I caught up with Mike at the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette, Louisiana last Thursday before his show. Unfortunately little Vega was having a bout with the stomach flu and Katie had to stay home and play nurse. The Blue Moon is perhaps one of the most unique venues to catch a show anywhere. It is an absolutely beautiful old Victorian home located close to the USL campus. It is a youth hostel for visiting foreign exchange students and travelers. In the backyard there is a large deck/patio area with a little shack that serves as a bar. Mike and I sat down in the kitchen, he brewed us up some herbal tea and we got down to business.

Schmidty: So this is the way we are gonna do it, I'm just gonna read em off, you can pass on any of them you want. The first one is "How are the dancing chinchillas doing?"

West: They are recovering with their monthly mayonnaise treatments to get over their severe burns that come from their very dangerous fire and dance display that they do at selected shows.

Schmidty: That is of course the second question "How many mayonnaise treatments does it take to cure . . .

West: It's about 45 between shows so it is about one every month and a half, but it is pretty spectacular when it happens.

Schmidty: The next question is from Beth Watts, she wants to know if you have a "real job" as opposed to just goofing off playing music?

West: Unfortunately I have a real job, its eighteen hours (a day) and it is playing music. It's an eighteen hour a day job and its, I love it, but you wouldn't do it if I didn't love it. It's like any self-employed thing, to do it you got to hustle hard and long and relentlessly, you know probably like yourself I haven't taken a holiday in ten years. Which, I have no complaints about.

Schmidty: This isn't one of the written questions but kind of a follow up question I have is "Why do you feel that it is so hard for a musician such as yourself to gain big commercial success to where you wouldn't have to work so hard?"

West: It's a different job um . . .

Schmidty: Is it a choice I guess is what I'm saying

West: I think there is choices involved I think people always make it appear like people who have big commercial careers they just like won a lottery ticket and you know some people win lottery tickets a lot of people go into the nuts and bolts and are very pragmatic, they figure out what is required and do the hustle just like any other job you want to get into. So I feel like I have made choices.

Schmidty: I guess I'm asking you if you have passed up a "sell out"

West: No, no one has ever tried to give me lots of money um

Schmidty: Has no one has ever tried to change you?

West: No people have looked at my stuff and they are like "Well I don't know how to make money with this, it's perfectly fun and nice and I like it you know." I got a call once from the head guy at Universal Publishing, it's like one of these national monsterous incorporated because he wanted my records but he was very frank on the phone he just wanted my record because he liked the songs but he couldn't think of a darn thing commercially that he could do with them, but he had just seen like a T.V. show thing that I had done and he was like " I really like your record, your songs, you know can I get some records? This isn't an A and R thing, I don't know what I can do with you, I just deal with commercial country and gospel music and this is a really different kind of job that you do. And that's the way, he was like, "We have all these guys you know that do this job here of making these things and there is a skill to it and there is an art to it and there is a craft to it and there is also just knowing what's required and meeting the requirements. And that's not what you do so uh. . . but I like the songs." It was an interesting call because it was like one of these people that's really hard to get to if your pitching songs and there he was calling me. . but there was no commercial potential in it. I mean he was like " You know I guess some of the funny ones you could sell to like novelty records but I kind of like some of the weird unfunny ones that you do and I wouldn't know what to do with those. "It was like the songs he responded to were it's like the sort of the humor you can. . ah "You know how to make a humorous record ah you know you can sell that." But the stuff that appealed to him was the where it's walking that line between it's sort of funny but it's not really that funny and it's kindof you know whatever it's the murky, dark, that's the appealing part.

Schmidty: It's never crossed your mind to write jingles then?

West: Oh you know I tried for years to be a pop star when I was in England, you know trying to be in a pop band. I always wanted to be on MTV and stuff and . . .

Schmidty: There's a question in here about your music career in Manchester. . .

West: It was a real shift for me, I like did that for years and then I realized that I was still playing music in my late 20's and relative to a British career that was too late and I realized that I still liked playing and then I saw Guy Clark play in a little pub in England you know and who was you know at the time you know whatever a 50 year old guy. I saw Guy Clark and it changed everything he's like this old guy to me he seemed like an old guy and there he was just like playing a guitar and singing songs in a relatively small venue in England, he was doing a British tour, solo and he, it was like the most intense, commanding, authoritative, show I had ever seen. I would go to like these rock-n-roll shows, punk rock shows and stuff and here was this gray haired guy and it totally, I was like "God you know. . ." Suddenly I just wanted to be 50 and writing good songs with authority as best as I could and performing them and then it really shifted the way I approached things because then I wasn't so interested in getting on TV I was more interested in seeing if I could get my 100 dollar guarantee from a bar gig because I realized that I just wanted to make a living doing that and the whole time I played pop music every cent I'd make went straight back into trying to like . . .

