working on so hopefully we’ll be able to get some of those finished. Our next album is going to be called Starfucker so we’re going to be working on that to and hopefully finishing that up. I think we’re going to be recording that in LA and get help from as many friends who will deal with us. And whatever else comes up – we’ll continue working for our dads and that sort of thing too.

GHE: Nice

AN: And we’re also working on some things for the wild horses. We released a Nelson family version of “Wild Horses” to raise awareness about what’s going on with American wild horses because they’re being rounded up and forced off land that was promised to be reserved for them. And horses in the US are being taken to Mexico and Canada to be slaughtered for consumption overseas. The Nelson family have been fighting that one for a long time and working to pass a law, a federal ban against horse slaughter for the wild horses. My brother’s [Lukas Nelson] got a song out called “All The Pretty Horses” and we’re working on another version of that song to raise awareness for that too. That should be out 2013 as well.

GHE: So I think you’ll have to come out to Australia again soon as well. For a longer run of shows

AN: I hope that we’ll be invited out again. We’ll see how this goes!

GHE: Thank you so much for taking the time out to chat with us!

AN: Thank you for taking the time with us as well!

The full list of upcoming Australian dates for Folk Uke are below:

28th December 2012 to 1st January 2013 – Woodford Folk Festival, QLD
Thursday 3rd January – The Brass Monkey, Cronulla, NSW
Friday 4th January – The Basement, Sydney, NSW