Grog Shop - Cleveland, Ohio

Peabody's - Cleveland, Ohio

Interview by Rob Kern.

Photography by Rob Kern copyright 2005.

Nashville Pussy is the type of band that’ll make you sweat, even if the weather is cold enough outside to freeze the balls off of the proverbial brass monkey.  I can’t describe their style any better than guitarist/vocalist Blaine Cartwright, “It’s like AC/DC making out with Motorhead while Lynyrd Skynyrd watches.”  While always a smoking live act, recreating the Nashville Pussy swagger in the studio has been hit and miss on previous efforts.  On their fourth full-length release Get Some! the band has come damned close to harnessing the energy of their live sets.  With producer Daniel Rey (Ramones, Masters Of Reality) at the helm, Nashville Pussy has kicked out their most cohesive and varied record to date.  Blaine Cartwright took a few minutes before hitting the stage at a recent stop in Cleveland, Ohio to chat with From Out Of Nowhere reporter Rob Kern about their latest cd Get Some!

FOON: First things first, let’s talk about the new release Get Some! 

Blaine Cartwright: All right, yeah! I like it a lot! (laughs)  It turned out really good.

FOON: How was it working with Daniel Rey (producer)? 

BC: A fucking revelation, a total godsend.  He helped write some songs, helped arrange and put little parts of songs together and he kept everything in order.  It was all positive; we’ll probably do another cd with him.  It was really cool.

FOON: The tune “Lazy White Boy” is my anthem right now. 

BC: You like that! I like that song too.  I was trying to write a song for people like myself.  Everyone says, “You’re not lazy…” and I say, “Yeah I am, you just don’t know me very well.”  Before you got here, I was sitting there watching baseball and drinking Coca-Cola, that’s basically what I do when I’m sitting at home.  On the road I work hard but, at heart, if I had my choice I’d be a lazy white boy.

FOON: I’ll throw a couple of more songs from the new one out; tell me a little about “Hate And Whiskey.” 

BC: I wrote that little riff in a Tokyo airport.  I was there for ten hours and I was just kind of bummed out, sitting there bored out of my skull and things weren’t like I wanted them to be and shit.  I usually have a pretty good life, so for me to write a sad song or something like that I have to savor those moments and remember how I felt.  Especially the lyrics on this one, I felt like this has gotta be like a southern-Bruce Springsteen song, like a big angst thing, which I don’t do a lot of.  Daniel (Rey) and I had a lot of discussions about that song; it took a long time to get the words together and the title.  I didn’t even know what to even sing about but it came together really good.  Some of those words were almost on the spot; I think the last verse I made up on the spot.  Not right on the spot but close enough to it, I was sitting there going, “Oh, I’ll get it…” and then going back and writing some more shit down.

FOON: “Hell Ain’t What It Used To Be” is a pretty tongue in cheek but at the same time it has a bit of a message to it.  I hate say almost political but more of a cautionary type tale of where things are going. 

BC: I thought it was more of trying to be funny about it, it seems like “hell” is getting kind of being overused and evil’s not quite as exciting as it once was.  Kinda like an old man going “Hell was a lot crazier when I was a kid…” I thought it was a cool phrase and I couldn’t really think of what to say, so I thought about me telling the devil I’m not coming to hell anymore ‘cause it’s kind of boring.

FOON: You’ve got a new bass player this time around, how did you guys hook up with Karen Cuda? 

BC: We had a nationwide search and we had a friend who came up with a list of names and he had some of the same ones I did and I was about to start calling people and he said, “No don’t call anyone, you’ve gotta call Karen Cuda.  She’s in a band called Hemi Cuda. She’s perfect for you guys, she’ll fit in image wise, musicianship, personality…” She’s working out really well.

FOON: You guys took a little time off after the tour for Say Something Nasty.  You scored a new label, new management right? 

BC: Yeah, the manager was someone we’ve known for awhile and he booked us in Canada and we were friends and he saw us go through so many assholes… He said, “Let me manage you guys.”  The new label (Spitfire) seems good too.  It’s not a bad thing; it’s better than being on our old label where they didn’t want you around. 

FOON: When Nashville Pussy was on break you went out with Nine Pound Hammer, is it easy switching hats between bands? 

BC: It’s really, really easy.  All I have to do in Nine Pound Hammer is play guitar.  I gotta write some songs but all I have to do other than that is play the guitar, which is pretty easy.

FOON: On the tune “Raisin’ Hell Again” Rick Richards sits in on guitar.  How did you hook up with him? 

BC: Rick is an old friend of ours; we practiced across the hall from the Georgia Satellites.  I got know him because he’s a huge Nine Pound Hammer fan and his girlfriend was always trying to get him to do something with Nashville Pussy.  So we said we’ve got the best slide guitar player in the world, Rick, right across the fucking hall, we need to get him to do something on the new record.  He drank like four or five shots of Jagermeister and did like five or six complete solos.  He heard the song for the first time, sat down, played along with it and said, “I’m ready.”  He did five or six amazing solos, I was there for all of them it was great.  It was fucking great.

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