Holly Golightly has come a long way since serving her time with Billy Childish-inspired girl garage group Thee Headcoatees. Since striking out on her own in the mid 90s she has made a name for herself (and what a name!) with a string of solo LPs, featuring an eclectic nostalgic mix of country, blues, soul, and rockabilly, all held together by Holly’s spare instrumentation and trademark smoky twang. 2007 sees the release of You Can’t Buy a Gun When You’re Crying, Holly’s first album with her longstanding bass player Lawyer Dave, together as Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs. Big City Redneck caught up with the duo as they smoked innumerable cigarettes on the back steps of the 100 club before a recent show.
BCR: On this new album it’s all about country music, unusually consistently for a Holly Golightly album. Is that Dave’s influence or is that just what you’re listening to at the moment?
HG: I always write country songs; they just don’t end up being country songs. Usually on an album they’ll be one or two that stick to that formula because that’s how I wanted them to be. But a lot of the stuff that I record with the rest of the band, and their input doesn’t necessarily follow that same formula. Dave does. So it’s a lot easier. It wasn’t particularly intentional it’s just the stuff that we like together. Dave doing stuff on his own is different. I don’t think it’s that different from what I’ve done, it’s just the end product is different .We tried to do it as acoustically as possible, not live, but when we recorded it we didn’t have a drum set and we didn’t really muck about with it.
BCR: Did you do any studio producing?
HG: No, just at home.
Lawyer Dave: It was at our house, just the living situation.
BCR: Probably my favourite thing on the album is the kitchen-sink percussion on Devil Do, how did that come about?
LD: I had a pretty good spot where the piano is on a nice hollow piece of wood and underneath it was the best place to stomp. So where the stomping is I put a pedal and a wash board and pots and pans. Basically just everything that was around the house. I tried it all.
BCR: Are you going to continue in this direction?
HG: What? Nowhere fast? That direction? Yeah, we’d like to pursue that if we can.
LD: I dunno. I would say that it would probably be just like this one. But we’ve no idea what it will happen until we actually do it. Which is pretty much how this record happened.
BCR: So, it’s just sitting around the lounge and picking up pieces of furniture?