Schmidty: What's interesting about the little niche you've worked out for yourself is that you have total autonomy . .

West: Yeah! I love it.

Schmidty: Your in complete control of your entire career, business, life, what have yeah, If you wanna book some shows you book some shows . . .

West: It's just like a cottage industry

Schmidty: And you have a die hard enough fan base in certain spots that they are gonna come find you

West: You're just, You're always, everything has a curve you know an area will be good for awhile and then it will phase out and your always going to be looking for like. . . You don't really get to go "Well that's it. I've carved out the job. It's always got . . . You've always got to be aware that the town that might be good for you for five years, five years later might not be good for you. So you've always got to be like

Schmidty: Flexible . .

West: It's a great big country and there is all these places I've never been. I'm going to Alaska for the first time next week and they have all these people in Alaska and they like music and it's weird the places you reach because of independent radio, public radio stations . . .

Schmidty: I heard that, the other day I was listening to NPR or something, they were giving away the new Truckstop Honeymoon cd

West: Oh they were , wow

Schmidty: What is it, if you made a certain pledge, it was a pledge gift, they were giving it away

West: Ohhhhh

Schmidty: Did you participate in music in school when you were growing up?

West: I learnt . . . I got guitar lessons when I was thirteen. And I you know like my mother tried to make me learn piano and I gave it up, I hated it. And then I got lucky and at thirteen I got this really kick ass, young, hip, slightly scary, authoritarian,classical guitar teacher. Who was a hard ass but he was cool, do you know what I mean?

Schmidty: Yeah I know exactly what you mean.

West: he was like this laid back guy that he was like . . .

Schmidty: You're gonna play this

West: and he wouldn't take crap out of you, and he only taught one thing. He wasn't like - "I'm not gonna teach you how to the play the Beatles or that's great if you want to do that you go do that but I'm gonna teach you Villalobos and I didn't know who Villalobos; and whatever else you want to learn you go learn on your own time, that's good and I'll encourage it but I'm here and your gonna learn this like really exacting technique. He kind of bullied me . . .

Schmidty: So obviously you know how to read music?

West: Well I only read it very badly because I only had this guy for like three years. You know but he lit the fire. I really feel like he lit the fire and then you know when somebody lights the fire and then you do what you will with it. Sometimes it take a certain something or someone comes in and opens the door for you and I feel like that really helped me out but I wasn't in like orchestra and couldn't sing worth a damn. Even when I started writing songs you know people who were being really encouraging were like " You know you might be able to do something with that but don't, don't sing. Find a singer" You know it's like advice I got very early on.

Schmidty: Have you ever heard the quote. You know who Woody Guthrie is obviously and Bob Dylan, I don't know if you've ever heard the quote when Woody Guthrie first saw Bob Dylan he said " I don't know about his songs but he's a great singer!"

West: Yeah? He's right

Schmidty: How do you like your eggs cooked?

West: Ah really intensely scrambled no runny bits

Schmidty: No runny bits at all, can't stand it?

West: No

Schmidty: It seems that many of your songs talk about god, religion, salvation, damnation ,etc. Is this because these topics are traditional to they type of music that you play and sing, or are these topics that are deeply personal to you and thus a source of inspiration when it comes to songwriting?

West: I think that it is a combination of things. I think because I live in, well we all live in areas of the world where, sort of Christianity colors the environment, the politics, the values kind of heavily, both reacting and adhering to you know both ends of it and um that kind of resonated with me because I had you know a moderately strict Christian upbringing and um and so I played with that a little quite a bit the tension there is in that you know. Just saying things. I never really intend to be insulting and sometimes people take offense and I really don't mean to insult people but I do, it is important to me that like when I feel there is an area where I'm not allowed to tread I got to say it.

Schmidty: You call them like you see them. . .

West: And the thing is, It isn't always like, a song isn't like your whole view of something, it's just, it's an aspect. . .

Schmidty: Can I. . .I need to ask you, I like this cuz it makes me think of questions I've thought about asking you before but, You write a lot of songs in character, I've noticed. .

West: Yeah well, Yeah

Schmidty: We were talking about that little niche, you know sometimes I find you'll have just the perfect take on a character and is that how you approach songwriting sometimes? You look at songs through . . .

West: It became, you know like when I first started writing songs it was a teen kind of pop thing, it was all love songs and they were all about me and the government's kinda thing you know and then and then I discovered that interestingly if you just remove yourself and try to tell somebody else's story, you still, everything you profoundly feel is communicated deeper and better somehow. It's a better way of trying to get a handle on your own shit is by listening to what somebody else is saying and then trying to express that. You know somebody tells you a story and your like "I don't know why that story stays with me. I don't know what it is about that story that just seems to ring with me but, you know eventually it will sort of mutate into a song and then the voice of that song is not directly me.

