Interview with Ginger Wildheart: Once a Wildheart, Always a Wildheart

Ginger Wildheart likes being busy, not just normal nine to five busy but “How the f**k am I going to fit it all in” busy. He’s just about to release his brand new solo album, the superlative Country/Folk infused ‘Ghost In The Tanglewood’ before heading out on a run of headline and support shows. In-between these dates he’s writing a brand new Wildhearts album and rehearsing for their up and coming ‘Brit-Rock Must be Destroyed Tour’ when they will hit the road with both Terrorvision and Reef for a run of co-headlining shows. The Wildhearts have also been confirmed for Rebellion and Steelhouse Festivals while Ginger is playing solo sets at both The Stone Free and Beautiful Days festivals, and breath…But wait, there’s more…

Originalrock.net’s Guy Shankland caught up with a cheerful Ginger Wildheart to discuss all the above and a whole lot more, including a bunch of questions directly from the ‘All Things WILDHEARTS (The Original Family)’ Facebook page. Where he was cross-examined with a plethora hard-hitting journalistic, spill the beans questions, such as…..Jaffa Cakes or Jammy Dodgers?

GW. I’ve been great, nice and busy. I like being busy. The older I get the busier I like to be, I like to play hard and rest hard. I like to rest like it’s an Olympic sport.

GW. Sonically their from different ends of the spectrum but they both came from the same place. There was just a real need for pathological honesty really. It was at a time when I had no real need for fantasy, I like a bit of fantasy even in songs that don’t sound like that they’ve got a bit of fantasy in them, I like to have a certain amount of control of the amount of humour or bad taste in there. Mutation and GITT both came from a real, almost exhausted place where I really wanted complete honesty. At my age, you get to that point where you just will really settle for nothing less.

GW. Yeah, very much so. I’ve always liked that sort of music and it seemed like it was time to do something that was a bit more like the music I listened to. I don’t know how surprised anyone would be to find out that I don’t actually listen to music that sounds like The Wildhearts. When people send me Bandcamp or Soundcloud pages of their bands if it sounds anything like The Wildhearts I instantly turn it off I can’t stand it. I listen to really extreme music, thoughtful relaxing Country music, it was just time to do it that rather than just talk about always wanting to do it.

GW. Not really, even since ‘Geordie In Wonderland’ I’ve been messing with this sort of stuff, sometimes I end up sticking a few too many guitars on there and it ends up sounding like a different kind of song. It was a conscious effort to do something that was stripped down and allowing the vocals to be heard. I’ve been messing about with this sort of formula since I started writing really.

GW. I just got involved with a new manager Andy Farrow who was involved with Devin Townsend as well. I looked at Devin’s schedule and then someone like Frank Turner and I just said, “look mate all I really want is for you to make me obscenely busy.” He said, “careful what you wish for, cause that’s what I do”. And he is, he’s keeping me out there. The older you get the more you want to prove you can keep it up, so to speak. You want your schedule to get even more intense, in a bid to keep age away from the door.

GW. Yeah, it’s great. Don’t get me wrong it’s great to play in front of your people and they know all the words, it makes everything a lot easier. But that thrill of being a brand new band and knowing who you were and every night was just kind of proving it again. I don’t if there’s a musician who wouldn’t be lying if they said they didn’t miss that time that was a lot more innocent and it was just you against the world. People like me don’t just miss things, we take steps to go and recreate them. So going out to a crowd like the Levellers crowd for example, who are very much like The Wildhearts audience, and there’s a lot of them who haven’t got a fucking clue who I am. So it’s my job to let them know and say, you’re in good hands get onboard with this, and that’s really what we all set out to do in the first place.

GW. Yeah, it’s really exciting, typical of anything I do, I don’t like to approach it in the traditional way. So me and Jase went away and recorded backing tracks for everything. We re-arranged the instrumentation on a lot of songs and we’re going to play with these backing tracks. They’re not backing tracks with orchestra’s and choirs and things on they’re just backing tracks to make it sound less like a traditional acoustic performance. To be honest acoustic performances bore the fucking shit out of me and I’ve convinced myself it bores the shit out of the audience, I know it’s not true but I can’t get it out of my head. I never want to approach anything in the traditional manner.

