Bonnie "Prince" Billy: (who is famously reluctant to be interviewed begins to discuss the unsatisfactory nature of rushed interviews even as I set up my recorder...) ...I feel like somebody should be thinking about how to do it better. How to organise it better, how to generally make this stuff more satisfactory for everybody. But I don't want to think about it. I want to think about making records, and I wish that they thought about it a little more.

Q: It's happened to me quite often recently, only with indie-label artists, though, that they?re quite clearly fed up with this format and they prefer to do a one-off interview every once in a while in a pub, and you just talk.

BPB: I think that's the better way. And I don't understand why the labels don't encourage interviews ever couple of weeks, once every month, and have it be a better interview.

Q: If you have a good conversation, or even a good interview, does it help you to get things more into focus?

BPB: Ideally it does. And oftentimes it does. You know, this time around I tried to enter by mentally preparing myself for becoming totally emotionally destroyed. Because if you prepare yourself for that then it's less likely for it to happen. And to try to enjoy the conversations. And I always learn something from the conversations. It's so unexpected, and it's so jarring, pulling these things from the inside, that can just be really upsetting. Even if it's a positive thing it's still - you ask yourself: "now that I have learned that, what do I do? I wasn?t expecting to have that bit of insight, of information. Am I supposed to just live my life? Hmm - that's interesting!"

Q: What's the most difficult thing - not that I'd want to drag you down! - is it questions about your past, or questions about the music making?

BPB: It's all so surprising and unpredictable that - you know, it's like -it's just the general churning up of ideas and feelings in a very surprising way. Cause you don't know if someone's gonna ask you about the past or someone's gonna ask you about a certain relationship you have with somebody, musically or otherwise. So - you know, here are, you think you know what you're doing in life, and all of a sudden people are throwing all these different things that you probably have questions about as well. And it's a lot of revelation at a given time. And then tomorrow I'm going back to Kentucky and I'll be dealing with people again. Normal people that I deal with on a regular basis. They won't have participated in this process at all. It'll be hard to reconcile this new insight I've been forced to have with my regular contact with people.

Q: Is that why Will Oldham invented Bonnie Prince Billy, so he could step into a role a play out a fantasy, maybe?

BPB: Yeah, a fantasy, and also to have at least some semblance of boundaries, some superficial way in the most confusing moments to be able to just say "this is this part and this is this part". I know then when I'm with family for example and they're talking to Will, I don't have to think: wait a minute, is that the same Will that someone from the audience is shouting something to? No! It's just a simple little superficial device so that my brain doesn't have to work too hard all the time trying to reconcile one reality and the other.

Q: How did "Beware" come into being? What were the circumstances?

BPB: I knew - more than with any other two records - I knew after finishing the last record "Lie Down in the Light" that there would be another record. I knew that because I said to Drag City in the States and Domino over here, I said I wanted to release this Lie Down in the Light record, and I wanted it just to be manufactured and distributed, not promoted. And I knew they don't like that. Understandably. It's understandable why they don't like that. But - my bargaining chip at the time was: I will make another record and you can promote it and do whatever, I even participate and cooperate as much as I can in ways that I normally don't. So right then I knew, OK, I'm gonna make another record. And so I guess probably immediately after finishing that last record I started thinking about - in loose ways, in completely abstract ways - what this next record would be. And maybe even started to write little bits of songs and things like that. You know, as long as a year before - nono. I'm not sure how long. Some time before - making the Beware record. And then I spent a year playing no shows, playing no shows at all, and that allowed me always to think about the record. Rather than thinking "I have to get this group of songs together, this group of musicians to play this way." I could only think about just assembling the songs, writing the songs. At the end of that year I was given a residency at an arts centre out in California. It was kind of a little bit removed, a little bit remote, you know, a little bit isolated. So for the last three months of that year not playing any shows I could sit in isolation and just look at these songs, sing these songs, and write these songs. Which was a unique experience for me. I've never had a time like that. Usually, before recording a record I'll try to go somewhere for a week or two weeks, just to make sure I have all the songs together. But this was the whole - essentially the whole formation of the songs happened in this untouchable environment.

Q: They didn't give you a task? They just said: you be the artist in residence?

BPB: Yeah. It's kind of an amazing Arts Centre where they say: we're not gonna ask you - you don't have to get us a treatment for what you propose, nothing like that, we know that the time you spend here may or may not affect your work, and it may affect it immediately, or it may affect it a long time down the line. The Headlands Centre for the Arts, and it's in the Marin Headlands national sea shore. It is a national preserved wild area that had been former military. It's very close to San Francisco. There's no development on it even though it's potentially one of the most viable real estate in the USA. Because the military had preserved it for military reasons, and then they sold it to the Park Service, and the Park Service decided to leave it with just the old military buildings on it. Otherwise it's wild. It?s great. If you ever get to San Fracisco, just cross the Golden Gate Bridge and take a left, and all of a sudden you're in another world. It's amazing. You're ten minutes from San Francisco. Some people who go there think -"I'm going to this art centre in SF", and for me, I said: SF doesn't exist, even though it's so close. I pretended it wasn't there.