Schmidty: It's kinda what I figured because I hear that in your songs. What song am I thinking of? Snow in New Orleans. There is the story about the kid getting arrested on the corner for playing trombone, not doing what he's told, so is that something you saw and . . .

West: That was just something that happened to a friend of mine's nephew and it was a well known local event among the street musicians, It was actually trombone shorty

Schmidty: Did it just piss ya off enough that you had to write a song about it? Or did it just fit so perfectly. . .

West: Well no that song actually came out of the chorus, which was my neighbor at the time, who was like a guy who told a lot of stories and a guy I owe a whole lot of songs to but he was kinda this guy that was always telling like really bizarre, enflamed, violent, New Orleans stories of all sorts, things that you just couldn't believe, but you knew were true

Schmdity: We got a lot of those guys out on the farm.

West: Yeah I bet, and your like jeez, you know, but then one day he was saying, he was like 50, you know, he had been a bartender and seen a lot of shit but like this sort of look of wonderment came over his eyes and he said "Mike the most extrodinary, the most amazing thing I ever saw was when it snowed, and it actually snowed long enough that it laid on the levy. And he was like, and you know I was raised in England, you know when I was a kid, it used to snow, like, you know, buses used to get buried in the snow, you know whatever, ice everywhere and he's like describing this extrodinary sight, and he pointed to the levee and he said "See how the grass is? That was all white." It was this beautiful simple thing that was just so extrodinary.

Schmidty: When my wife first started teaching down here, you know she teaches first grade and all those poor kids out in the country, you know, probably the same as New Orleans, they'be never been past Loureville, you know for some reason in Louisiana they just refuse to go past their little parish line

West: Oh sure, in Bernard parish it's the same way, people don't go to New Orleans.

Schmidty: So she was telling them all about jack frost and snow and everything and one morning we had an actual frost, boy they were just convinced they had seen jack frost you know because they had seen the footprints their dad had left going out to the car and they thought that was snow. They thought the frost in the grass was actually snow. It's a big deal to southerners I suppose

West: It is.

Schmidty: I got to get some more of these before you gotta go. What are the best things about being a musician? Do you that your musical career is a choice you have made or do you feel as if it is something you almost have to do, like a calling?

West: You are a little bit of a slave to it, you know. I love it and I chose, I choose to do it, the way I do it and I feel that I make a lot of choices . . .

Schmidty: It's not like the priesthood . .

West: There is something about it that like that you go to extremes, I mean you can just look at like, you know last week, me and my wife and our year old kid got packed in a car and drove sixteen hours to Kansas City to play a 150 dollar gig and then onwards, you know, and we do that all the time and sometimes we do two gigs all crammed in a little van and drive to the ends of the world these little venues which you know, whoever is willing to show up, and that's what we do all the time. It's not like this occasional thing and it's kind of extreme. Now it's not an easy way to make a living but it's better than going down a mine and have it slide, but there is a certain extremity to it. There's a lot of times where you are driving between shows and it's a little dangerous and your slapping yourself and your hitting physical limits that are, you're trying not to be a hazard to other people and your walking a bit of a line. When you do it all the time it's a bit like that and it doesn't, on paper you know to anybody who's, but you know for the few hundred dollars your making a day you know your smart enough you could do all these other things. You know you could go to school and learn some things and make some proper money and not have to bust ass so hard

Schmidty: But you lose your autonomy.

West: Yeah you lose the autonomy and once your bit it's really hard. It's a classic hackneyed thing people say "If you've been on the stage and you liked it it's very hard to give it up." There's plenty of people playing music who don't really like being on the stage and it's easier to put that down. But if you get bit by that thing of being a performer, it's like a virus, you never really, what you are is never, that mechanism only works there, the person you are in a performance, that's the only place that you are that, like for me it was like this total switch I discovered when I was 17, you know I was like "Well I'm this whole other thing and this personality, and this confidence, and this authority, is no where else in my life. Every where else I'm this shy, you know, kind of geeky, studious kid, this kind of socially awkward and whatever. Suddenly you put me in a gymnasium full of other kids and I act like I don't even know them and I'm telling them what to do as if it's the most natural thing in the world and you know it was an odd switch to find in your personality and once you've found it, it would be really hard to just be like, it's the only place you can do that. It's like finding this other gear on this car and you're like "oh shit, wow I didn't know it went there" It would be really hard to go back and be like "oh I'll just stick to these lower gears"

That's all for now kiddies, stay tuned for part two when we find out what major magazine Sneaky Pete used to be the managing editor for.