Seasick Steve
As the veteran bluesman – if not quite veteran vagrant – returns to Cardiff, Buzz chats to Seasick Steve about the wonder of the blues, Beyoncé, and his new album Can U Cook?
So, can you cook?
Uh… I can cook, a little bit. I can take care of myself. Nobody probably’d want to eat my food – but I actually can cook southern cooking. I can make biscuits, and I can make greens really good. I can make, like, unhealthy food pretty good. Soul food. But nothing to write home about.
Do you prefer to record albums in a more analogue way or do you find new engineering tools useful?
I don’t know how to use a computer for anything. But I know how to run a tape machine. And I know how to use microphones, you know? So I’m good at it, I know how to do it. But if they run out of tape, you know, when you can’t get tape anymore, then I quit.
Of all the old bluesmen – John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and all the rest – which one do you look up to the most?
You know, I love Mississippi Fred McDowell and Blind Willie Johnson the most.
What’s this about Jack White and Beyoncé sharing you as an inspiration?
We just played with Jack White in Barcelona this summer. I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He told me a funny story. He was telling me – and I could tell he didn’t want to tell me, either – Beyoncé had called him, she wanted to do this sort of bluesy track. And so she wanted him to make the track. He ended up having a song on her record, too.
So one of the songs on there is Jack’s. But she wanted to do this sort of bluesy song. And she sent it to Jack to make the track. He sent the track back to her. And she goes: “I really like the track, Jack, but can’t you make it a little more Seasick Steve-like?” [laughs] Ohhhhhh, I could tell that he probably didn’t like that! But how she ever heard about me? That’s one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long time.
We heard you nearly got killed by an electric car, which inspired a song on the album?
That song Last Rodeo – it’s very specific – it came to me. I was in a parking lot in Norway and a car hit me, not hard, but it hit me. And it was one of these electric cars. I thought: “Fuck me, I’m going to get killed by an electric car!” And then I went home and wrote Last Rodeo. I just thought “If that’s what the world wants, if they want everything clean and everything perfect, and they don’t want rock bands anymore, I hope I’m gone.
Do you still love playing live?
Yeah. We rock. That’s what we do. Me, Crazy Dan [Magnusson, drummer] and Luther [Dickinson] – the most amazing guitarist you’ll ever see. And I don’t know why – I know, I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but we rock, in our little world, you know, where we are. We rock, and we rock enough that we can make 7, 8000 people think so. So then we must rock. I always use the reflection of the people. Like, if we went out there, and people were like “tsk…” then I would go: “Oops, time to go home. We’re boring.”
What’s the best crowd you ever played for?
Wherever we play, I always just turn it into a bar. I just shrink it in my brain. I’m just like: “Alright everybody!” And I just, I take my arms and I just go “rrrrrrrrrrrrrr”, and I look at the few people up in the front there, and we’re having a party. Cause you can’t see nobody anywhere else anyway, so… But I try to reach around my arms, you know, in my brain. I’m like: “Come on down everybody! Party!” [chuckles] So I try to turn everything into a bar. We rock. That’s what we do!
Seasick Steve, Motorpoint Arena Cardiff, Sun 18 Nov. Tickets: £30. Info: 029 2022 4488 / www.motorpointarenacardiff.co.uk