GW. (cutting in) It’s gone mental, I was just doing an interview with Gary from Reef and Tony from Terrorvision yesterday and it’s been extended, we’re going to Australia with it, then The Wildhearts have got gigs in Japan. Hopefully then in September, we’re going to be recording the new album. It’s been funny writing the songs, we got together last weekend to rehearse the songs for the new album. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit apprehensive but it was really like putting your oldest most comfortable pair of shoes on and going out dancing. It really is like knowing exactly what buttons to push and when we are arranging the songs we know exactly what we don’t do because unlike anything else any of us do, we can all hear The Wildhearts in our head. When you’re learning a song from the ground up you can hear the production in your head because we know what we sound like. It’s like having sex with your missus and I didn’t think I would find that kind of familiarity as comforting as I did and that goes for the rest of the band as well. We were all surprised at how much affection we’ve got for this, us fucking miscreants. It’s not just the band obviously, we don’t just think of The Wildhearts as a band, but this ridiculously involving community that does all sorts of incredible things for each other. That makes you go “suck those stomachs in lads this has gotta be good.” Danny practising on his false leg now, you know we’re really taking this seriously because we don’t want to let the fans down, they’ve been very loyal. Again that comfort is strange in itself but it’s a lovely feeling. We’re a good band, I know a lot of people say it but I’m the first to forget it, how good we actually sound together,(pausing) it’s going to be great to remind people.

GW. You certainly can’t have, not we ever had much of it, but you can’t have an ego when one of the team is fallen. It certainly puts your own problems into perspective and also it’s a timing thing. If ever we needed reminding how amazing this community thing is, you now once a Wildheart always a Wildheart, Scott will always be a Wildheart. For the fans to say “Fucking right he is” it made us all realise like I said that we’re not messing about here. This is a bunch of people that can and do change peoples lives. We don’t want to be giving them any old shit you know.

(For more information and how to donate to Scott Sorry please check out www.gofundme.com/scottsorry)

GW. (laughing) The album title will be the last thing we come up with it always is. We’ve got six songs written, plus I’ve got enough ideas in my head for another eight or nine. Five songs have been rehearsed to a demo standard. The next time we get together we’ll do another three or four songs and the next time after that we’ll do another five. That’ll be enough to do demos of the album. It’s great there are five songs here which are all a little bit different from each other and I know it’s an easy sales pitch but whatever you like about The Wildhearts we definitely touch in these five songs alone and we’re barely halfway through the album. It’s a fun group, there are not a lot of other groups that have elements of The Damned and the Pistols and Motorhead, Ramones and then just getting away with putting a little bit Seventies classic heavy Rock in there and a little bit (laughing) of fucking ABBA! It’s insane, I certainly don’t know another band that can do that and make it sound…cool.

GW. Yeah, fucking Eugene (Butcher VLR Editor) he said: “Why don’t you host it?”. You can’t turn that down, it’s my favourite magazine in the shops. I don’t know if anyone going to be able to understand my accent (Geordie), you think they would have got Captain Sensible to do it. The thing about is I’m such a fan of Punk, I’m not going to go up there with loads of punch lines and try and be a stand-up comedian. I’m actually going to be in reverent of all of the people there, getting awards, mentioned. (pausing) I’m not a big fan of music awards, I’m not a big fan of getting awards for music really, but Punk and all the stuff that’s featured in Vive Le Rock, you’d do anything to keep that alive. I’m obviously very honoured, a little bit nervous, I don’t know if apprehensive is the right word, but its just like, fucking hell I don’t have a clue what it’s going to be like. At least everyone will know I should be up there, I’m not going to be like some guy who’s doing it for the paycheck. I think my passion for the genre is going to shine through whatever holes there are in my performance (laughing).

GW. You know what you’ve just got to say yes to everything. When we said yes to doing Mutation shows and we pulled those off, I don’t think there’s anything in the world to fear.

(Find all the details on the VLR awards including tickets, live performers and how to vote check https://originalrock.net/2018/02/01/vive-le-rock-set-awards-show/

THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ARE FROM THE ‘ALL THING WILDHEARTS’ FACEBOOK PAGE…Ginger was happy to answer these, I think.

GW. Ummm, aarghhh… This is not the best one, it’s just the one that comes to mind, was ‘And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’ in New York. It was so good I just got fucking steaming drunk, ended up having a fight in the crowd. I got so wrecked I ended up going to AA the next day and got sober for a year and a half. It’s the only gig I’ve ever been to that sobered me up for a year and a half.

