Part 21 (1/2)

”Then get one,” he said.

I thought about this for a few days. On the one hand, it seemed easy. I had been writing about music and people who make it all my adult life, off and on. So I knew loads of musicians. On the other hand, it seemed an incredibly awkward proposition. I would be asking talented people, possibly with reputations to consider, to line up behind a part-timing parvenu of sorely limited abilities who had clearly taken leave of his senses. Again, I thought advice was required. I mentioned the opportunity of the Albanian trip to another friend of mine, Mike Edwards. I'd known Mike since the early 90s, when he was the singer in Jesus Jones, and I was a writer for Melody Maker Melody Maker: my first visit to the US, and my first MM MM cover story, had involved rendezvousing with Jesus Jones' tour in Salt Lake City in 1991, when they were hovering about the top of the Billboard charts with ”Right Here, Right Now.” cover story, had involved rendezvousing with Jesus Jones' tour in Salt Lake City in 1991, when they were hovering about the top of the Billboard charts with ”Right Here, Right Now.”

”I'll do it,” said Mike, instantly.

I wasn't sure he'd understood. I was asking for tips about recruiting. I wasn't yet recruiting.

”I'll do it,” reiterated Mike.

I was both grateful and astonished, but also struck by a number of potential difficulties, which I thought it best to mention up front. Most obviously, there was Mike's att.i.tude to country music. This fluctuated, judging by our wine-addled debates going back some years, somewhere between hostility and indifference.

”I can learn,” he replied.

Also, he hadn't heard a note of any of my songs. They might all suck.

”I'm sure they'll be fine.”

Plus, and I wasn't sure how to put this, Jesus Jones' mostly electronic pop records, fine though they were, had hardly been all about the lead guitar. And a country lead player, I explained, really had to be able to cut it, especially if he was also carrying a rhythm player like me.

”I'll manage,” said Mike.

Then, you know, there was the fact that Mike had, within living memory, headlined major venues, indoors and outside, in front of a group which sold records by the million, in places people had heard of. This would be a sideman's gig buried down the bill in a band which could scarcely be more obscure in a country which didn't even get around to joining the 20th century until about 2003.

”It'll be fun,” declared Mike. ”And anyway,” he continued, sealing the deal, ”Gen [Matthews, Jesus Jones' original drummer] can play drums, and I've got a mate called Alec who'll play ba.s.s.”

That seemed almost suspiciously easy. I felt able to push my luck. I called Astrid, and asked if she'd like to come to Albania to play piano in my country band, and maybe sing a bit.

”Okay,” she said.

As the band now apparently existed, I needed a name. At the twilight of a long, liberally lubricated evening with another friend, someone mentioned a throwaway gag in a magazine column we'd both recently read (and the author of which, sadly, I have forgotten). Seeking to summon an image evocative of the chaos, hysteria, confusion and general shrieking nonsense that had apparently recently beset his personal life, the writer had likened the vexatious female he was bemoaning to ”a fire in a zoo.” It was cruel and vindictive, certainly, and altogether inexcusable, probably, but it made me laugh at a point at which little else was, and so the last toast hoisted before the waitress started doubting out loud that we had homes to go to was to The Blazing Zoos.

The next few weeks were, probably fortunately, necessarily too busy to ponder the folly of the enterprise. I stayed at Mike's house in Cirencester for a few days while we recorded some more demos. I emailed these to the band along with some MP3s of suggestions of the sort of thing I hoped we might eventually resemble-mostly my alt. country favourites (Old 97's, Robbie Fulks, Corb Lund, Todd Snider, Drive-By Truckers, Ryan Adams, Steve Earle), along with a few old-school throwbacks (Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, David Allan Coe, The Flying Burrito Brothers). After several raucous rehearsals in a reeking bas.e.m.e.nt in East London, we sounded exactly nothing like any of the above-but, I thought, every so often, to the extent that I could concentrate on anything beyond not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up what I was supposed to be doing, we sounded okay. This was entirely due to everybody else: Gen and Alec were an instantly solid rhythm section, requiring no more, respectively, than suggestion of approximate tempo and the ident.i.ty of the key we were aiming for; Astrid was, as I knew anyway, an almost indecently talented piano player, and blessed further with what I maintain is one of the half-dozen loveliest female singing voices ever recorded; and Mike was a revelation, every lick and solo sounding as I'd hoped, if not quite dared believe, that it would.

Our party of six-the band, plus Astrid's guitarist Dan Burke, who would be joining her for her own set at the festival-flew via Ljubljana to Tirana. I had no idea what the rest of them were thinking, and even less of a clue what I thought I was doing. But I clearly felt I was keeping some sort of appointment with destiny. Clearing pa.s.sport control at Mother Teresa Airport, I was genuinely disappointed when the customs officer behind the desk neglected to ask the purpose of my visit. I had been looking forward, with peculiar intensity, to replying ”country singer.”

Outside the airport, we were chivvied aboard a white minivan, whose panelling was extensively and inexplicably decorated with pictures of The Teletubbies: it would have been an undignified vehicle to die in. On the drive down the coast, we played those games that musicians confined to each other's company do: coining, according to a preordained theme, puns based on song t.i.tles. We did geography (”Hungary Like The Wolf,” ”Ice Iceland Baby”). We did London Underground stations (”s.e.xual Ealing Broadway,” ”Solid Gold East Acton,” ”Theydon Bois Of Summer,” ”Rotherhithe Ho Silver Lining,” ”Wouldn't It Be Goodge Street,” ”Paint It Blackfriars,” ”Been Earl's Court Stealing”). We did foodstuffs (”We Could Send Lettuce,” ”I Fall To Pizza”). We did fish (”Hake, Rattle & Roll,” ”I Don't Like Barramundis,” ”Baby You Can Drive My Carp”). We did, briefly, the p.o.r.nographic variant, but only got as far as ”Fisting By The Pool” before Astrid told us all, quite rightly, to shut and/or grow up.

And then was when I noticed we were going too fast. And that's how I got here.