Beth Ditto: dishing The Gossip

Slovakia | by Ross Purdie22 July 2008

Undoubtedly one of the best new bands to have crossed the Atlantic in recent years, the bass-heavy sound of Arkansas trio The Gossip is possibly the reason why your ears are still ringing with Tinnitus a month after you watched them live.

Unpredictable, outspoken and with a singer who spends more time in her smalls than a swimwear model, we caught up with riotous first lady Beth Ditto at Slovakia's Povoda Festival to chat about the band's new album, superstition and, erm, squeezing a nickel until the buffalo shits…

Virtual Festivals: What are your first impressions of Slovakia?
Beth Ditto: "Beautiful. Everyone's really nice and I’ve learned how to say 'thank you' in Czech and Slovakian, and 'excuse me'. I haven't seen much of the festival yet as we've just got here and we've been driving a bit. It's also the first day of my period, so I'm a bit tired."

VF: Tell us about EXIT Festival last weekend…
BD: "Let me think about that. Oh, in Serbia - amazing. Do you know that festival didn’t have many corporate sponsors?"

VF: The reason there's no real sponsorship is because the festival is trying to fight for the right for Serbs to move around Europe, so it's more of a political thing.
BD: "I didn't know that, I didn't get that much information from the promoter at all. You got the gist that it was a political festival and that it is super community-based and one of the promoters was telling me that when the war was on, he was still putting on punk shows. Bands like Husker Du, well the drummer from Husker Du and his band went over and played – you got the idea, but he didn’t tell me that that was one of the focuses."

VF: I was there and when you played 'Standing In The Way Of Control', that message sort of resonated in terms of what it means to Serbia.
BD: "It was amazing. When you put it in that context it makes sense now, but at the time I'm like – that’s the song everybody knows. But that's a good question. Even behind the scenes [the festival] has a punk ethic."

VF: How does Pohoda compare with EXIT for far?
BD: "This one? Well, I've only been here for 30 minutes and so far it's cooler. I haven't really seen that much so I can't really say. I would try to bullshit you a bit, but I can't."

VF: What can we expect tonight in terms of new songs?
BD: "We're doing five or six new songs. We don't really know what we're gonna call them yet. One of them is called 'Long Distance' or 'Long Gone Distance' at the moment. I don't even know all the words yet. That's the trick – we’re such a live band that all the songs have to be worked out super live. In the basement practising it's not the same. The music is still there, but it's still being worked on. We're working out all the kinks now."

VF: When can we expect a new album?
BD: "A new album? Soon-ish. I can't tell. A lady never tells and I sir, am a lady. I don't know, I'm really superstitious about setting a date and it not happening. I'm really superstitious."

VF: You say you're superstitious, do you have any pre-show rituals?
BD: "No not really, but it's more about jinxing. I don't want to jinx things."

VF: What would jinx a show?
BD: "Well, we'll say things like: 'This is going to be the worst show of all time – the worst show ever.' That's how we don't jinx it. Un-jinxing – does that make sense? Keep low standards and you'll always get what you want and, if you don't, you won't be surprised you didn't. That's kind of our philosophy."

VF: So there are no song titles yet?
BD: "There are song titles, but they might not stay. I don’t want to say and jinx it because they may change. It's too early – it's premature."

VF: Do you prefer playing the new songs or the ones you've been playing for the last couple of years?
BD: "I feel really lucky that people still want to hear the ones I've been writing since I was 17. I'm also the kind of person who can listen to the same record over and over again, all day long and it will never phase me. And every time it's just as exciting as the last time. But now I have more time to improvise and move around and I can just stop singing if I want to but [the band] have to keep doing it. I think it might be more structured than before."

VF: How does this festival season compare with last years? Last year you did loads in the UK and this year you seem to be more about Europe.
BD: "We did quite a big tour of the UK last year because there was just so much stuff to do, but this year we just don't want to wear the UK out. We're doing a lot of places this year that we haven’t done, like Serbia and Slovakia and places like that. But it should be more interesting because we've been coming to England since 2001 or something. So I've been all over there, for years. I think a lot of people have only seen us for the last two years, but we've been going over there forever doing punk festivals and playing clubs like that. But for me, personally, I've seen England a lot and I don't want to wear them out."

VF: Was there any special plan to come to Eastern Europe?
BD: "That has been a goal of mine for a long time, because we've played France and we've done Germany a lot, but I really want to go to Prague, I really want to go to Budapest. We've always wanted to come to Eastern Europe – always. You always see the same stuff all the time and you get a little spoilt because you say: 'Oh yeah, there's the Eiffel Tower, again. Oh Big Ben, again.' And here the hotel we're staying in is a castle and it's unbelievable – it's really beautiful."

VF: Where is your favourite place in Europe?
BD: "I love Berlin, but it depends what you’re talking about. Are we talking about food? Are we talking about people? Or music? I always London and I love Manchester, love it - the people there are hilarious. Glasgow is amazing, but I love Berlin."

