Here is the long awaited Part II of the West interview.
Schmidty: How did you become involved in production and moving forward how big a portion of your musical career do you see production becoming?
West: That’s been a lot more in the past five years, I didn’t set out you know to make records, I just cuz I didn’t have enough money to make records for other people, I didn’t have enough money to make records in proper studios, I always had to, everything was always on a low budget, so I said why don’t you do this sort of semi BIY(?) thing and I learned how to make records cheaply and then people started coming to me asking “How do you make a cheap record?” then people started asking me if I would help them make a cheap record and then I started accumulating little bits of gear where I could actually make a cheap record for them and then I learned how to make slightly less cheap records and accumulated more gear and suddenly it’s like I have a studio in my house which is just being made piece by piece and I’ve been doing a lot of that whenever I’m home, it’s part of why it’s an 18 hour a day too, it take two of us now, where as during the day I would do all of the booking and logistics, now when I’m at home I’m usually in the studio for eight or nine hours and then I go to my gig so Katie has to do all the booking and paperwork and business of the band because suddenly there is just not enough hours in the day.
Schmidty: Do artists approach you or do you find talent?
West: Artists approach me and I look out for songs that I like. You hear somebody that like to do something you put it out there and you just say you know if you ever think about if you think it might be fun to do a record and sometimes three years later they ask you to do the record. When you hear songs and good songwriters it’s exciting, it’s good stuff.
Schmidty: What’s the largest crowd you have ever played in front of? Details.
West: 6,000
Schmidty: Where at?
West: Berlin, yeah we landed at Hafenaur(?), we traveled all that way, we flew over there and played a half hour show in front of 6,000 people and then flew home. That was last year. It was bizarre, weird, we were the opening act for this big band.
Schmidty: Besides shooting out both of Mike’s tires what else has sneaky Pete done?
West: Ha, ha . he has done very many things, he was actually editor of, managing editor of Fangoria magazine, have you ever heard of that?
Schmidty: Absolutely
West: He worked on details for rock-n-roll magazines, interviewed tom waits and published it, he’s had a big career as a new york publishing guy and he gave it all up to come to the south and write novels and ended up as a musician.
Schmidty: How many tattoos do you have? Do you have a philosophy . .
West: I don’t have tattoos, Katie has tattoos and
Schmidty: Oh that question was for her I’m sorry do you want to answer for her?
West: Well she’s got a lot and she’s about to get one more, she hasn’t had any for a long time and she’s thinking of getting one of those day of the dead, dancing skeletons the ones playing the banjo.
Schmidty: So did she have any philosophy . . .
West: I don’t know, She does have her reasons, I don’t know what they are, Every tattoo, she talks about it being like a notebook, like a journal
Schmidty: Are you a U.S. citizen?
West: I am
Schmidty: You are, so do you have to pay taxes?
West: I pay taxes
Schmidty: You have to keep track of all your albums?
West: I do, I have a little sheet out there, I write everything down, I do pay taxes, I always have, because I’m an immigrant I was always very particular about that.
Schmidty: So do you still maintain your citizenship with both England and . . .
West: I have a British passport
Schmidty: What about Australia?
West: I could if I ever wanted to move back there but
Schmidty: Is it like America if your born there then you’re a citizen for life?
West: ah, they’ll take away your, they don’t accept other people having multiple nationalities, America doesn’t really have a problem with it, they just don’t recognize any other nationalities. Australia if they find you’ve got other nationalities they will actually take your nationality away from you whereas America just like “I don’t care if you have a British passport, you can trash it, you can keep it as a momento, you can use it in England, but here it doesn’t mean anything. Australia takes the view that you shouldn’t have one of those we’ll take it and Britian doesn’t care so
Schmidty: I have a few Stage 7 questions, the first is, I don’t know if your aware or not, but the Winfield powers that be are kind of down on us because we appear to be taking to much attention away from their whatever so they are charging us, so they want us to start negotiations with them to be an official entity of the walnut valley pecan grove whatever, we have mixed emotions about that we think what we’re gonna do now is just raise the money independently and pay for whatever campgrounds they say we got to have. That being done, your still gonna come play on our stage right?
West: Absolutely, Absolutely, Absolutely I think it was a good idea this year to ask people for donations, to keep it up because it’s a big part of the reason we go.
Schmidty: You got any questions for me?
West: Yeah, when are you gonna come over and play banjo with me?
Well folks that’s it for the West interview. It was very difficult due to background noise and Mike’s unique accent to transcribe, I am sure there are a few mistakes but I hope I came as close as possible to getting everything correct. I personally think Mike is one of the strongest songwriters that I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting and we are all very lucky that he graces us with his presence every year. Keep an eye out for the new Truckstop Honeymoon c.d. and look for mike to come rambling around your town soon.
Schmidty – peace out muthas