GW. Imani Coppola, I’ve said this a few times and every time I say it she gets in touch and goes “c’mon lets do it”. I’d love to work with Imani Coppola but under the right circumstances, if there was a reason for it or we both had enough time off to go, lets experiment lets see what happens when you’ve got two people from slightly different sides of the spectrum, but with a love for oddball Pop, I guess. There’s a lot of voices I’d love to write songs for, some of the greatest singers in the world I’m proud to be a fan of. As an overall rewarding experience, I think Imani Coppola would be quite exciting.

GW. I’ve got the point in my life where I never, ever ever ever say never. I’m certainly not in a hurry for it cause I’ve got the solo thing to be doing, I’ve got The Wildhearts to be doing but every time I hang out with Toshi, Ai and The Rev, it’s great you know. I mean Cat became our de facto singer really. For me really the band was created as a vehicle for me and Victoria and when that didn’t end up so well Hollis was a natural replacement. And when that didn’t work out too well I was just like, you know what somethings trying to tap me on the shoulder here. Sometimes I’m as stubborn as can be but I think there are enough warning signs to signal the universe is going “ It doesn’t fucking work, it’s a lot of fun but it doesn’t work.” Mutation’s pretty much the same thing, that kind of ended up being an unpleasant experience. There’s a difference between hard work and working really hard, Hey! Hello! Is just hard work.

GW. Not least from me and the band members themselves, we’re certainly not finished with it. Everything apart from the singers we’ve had has been really good in that band, just don’t get anymore blonde American female singers involved.

GW. I’ve usually got a reason to write, so I would say that I write for specific projects. I’m pretty hard on myself when I write. I get up early in the morning, make a pot of coffee and get working in the mornings and then edit it all and make a rough recording in the afternoon. So it’s got to be part of an overall package, for example doing The Wildhearts stuff, it’s reason to structure your day like that, you do want to get great results. I’m not really noodleer, I don’t sit with my guitar and mess around I tend to get going.

GW. Yeah, and then you can get loads of little ideas and I stick them down on me phone. I’ve got tons of little ideas and bits and pieces on the phone, should I ever need them. As for completing a song, yes it’s got to be for something.

GW. No, no I was shit at it because I travelled so much, it was so hard to be Vegan and not eat chips all the time. I started putting on loads of weight and I was like you know what I can’t go out like this. So I went back to being Veggie and because I tend to exercise a lot when I’m getting in shape to go on tour, I ended up eating fish because of the omegas, protein, so yes I’m a shit vegetarian!

OR. So is it fish now and no meat or is it everything now?

GW. No, no meat. I don’t eat any seafood that’s smarter than my dog. I don’t eat squid and things like that.

GW. Jesus Christ, there’s been loads. I don’t know, I think the ’Suckerpunch’ E.P was one that really went well. That was a strange one it really felt like we were on a roll doing that one. Plus the fact I need a rhyme for ‘29 X The Pain’ and Kurt Cobain died and I went “Kurt Cobain rhymes with 29 X The Pain, that’s fucking weird.” And 29 was of the most enduring songs I’ve ever written, so yes the Suckerpunch E.P is the one I’m fondest of.

FB. Your favorite film soundtrack?

GW. Rocky Horror Picture Show.

GW. Jaffa Cakes.

GW. Never say never but I can’t see why we would. If someone says here’s a massive cheque to play it in its entirety then I might re-assess the answer, but I can’t see what the point is, to be honest. We did a few Fishing For Luckies gigs and my one regret is we didn’t record it for a live album, so maybe that’s something we would do.

GW. If I say yes hopefully it will happen, so yes.

GW. (pauses….)NO (laughing.)

GW. Yes, me and CJ are going to do one. We’re going to do The Wildhearts songs that aren’t in the set. We’ll probably turn up, not know what we’re going to play and just take requests. I was going to do a solo set, but I thought you know what I want to create the same atmosphere as we did last time I did an acoustic set there. It was just fucking mental in that little pub, so yeah me and CJ will do an acoustic set.

Ginger’s new single ‘Paying It Forward’ will be released on February 16th while his excellent ‘Ghost In The Tanglewood’ album is out on March 2nd via Graphite Records.

For up to the minute Ginger news and (constantly added) tour dates check out his website www.gingerwildheart.net