BCR: Okay, fair enough! Bit of a change of subject- you've just been on tour with Hank Williams III. How'd that go?
JIM GOAD: Shelton Hank Williams is a fine individual, I love that guy- he was under no obligation to ask me to do that tour, and he offered me a great opportunity. When I was a kid I had aspirations of being an actor, there was some theatrical... unfulfilled wannabe thespian thing going on there. We were on tour for 35 days, we did 28 cities across the United States. On a typical day we'd just wake up on someone's hard floor after two hours of sleep, and have to drive... I'm trying to convert into kilometres... about 800, 900 kilometres to the next gig, under blistering... I mean, it doesn't usually get that hot in the UK in the summertime, but the American South and the southwest, like Texas and Arkansas, just blazing, ungodly fucking heat! Seven of us in the van, not air-conditioned, going these ridiculous distances between gigs every day. Then you get there, you do your soundcheck, you hear them do their soundcheck for three hours, then you play for 45 minutes, which is the highlight of the day. Amazingly, with no experience- the crowd liked us! And then you have to sell merch for three hours with blisteringly loud music in the background, surrounded by drunks. And I don't drink. I haven't had a sip of alcohol for going on 26 years now, April will be 26 years since I touched any alcohol, so just the rigours of it and just being surrounded by dopey drunks all the time was horrible.
BCR: But the actual playing was good?
JIM GOAD: Yeah! That was the best part. It was really no tension. It was weird. I figured I'd have stage fright. We were playing some relatively big halls- Cain's Ballroom, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one of the first places where the Sex Pistols played when they came to America- that's 2,000 capacity, and you're looking all the way to the front door and it's jammed... it was fun! They liked us!
BCR: So would you do it again?
JIM GOAD: (Laughs) No.
BCR: Just a one-off experience, then?
JIM GOAD: I wrote a piece about it over on the Hank Williams III message board, they called me whiny, I was like, well fuck, guys, you've lived your whole lives with your guitar and your bass and you say this is rewarding, but I'm telling you it's not! It was horrible, so grinding... truly unrewarding. And then trying to corral a bunch of guys most of whom did drink, like where the hell are the seven of us gonna stay tonight, with three hours between now and when we have to get up and leave for the next gig... awful!
BCR: Yeah, that doesn't sound fun, actually.
JIM GOAD: And again, I'm not sure what kind of metaphor to use other than alcohol, but when you don't drink, drunks are just about the most annoying thing on earth. What are you celebrating? Why are you so happy? Look at your life! What is there to celebrate? Most of them aren't celebrating, they're escaping! You get the sentimental ones, and you get the belligerent ones. I had to shove a few belligerent ones, and try to deflect the sentimental ones! But I love the old country music, and it was pretty much like karaoke or like being an Elvis impersonator or something, because we didn't do one original song. I don't think we even approached the quality of the originals. I'm out here doing these Dave Dudley and Red Sovine and Dick Curless songs...
BCR: To be honest, it sounds brilliant. I wish I could have seen it.
JIM GOAD: It was just one of those things where... do you know who George Plimpton was? He was a Yale graduate, who did a book called Paper Lion, where he- football means a different thing in the UK, but the national sport here besides baseball is a different brand of football, the Detroit Lions are a football team, and he was a skinny Yale graduate who decided he was gonna be a Detroit Lion. He played in one set of downs or something, and nearly got his neck taken off. That's what I felt like I was doing. It was like performance art. I'm not a fucking musician, I hate musicians! That's the problem with doing music, you've got to deal with musicians! A pathetic lot, pretty much, musicians. I don't see much glory there. And I'd lived nearly a year and a half in rural Pennsylvania in the rented house of one Legs McNeil- do you know who that is? He did a magazine back in the 70s called Punk in New York, and takes credit for inventing the term “punk rock”, although there's pretty conclusive evidence that he didn't. But this was a guy who... what's worse than someone who acts like a rock star but isn't a musician? If he's what it's all about, and the people he knew, then... these are people who don't function! I wind up sounding like a parent teacher organisation or hall monitor from the 50s, talking about how rock and roll is the devil's work, but... these people are just so fucked up! I guess what I value is people you can... show me what you've produced! Show me something you can put your hands on! What do you have to show for it? So many of these counter-cultural types are just people who fail to function on any kind of level.
BCR: Okay, well one last question, cos I can hear my dog getting antsy in the next room...
JIM GOAD: What kind of dog have you got?
BCR: She's a lab cross...
JIM GOAD: A labrador?
BCR: Yeah.
JIM GOAD: I've got my gay little pug here...
BCR: You still got your pug? I always like reading about your pug on jimgoad.net...
JIM GOAD: (laughs) There was a three month segment of my life a few years ago when all I did was raise her nine puppies until they were old enough to sell... I'm just crazy about her!
BCR: Last question- you've said you don't fall anywhere on the political spectrum, so this is the obvious stupid political question. Who would you like to see in the White House next year?
JIM GOAD: My theory, and it's not very popular, or a theory that's really been heard much, is that the president is not much different than a monarch. I mean, I really doubt that any American president sets much in the way of policy or makes any real decisions that have any effect on anyone's daily life. The true leader of the pack, the Capo di Tutti Capi or whatever, the Mafia head, is the head of the Federal Reserve, which is a private group of bankers, because they're Federal they have nothing to do with the government. They print money, they print a thousand dollars and hand it out, they print a thousand pieces of paper and expect eleven hundred back. And that's what causes inflation. If you got rid of the Federal Reserve, you could end homelessness and most of the problems that are caused by economic inequity. But anyway, I think the President's role is to make people feel better, to inspire confidence. Someone who's engaging... you don't look at this person on the television and say oh fuck, world war III is coming, it's all over... and I think Hilary Clinton is too fucked up to head the country! She's a scorned woman, she's someone who was publicly humiliated because she was probably a little too old and a little too bitchy to satisfy her husband, and there's a coldness that that woman radiates that I think would be dangerous and detrimental. Obama has charisma, on the Republican side Huckabee has charisma, but as far as their policies go, I don't really care. Either one of those guys would be fine because they're folksy and they radiate charm. Clinton was a good president, and Ronald Reagan was a good president. Diametrically opposed as their policies were, they were charismatic people. Who else is there? Romney is just a cyborg, John McCain, who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison, that's kinda tough, but he's way too fucking old, he's in his seventies now, he would be the oldest president ever to be elected. But I hope they elect someone who has just a scrap of personality. I really do think they're symbolic, I really don't think they influence much.