Q: Have you never had the problem that in a beautiful environment you just end up writing kitsch? That?s my problem!

BPB: Ha. Well, I guess I value kitsch. So it wouldn't be a problem for me. I've never understood - it's a little difficult for me to get distance from stuff enough to really call it kitsch, or camp. Like these things that seem to be about - I see what the emotional value is supposed to be in this piece of work, and it's so obvious that I'm not gonna be affected by it. But for some reason my brain doesn't work that way. If someone intended something to have emotional value I usually see that emotional value and I can't get that kind of cynical distance from it in order call it kitsch, or to call it - I like, erm, "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion. I like that very much! Or I like "Starship Troopers"; that Paul Verhoeven Science Fiction adventure movie - I find it emotional and exciting, and everything he wants me to feel, I feel it. Even though he may have some kind of cynical distance. I'm not sure.

Q: Does that worry you? I mean, I?m in tears when I see "Babe"...

BPB: There you go!

Q: And I resent it slightly that someone has this emotional - just pressing a couple of buttons on me, and off I go!

BPB: Nah! I feel kind of overjoyed and grateful that I'm human. Haha. You know, that - also that somebody wanted to do that. At times I don't like Stephen Spielberg, you know, whatever, he's smart, he's talented - I don't like the way he pushes buttons. It seems strange and manipulative and kind of evil. But - "Babe"? I don't have a problem with Babe. And I don't have a problem with Starship Troopers. Cause I feel like there's certain things with certain people like Douglas Sirk or Paul Verhoeven where it feels like they're pushing these buttons, but they're also having an intellectual and political agenda that accompanies the emotional one. So I feel there are a lot of buttons being pushed, you know, overtly and subliminally, and I feel kind of great on that ride. "Babe" as well - right - and "Babe, Pig in the City", right, there's enough craziness in there that you feel like, "OK, I can put my emotions here for an hour, an hour and a half".

Q: Have you read Postcards by Annie Proulx?

BPB: I'v never read it, no.

Q: Throughout that book - of course, it's brilliantly written and all that - but there's this dog that keeps coming in, and you just know this dog will come to grief. And you just know - you bond with this literary dog, and of course the bloody dog does come to grief. I really resented that. In the field of the music that you're playing, isn't there a similar thing? You just know that if you play A minor followed by C it will start a similar mechanism?

BPB: Yeah, well, except that - again, I don't know, I've never read any E. Annie Proulx, I guess I'm highly suspicious of the books just only because of that one movie with Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore. Shipping News. I find both of them very dubious forces in modern cultural media, Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore, I don't trust them at all. And so I feel like, well, if Annie Proulx trusted them with her work, then I'm not sure I trust her. Honestly. I do think - yeah when things are assembled in that way, if they go the way you're expecting them to go, then the person has really let you down, the makers really let you down. In music as well. If the writer and/or performer isn't taking advantage of their unique opportunity to deliver this piece of music - the unique opportunity is to have a relationship with what E minor to C does, but not use it as their - to feel, OK, veering off the course, but knowing that - there's no reason to devalue the power of E minor to C. And to say - but to just use E minor to C for E minor to C is a waste of everybody's time. But still, to have a relationship to it and say, "OK, just so you know this song is beginning likes this, alright, so we understand, we're together on this, OK?" and now that we?re together on this, what do you think about this? What if I go here with this bridge, with this chorus, with this lyric? How do you think about that - because I think that's where I want the song to go. Is that OK with you, the audience?"

Q: So, say, when you're in this Art Centre in San Francisco?

BPB: Outside of San Francisco, haha.

Q: And you have the core of a few lyrics - do you start with a theme? Or does the theme of an album, of a bunch of songs, grow out of the work?

BPB: Yeah. So far I think I have chosen or allowed the theme to be the least controlled aspect of these records. And this was no exception. Like, thinking about other things that I want to orchestrate and control, and theme not necessarily being one of them, and feeling, like, well, the theme will be the most organic aspect of the record, so that - hopeing and trusting that the theme will emerge. And of course something will emerge, otherwise the songs wouldn't go together, and we wouldn't go to the recording studio with this group of songs. Like, with the beginning of a song, saying to myself, erm, that, you know - approaching it like it's a building, a table or a bench or sthg like that.

Q: And the more you progress the more you see the shape of it.

