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Someone even said it to me on this tour and I nearly punched them in the face. They said at
least you’re doing the thing you love.

BiTS: This current album of yours, “Stone By Stone”, which I love. I think it’s absolutely
wonderful, when you’re going out to do the gigs, are you gigging all the tunes off it, or are there
some that you just can’t do?

IS: No, I can do them all. I think I’ve been doing them all, actually.

BiTS: I was just wondering about something like ‘Working On A Building’, which rather
depends on a pretty much strong chorus line, really.

IS: Well, originally, that was solo anyway. There are some friends of mine that are guests on it,
Jimmy and JJ, who live a couple of hours away in Hollywood and they’re great friends and
heroes of mine from a band called The Imperial Crowns, who incidentally never toured the UK
because they didn’t want to lose money [chuckling],
but they toured all over Europe very successfully. But
just having them there, obviously, I wanted to make it
into more of a group thing, but the song stands up on
its own. It is more fun. I threw out my Dutch band at a
gig yesterday. They locked into it, and they did sound
Jimbo Mathus
really good, but it does work alone, yes.
BiTS: With a song like ‘Holler’ as well, you can get the

audience clapping along, I guess.

IS: I guess, yes. Funnily enough, that one was supposed
to have a drummer on it, Stephen Hodges, who plays
on ‘Hand In Hand’, but we couldn’t make it work
timing-wise, so that ended up being a solo. That was
supposed to be with drums, so things happen on the
day.

BiTS: My very favourite song on the entire album is
‘I’m The Shit’, but unfortunately we can’t play it on the
air in this country.

IS: Yes, I didn’t think that through, did I? It had to be that lyric.

BiTS: It’s a truly wonderful song. I love it, but there we are.

IS: It came about because Jimbo Mathus and I were texting each other various lyrics and I said
I’ve got Jimmy and JJ coming in to do ‘Working On A Building’ and they work with Chuck E.
Weiss and Chuck E. Weiss was still alive at that point and so Jimbo started sending me a few of
the lines from ‘I’m The Shit’ and I thought I can’t do much with this. It was just sort of rambling
kind of beat poetry kind of stuff, inspired by Chuck E. Weiss. Anyway, then Chuck died a few
days before recording the album and I thought well, I ought to make something out of his song
and I found random notes in my phone and stuff and I had a line saying I’m the shit that
happened, and I thought that’s a great hook. I can tie all this beat poetry somehow and add my
own stuff and yes, it came together. I wrote to Jimbo, I’m the shit that happens and he wrote

back, the shit that will always be [chuckling], so it all came together. But if Chuck hadn't passed
away, then I would never have put the song together.

BiTS: Tell me something about the song called ‘The Fear’. It sounds very heartfelt. Is that true?