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Twinmusix got to speak to Blaine Cartwright from Nashville Pussy about their upcoming tour and more.
TM - Hi this is Amelia and Elizabeth from Twinmusix and we are here with Blaine from Nashville Pussy, thank you for having this interview with us today we really appreciate it.
BC - Yeah man, where are you from?
TM - We are from Sydney Australia.
BC - Ah Sydney, we will be there soon!
TM - Yes, we are really excited to have you! What can fans expect from your tour?
BC - I don't know, a lot of fun, I come to Australia to have fun, everybody's coming to have a good time
TM - You are also playing at Frankie's are you excited for that?
BC - I'm very excited about that, I think there is a Motörhead tribute band playing before us that I'm going to sing a song with maybe, it sounds like a big party and then playing the crowbar the next night. We are in for two great nights so I'm looking forward to that. Usually in Australia our shows are far apart so we are jumping on an aeroplane every morning, so we are trying to drink and get to know people at night and then the next morning we are back at the airport, I'm sitting and arguing about luggage with flight attendants and arguing whether we can carry a guitar on everyday. I don't like flying at all so it's pretty cool, I think we only have one flight and 5 shows all together. I think the last day will be in Sydney and we have a day off so I'll play the last night of Sydney and then have a hangover day, so we are prepared to have fun.
TM - Nice, making sure you have some electrolytes for your hangover day
TM - What can fans expect from your setlist for Australia?
BC - It will definitely change from the last time we were there, definitely the classic Nashville Pussy stuff. We have our drummer playing with us who was in Rhino Bucket and The Sonics and Lita Ford, his name is Dusty, he's been playing with us for a year and he is badass. We have switched up 7 or 8 songs since we have been to Australia so just greatest hits, I think we have all the basis covered but feel free to yell a song out we might play it we might not. We have an around an hour of rock and roll which is a long time for us sometimes one song goes into the other.
TM - You said you just have a new drummer called Dusty, how is it working with him?
BC - He's great! He came in and saved us when our last drummer had an accident on tour, he came in and helped fill in and he was always my dream drummer. I always wanted to play with Dusty Watson because he was always a badass drummer, he played with Dick Dale and played alot of surf music, he played on Lita Ford's first record, he played AC/DC type stuff with Rhino Bucket he played live Rhino Bucket and Supersuckers, he does everything. He's a rigger, he's got the most crazy rock and roll stories in the world, we will be talking about Dio and he will be like “oh I was in the studio when he was recording Holy Diver we were hanging around to party” and I'll be like “really!?” He will pull out ones from the 70s “I was the drummer for black flag I was their first drummer briefly”, he will just drop those stories and make ours look like shit, we have good rock and roll stories to though his trump ours though
TM - Can you tell us a rock and roll story?
BC - Nashville Pussy opened up for Slayer in Scotland, it was early on and it was a Slayer crowd I think we got paid almost nothing, but we happened to be there and David like “do you want to open for Slayer Slayer? It’s like 2000 people” and we were like “yeah we will do it” and we go up there and it was kind of confrontational, we had just toured with Motörhead before and I said to Lemmy “hey we are playing with slayer in Glasgow Scotland, what do we do to not get people to throw things at us?” and he was like “they are going to throw things at you anyway” and I was like “well that's not good”. It was kind of confrontational at first, and then we won everybody over and Ruyter played the Scottish song and thought we won everybody over, but one person hated us so much that they vomited into a cup and they threw the vomit at the stage and it broke on the drum monitors and splattered everywhere, I guess That's Rock and Roll.
TM - So you just said you had memories with Lemmy that's pretty cool, can you tell us a story with him?
