BELGRADE INTERVIEW with Igor Mitic - Nov. 29, 2002

(About your being in the Delta)
The blues are many things to many people. I mean, there's different kinds of blues, you know. There's a sad blues, heroic blues, joking blues, unhappy blues, winning & losing blues, murder blues, loving blues… and there's heavy emotions and conditions in celebrating the blues. So, in Delta blues, you have particular kind of … a sort of spirituality, because it's all about the land. In the Delta, you have a long tracks of flatland by the river. There's not a lot of relief, and lot of this land was cleared for many years for the further cultivation of cotton… you don't have a lot of protection from the elements, you don't have many places to hide, a kind of wide open territory. Everywhere you look, you see evidence of share croppers - the men who are living in the blues, hardworking in the fields, and their hardship shacks. So then, there's a kind of loneliness, a kind of loss, an exploitation in life. Confined to the land, and the plowing & planting & harvesting of the earth, and working all your life for the boss man, there was still time for celebration… however forlorn. Celebrating by picking up a guitar or a banjo or whatever instrument a man could get his hands on… or fashion out of a piece of cane bamboo or a strand of hay baling wire stretched on the side of a barn, if necessary. Blues started as a holler, an utterance, a howl, then became a song... of loving a woman or unlucky in love, of winning a crap shoot, or of loosing money in a fit of gambling, or losing a daughter drowned in a flood, or a husband who was hanged for looking funny at a white woman. There is no limit to the kinds of blues that a man or woman can sing. In a fatal kind of way, there is no escape from the delta and the farming hill country surrounding it. It's difficult to get out of there. You have to drive a long distance, or you have to go out on the road and walk… Men, walking by the road… Many people used to dream to ride the train out of there… And the train became a symbol. And the sound of train became an aural symbol of the blues. Sound of the wheels on the tracks… And the train became of symbol of travel to the unknown… People who worked on the trains were celebrated by the bluesman. Engineers and the brakemen… and it was a good job at those days. If you worked on the railroad, you were part of society, of the new technology, and you went places... to the cities & the bright lights & hot & cold running water & flushing toilets, & you earned enough money for big dice games & smart, pretty city girls… So, the train became a very important symbol of the blues… of escape, of romance.

(question about your first gig and breaking the guitar)
A lot of frustration, a lot of discontent i reckon… I did that because i wanted to express in somekind of public gesture that discontent and frustration, alienation… My feeling of being someone, some trash from Arkansas, being an artist and living on the margins of things, and you know, I had a terrible bourgeoise attitude surrounding me. I got tired of all that bourgeoise thing happening around me in States at that time. I was trying to work as a photographer and artist, & a film maker… i felt thwarted. And I took up a guitar because of frustration.. I was a performer in Jim Dickinson's band… I was a kind of actor & a product of the turbulent sixties. I was a lot on the road and met a lot of people those days… There were mass movements of people going across the country then. And a great part of these times were devoted to rediscovery of the blues... and the celebration of the blues, that happened in 60s. It's just a kind of natural unfolding of things…to be influenced in this way by what was going on around me, and finally this expressions came out. I picked up that $5 Silvertone guitar, & started the "Bourgeoise Blues" by Leadbelly and thought - I'm just gonna give notice to people, you know, I'm gonna destroy some guitar and tell them all, it's sad bourgeoise town, man, like a lot of others... and kiss my ass! And, you know many people noticed this gesture & really adored it. Really like they were thinking the same thing… of doing some kind of spontaneous thing like that, themselves…I hadn't been thinking too much about it... cause I was already kind of living in that kind of anti-art-action way already….

(About "Brasil" cover)
…The marching drummers of Napoleon Strickland's cane fife band play on it. Shewolf was in that band at the time. And later I've done some good stuff with Shewolf, you know… I put her on a record compilation, too. "Swamp Surfing in Memphis". But she was one of the drummers on that song "Brasil" and "Bourgeoise Blues"… That was a wild recording session for the "Behind the Magnolia Curtain" album… really wild.

…(Question was, is it hard for you to find musicians who are gonna understand your ideas…)
Well, They can be difficult to find… Fortunately, I've got some pretty good luck. Not always, but I had good luck sometimes, and I have been able to remind myself of this when listening to the good musicians whom i've had to privilege to work with. It takes a special individual to play in the Panther Burns. You can't just plug in a musician into this music. It's not possible… It takes more of an artist than a musician; to play this music is a hard work for musicians, but it is easy for an artist. I would rather work with someone who's got more of a philosophical orientation, than sheer musical virtuosity to display in the band. Hot musicians, jazz people, good rock players, good blues players, yea, but it takes more than a good player… something ineffable.

(About your living in Europe)
Well, I lived in the States a long time, you know… I like a cross cultural kind of environment, man. You got so much travelling involved, where I like to draw music from other cultures, and I like to take music from my culture into other parts of the world... and I like that transgressive feeling. It might be easy to stay in Memphis maybe for the rest of my life, and mess around there. I mean, it's not about being more or less successfull - that's not the point. It's just that I have a hunger and an interest in experiencing more... of the aspects of the world. I know Memphis, I know the South, I know America quite well, I've played all over the country. I've spent years down south and now, I'm interested in language, I really like studying another language, you know. I'm interested in the whole idea of how languages developed... I like the way that there are so many languages spoken in Europe & how they have derived from various origins. And it's not that we have less in America, but there is more emphasis on living, on culture, on appreciation in Europe. I'm just saying, for most people, it's part of the social fabric here. In the States we have all of this, but its more like a special groups of people, certain sectors of society are interested in this. In Europe, art is appreciated, I think, by a lot more people from all levels of society, and it is respected, you know…

~tav falco
P.B.F.L.
Panther Burns Forever Lasting

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