BPB: Yeah, and also imagining that I?m constructing it based on skill and experience, but part of the skill and experience is learning to leave the kind of the theme and the emotion to the subconscious, and figure that I've learned from listening to music and from playing music - my subconscious has learned how words and meter and structure and things like that have a relationship to content. And I'm gonna see if I can continue to let the subconscious recognise that, and I will - my conscious brain will do its part of the work on the song, and then the subconscious brain is gonna do its part of the work, almost as if it's collaborating with somebody completely different, you know. Yeah. So I can sit down - an easy song to talk about would be a song like "You Don't Love Me" on the "Beware" record because it's kind of like a novelty song. Like a kitschy song, kind of. I was definitely trying to - I knew it was becoming a funny song, like George Jones could sing this funny song. Like "The Race is On", or "The King is Gone", one of these George Jones songs. And still, I think I didn't even have to think too hard, to reach too far about the situations I was describing. It was just a matter of turning the situation into something kind of humorous. But not - like all the theme and the content was there and relates to the other songs, but this time I just think: that's not very funny, but this would be, this would be kind of funny, and this rhymes with that, right, and then I have to repeat ? OK I've got these two lines and they've got this meter in this rhyme scheme, so I wanna put that in the second verse also, and then just filling out the form that I created by creating the first verse and the chorus. Then I have a form, and the second part of the song is just filling out the form and not even paying any attention to where the theme is coming from.

Q: Once you've written the first sentence the whole story is basically written, isn't it?

BPB: It's written - but it's important, it's very helpful to have these strange little empirical guide lines rather than saying, "oh, yeah, the whole story's written so I just keep flowing", it's saying like if you're writing a novel and you say: "OK, I wanna have a cliff hanger at the end of each chapter, I want this character to disappear for 2/3ds of the book and then reappear." They're sort of arbitrary rules. They're just these sort of little guide posts to help the mass of potential material find a place.

Q: And rules are there to be broken.

BPB: Exactly - rules are there to be broken.

Q: I'm sorry - I'm really aware of the time, she told me she'd kill me if I didn't finish after 20 minutes!

BPB: She won't kill you. She won't even find you.

Q: At what stage in your song writing career - if you wanna call it that - did you discover your affinity to English Folk music, Richard & Linda Thompson, that kind of stuff?

BPB: Very very very very early. Since I was a young teenager it's always hold a strong attraction.

Q: How did you come across it?

BPB: Radio was never very good in Louisville, so it was public library and used record shops, and used book shops as well, cause you could find - easily half of my exposure in my teenage years to olde worlde songs came from books with just the texts. Just the lyrics. And you could impose or imagine all kinds of melodies for these words. And then there was a huge musical moment for me when I met a guy, a Scottish guy when I was younger, and then I met him again and he was deeply into old and current traditional Scottish and Irish music. And I just sat down with him and I said: "OK, this is what I know about Scottish and Irish music, and I know, I have a sense that I'm not alone and that there's more to it, that more's been going on, and more's going on now with all this kind of music". And he said: "You're right". And I said: "Teach me about it." And he did. That was when I was 17 or 18, and he just made tape after tape and he?d make notes about every artist and every song and every recording that he'd put on the tapes, and it was immensely important for me.

Q: I love that album you did with Harem Scarem.

BPB: Yeah. This guy - that was in 1987 or 88. And as he grew up, he stayed working in music, and eventually was on the Scottish Council for the Arts, and he wrote to me, "would you be interested in doing a tour of Scotland with a Scottish traditional band?" He introduced me to Harem Scarem and vice-versa - the same guy, yeah.

Q: Can I ask one more question? It seems you've delved into film again. A little?

BPB: Very little, yeah. A little. The last time I was in front of a camera was for this Wendy & Lucy movie which was now over a year ago, the shooting.

Q: What possessed you?

BPB: On some level it's the same - it's another kind of collaboration, not too different from, say, writing a song for Candi Staton (which he has done), or singing a song for Björk and Mathew Barney. And in this case it's - someone was calling upon me to use my textual and interpretative skills to help them make their work. So just because somebody asked, and it seemed a pretty vibrant and fertile environment to work in. It was somebody I'd worked with before. I'd written some music, recorded some music for an earlier film of hers. "Old Joy" and now "Wendy and Lucy".

Q: I keep hearing "Wendy and Lisa".

BPB: Yeah, ha, exactly. Maybe that's why she called it Wendy and Lucy.

Q: Well, thank you very much.

BPB: I always think, like, that's one of those sound bites that's programmed into my mind: "Wendy?" "Yes, Lisa?" "Is the water warm?" "Yes, Lisa." "Shall we?" (sings the song). That was my first big concert, seeing the Purple Rain tour with Prince, in Lexington, Kentucky.

Q: Wow, that's not a bad one to start with!

BPB: It's not a bad one to start with, except it was also my first time where I was like: "Big concerts are not that cool!" Too many people, the stage is too far away, and the sound isn't as good as it is when I'm at home listening to the record. A huge arena show, at the very height of Prince's popularity. And so, now when people are talking about, when I see these shows happening, I'm just like: "why?" Why would you go and pretend to see somebody and pretend to hear music in an environment like that? I don't understand that.

Q: On the other hand, a little pub, two people playing really bad Jazz in the corner, but it's got (snaps with fingers).

BPB: Yeah! That's so much nicer!