BC - Mainly touring with him, probably about 150 shows all together we started off in 98 I think and to toured a whole bunch and toured again in 2008. We would tour with them for three weeks and then go for a month off, and they would still be on the road. It’s really weird when you were touring, especially with the Golden Days of rock. You think of what backstage is like you think oh my god it's crazy you think I'll that will be nuts, and it's pretty calm a lot of the time, well Motörhead backstage is not calm it's exactly what he thought rock and roll was! I mean every night was sex, drugs, and rock and roll with those guys it was just non-stop. He's a really good guy Lemmy, when Nashville Pussy was playing at the knitting factory in LA and we weren't on tour with them he would always come out and see our show, and we played the knitting factory and there was a couple of thousand people it was packed, if you were standing at the front you could see the audience, you could see us, and then on the side you could see lemmy watching us like a silhouette. He had the door open and you could tell it was him in all black leather, so 1500 people or whatever it was there watching and lemmy watching us. We were so distracted that he was there and he walked back and forth and then afterwards we had some cocaine and we offered Lemmy some but he hated Coke he likes speed, he thought cocaine was a waste of time. so he said do you want some cocaine after the show and we went backstage to the bathroom in 1 by 1 and 4 members of Nashville Pussy snorted cocaine off Lemmys ace of spades necklace it is pretty cool, we have a few stories like that with Lemmy, a lot of stories are just about me and Lemmy sitting around talking about history I think a lot of us would say that he would be a history professor that got in trouble for hitting on young girls. I think that's what he would have done because he was so smart I asked him if he liked American history and he said “America has only been around for a couple of 100 years what history? There's not any history yet”. He was always real quick with an answer like that, we knew him very well sometimes we got into arguments about music and I was a really big fan of glam rock and the 70s because it was really hip when I was 9 or 10 years old, he didn't like that because it was a really cheesy version of hard rock. I remember we got into an arguement about Black Oak Arkansas which he hated and I was talking about how great they were and he put his arms around my throat like he was going to strangle me if I kept talking about it, he was just joking but yeah so we have a lot of great memories of that time.
TM - That's so cool I wish I got to meet him he sounds like an awesome guy.
TM - If you could have any band play one of your songs which band would it be, which song would it be, and would it be in your style or they're Style?
BC - That's a really good question! I would have the Rolling Stones play its off Up the Dosage its called Let's Get It On Before The Drugs Wear Off and I would have it in their style because it is pretty close to that anyway, but it's such a good song we did a good job. It's kind of left field for us that song would of put hip back on the map as far as being hip it's probably not going to happen.
TM - You could ask them
BC - Man they are hard to get to, I just saw them in Atlanta there's 60000 other people to it's not really easy to get their attention. We basically paid $400 to watch a TV screen they were still really good though, Mick was great!
TM - Oh yeah the Rolling Stones are amazing
BC - Yeah when they came to town Mick Jagger came to a lot of landmarks, a famous strip club and stuff and took pictures and stuff during the day it was kind of like hey I'm glad I'm here I came a day early it was very cool. I saw them when I was in high school in 1981, I saw them in Chicago, tickets were $6 to $8 we drove all the way to Chicago on a school night it was a big deal, it was a great great great show it was so good.
TM - What's your favourite memory of watching someone else perform live can you tell us a story?
BC - Probably about 1982 James Brown when I saw him in Kentucky, saw him with me and three other friends we were 18 at the time and we went to Kentucky to see James Brown and we waited backstage for him back in the alley where his car was. I asked him for his autograph and I got to go to the front of the line everyone was going “James! James!” and I said “Mr Brown!” and he was like “what do you need son?” well I didn't know that's what he wanted he didn't want people to say James he wanted people to say Mr Brown so I did not know that at the time but that's why that happened and I said “can I please get your autograph?” and he said “what's your name? God bless you son” then I saw him live with my girlfriend in Kentucky. We were right up front and he comes out and recognises me because there wasn't a lot of 17 year old white boys seeing James Brown back then so he recognises me and points right down in the middle of the song and he said “hey brother!” and pointed at me and I was like ah woo and he totally remembered me man, I was right up front there was only a handful of people right up front so me and my girlfriend were trying to say hi to him between sets and we went back to this dressing room area, we could see there were two or three people working on his hair there it was something kind of religious so we were like we can't interrupt that, I didn't want to interrupt him getting his hair curled so that was probably my favourite moment of seeing someone perform.
TM - That's really cool, is there anything you would like to say to your fans?
BC - Come on out and see us it will be great time! I’ve learned out of life that the best you can expect in success is their love and all that stuff over or have a great time with what you remember it will be a night to remember!
TM - Thank you so much for this interview today we really appreciate it