VF: What’s so special about Berlin?
BD: "I always think how the Leftbank was for artists, especially for Americans, the Leftbank in Paris was where everybody gathered to make art and all these artists are moving to Berlin because it's cheap and its having this renaissance right now. It's feeling, moving and shaking and giving me this feeling that everybody's doing something really productive even if they're not doing anything. But they can because it’s cheap and people are really excited about things out there, I like that about Berlin."

VF: What were your feelings about your remix album 'Rework It'?
BD: "The thing about the album was that we had this label, and I don't want to talk shit about them, we were ready to move on, we left them, they had the rights to 'Standing In The Way Of Control', so they can do whatever they want with 'Standing In The Way Of Control' and they're just releasing it until it's ran into the ground. It's like, as my mother would say, squeezing the nickel until the buffalo shits – because there is a buffalo on a nickel. I think they're really milking it for what it's worth. We didn't want it to come out, they didn’t even ask us, they just put it out. There is a lot of good remixes on it though, so the plus side is it's really good. They keep calling us and saying: 'Will you come over and promote it?' But it's too late to ask us now; we've already booked our summer. The remixes are great, but the idea…"

VF: Who is your favourite remixer?
BD: "I think as far as live DJing goes I really like people who will just play a song. So Nathan from The Gossip is one of my favourite DJs, honestly. My favourite DJ is a DJ named Beyonda from Portland; she's this amazing dyke DJ. She's phenomenal, she can mix anything but she'll mix Joy Division into a Kitty Wells song, a country song, into the Ramones or something – she's amazing. I always think versatility is really great. I love everything, so when you go and only hear one thing, you're like: 'but what about Huggy Bear? What about listening to Huggy Bear'."

VF: What's happening with your fashion line?
BD: "I'm trying to work on something that's ethically cool. There are a lot of things to work out with that, because it's something I've always wanted to do my whole life."

VF: Is there anything else you're doing aside from The Gossip?
BD: "Well, I'm writing a book, which is a joke."

VF: Is it about you?
BD: "It's about everyone and everything, but mostly about Arkansas. It was completely written and then it had to be scrapped because it wasn't very good. I can’t write the book, so we did five days of ten-hour interviews with somebody else and I guess it's called ghostwriting. But after this summer we have time off so I’m going to actually get more hands on with it and write a lot of it myself."

VF: What's the most sensational element to the book?
BD: "People's preconceived notion of me is so 'why' because they're like: 'What you going to do now?' and I'm like 'I don't know, I thought I might just sit here.' So I think the most sensational part of it is probably going to be the things that we used to do in our childhood to entertain ourselves - there are some bits that are ungodly hilarious. It's going to be funny, I think it's going to be funny."

VF: Have you witnessed your audience change over time?
BD: "Yeah we have a lot. It's been really interesting, I don't ever put ourselves on the same success, whatever that means to you, level as Nirvana, but I do feel a certain kinmanship with Nirvana right now. Especially because they came from the same scene as we came from – the Olympia Riot Grrrl scene – so I think that's where we were coming from and we've seen our audience go from a punk context to a mainstream context. You used to go out and get fucked up dancing and get crazy with people and now it's like they want to go out and grab your tits and it's a really different world. Then you start to understand why performers do things to medicate themselves, like drugs or drink all the time, and I've just had to make the decision to stop drinking. You really feel like you're up against the wall and they say there are three bad apples in every batch and for the most part those bad apples don't make a big difference. I enjoy being heckled, I really like it – I get a lot out of it. Usually by the end of it, if it’s a girl heckler, we usually chat at the end of the show about records or laugh at each other. It's just one nerd being self-conscious making fun out of another nerd being self-conscious."

VF: How was working with Rick Rubin on the live album?
BD: "Rick Rubin is amazing. The live album was interesting because it went a lot differently than we thought it would, but the DVD is the most exciting part. Rick Rubin I really think is going to save the music industry in regards to the major labels. He puts a spirituality and soul and actual love into the music that I don’t think has been there for a really long time. You meet all the label guys and they're really nice, but he invites us into his house and he has these speakers in the room and you sit down and you listen to everything. You talk about records and if there is something that he doesn't know about, he writes it down immediately, he makes lists of things he doesn't know.  He's like a nerd; he's like a 16-year old nerd in high school in this way. But he's really very friendly and very helpful. It's like he found out I'm into tarot and he sent me all this information about psychics and the tarot and sent me loads of books. Then he found out I was really afraid of the dark, so he sent me a book on fear and how to fight my fears. He's really in tune with what he's doing and he really wants to get to know you as a person."

VF: Are you working with him now?
BD: "We've been going to his house and we've had some listening parties, well one actually, but we've been trading information and at this point we're doing it song by song, then we're getting a few producers – we want to have more than one this time, because we’ve never done that. We're hoping that James [Ford] from Simian Mobile Disco will produce a track."

VF: You're known for stripping down during your stage show but you've been more refined in eastern Europe from what we've seen. Has your stage show changed?
BD: "No not really. It's always more of a challenge, which is nice. I hate doing the same thing over and over and over. Don't ever write anything off."