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On her new album "Amnesty for Eve", Beverly Jo Scott has gathered
a wide collection of songs that range from the emotionally charged "Chain
Link Fence"
to the erotico-funk "Mona Lisa Klaxon". Several of the titles were written
in collaboration with her still existing band what makes this project all the
more interesting. We met Beverly and talked about Belgium, politics, religion
and music.
FM: You´re living now in Brussels, why Brussels?
B: Well it just happened to be the first place where I landed in Europe in
1982. We are talking like about 16 years ago. A girlfriend in America was coming
to Belgium and with my vagabond spirit and discontentment with my life in the
United States, I was 21 shit, I thought, I´m going with you. I don´t
know where Belgium is but I´m coming with you. Thus, it could have been
anywhere.
FM: Do you consider Belgium to be your home now?
B: Through the force of things yes, it´s just the way destiny brought
me about, when I first got here I was playing in the street, I didn´t have
any money and I still don´t have it. I´m not a person that has money
and probably never will be. Europe was so terribly different and in the eighties
there was a real boom going on and no one exactly knew what to be, whether they
had to be in the rock scene or in the new wave scene, there was this big shift.
And I was still a street kid I didn´t have the money to get out. When I
had built up a reputation as a singer and was working in clubs and getting out
of the streets, things were happening for me, so why should I leave. I was learning,
it was a total discovery zone when I got here. I had a life actually, that was
what it was. I never actually left Belgium, so yes it became my second home, I
met friends, fell in love with people and moreover from here I can go to anywhere
in Europe where I want to go to. It's such a hubcap.
FM: It´s the middle of the world.
B: Well it is with it´s lack of national identity, it´s been a
goldmine for this small country. They didn´t have this flag waving bullshit
like we had in the US. People would rather go to the café to drink beer
rather than worry about their party. Now, it has changed a bit. But that´s
still the reason why I like to come back, I can be an ex-patriot over here. I
feel comfortable here.
FM: Hasn´t the recent division of Belgium into three communities
had any influence on you?
B: Yeah sure, in conversations the different cultural communities, and don´t
forget the German community since everyone seems to forget them all the time,
I´ve got a great following in German speaking Belgium, they are loyal to
me. But between the Flemish and the French friends I always try to be the devil´s
advocate because I can see what´s going right or wrong. I can see that they
are all fighting for the same thing that is their individual culture. But they
go overboard… politicians kinda keep the fire going underneath, so that the
people would scrap and fight so that the politicians can buy houses in Brazil
and walk off. They are blowing smoke in people´s faces through the name
and the cause of the soi-disant "volk"-thing. It´s bullshit, you
won´t find many families that don´t have families two generations
back that aren´t totally mixed. Nobody can say they don´t have a Flemish
or Walloon cousin or niece. In Rock ‘n´ roll we don´t have race,
culture or so, only respect. I just think it´s all ridiculous.
FM: Well talking about different cultures, on your previous album blues
was omnipresent, but with your latest album "Amnesty
for eve" you changed the sound a lot into a more rocky thing, why?
B: It´s more europeanish this one … You know, I´ve been playing
with the same guys for the last six years and we are really a band, a family and
as the years go by, you learn to to know people and you share things and I learned
from European music. Some of the songs on this album were written within the group
and I gave Leeway to their ideas and influences and we ended up with a rather
solid and interesting sound that I think is a good mix between the American and
the European roots I have. Belgium is very strong on the music scene and something
else I have always recognised. It also started in the eighties with groups like
Twee Belgen, they had ideas. And when Jo
Bogaert started with the techno scene, it was undeniable that people like
this influenced underground music all over the world, particularly in New York.
FM: Look at Front 242…
B: Absolutely, if you deny that, you´re being difficult and blind. So
it was easy for me with this kind of encouragement to get exited about creativity
especially culturally. I like mixing now, when my guitar player comes and is talking
about The Who or even TC-Matic with Jean
Marie Aerts who we adore, he´s just fucking great. When it goes like
that you look at it from a different angle, from you own education. It´s
a kinda collage, a cool mix.
FM: Was this album a difficult birth for you?
B: No, not at all in the creative part… well sure it is, I´m kinda
snowing over the basic problems but the actual problem with this record was more
the business side but that will never stop me from singing. On the other side,
creativity is never easy, you have to be satisfied before you reach satisfaction.
FM: But that´s inherent to making music, no.
B: Yeah, some songs will go like a breeze, others will pull your hair out,
you scream and roll over the floor and when you then listen to what you have recorded,
you realise it sounds so easy. (Laughs) And why is it so hard to get there!
FM: Why this strange title?
B: It´s a kinda pro-woman thing without being a feminist thing, it´s
kinda symbolic, we are still pushing very old and obsolete values into people.
I lived a lot of things in my life that were really devastating for human beings.
They were perpetrated by people who were morally in command at that time. It´s
like this one-god thing, which I think is just full of fucking shit, I´ll
be honest with you? We are all gods, we have to love each other and take care
of each other. These days we´re to much bound towards money. And Amnesty
for eve just means that we have to move one and get over this whole load of shit.
Society has never been so far advanced but yet psychologically we´re still
in the dark ages, and this is what is all about. People are still losing their
children or family due to some stupid moral ideas from a fabricated religion!
I could go on forever. And the picture of me in that field with my guitar on the
inner sleeve of the booklet, when I saw the photo I was so stunned and I immediately
thought it was like Eve coming back in the garden of Eden.
FM: You still play in small bars, is this a way of getting back to your
roots or how does that feel?
B: Maybe, I feel most at ease where the conditions are good, it can be in
the smallest bar or on the biggest festival stage. If technically we have the
right condition to send out emotions and really play and deliver, we can play
and deliver at any time. We´re a very honest band, we´re from the
old school of bop till you drop! But when you are in a room that sound like a
cavern you won´t get anything to sound good. Small clubs have this intimacy,
you can sing to people directly, face to face. You tell more jokes and it all
gets so much closer. On the other hand at festivals you get this enormous power
thanks do that sea of people in front of you. And then we´re really having
a party.
FM: Is it hard sometimes to get gigs at all?
B: Well when I don´t get the opportunity to gig because I don´t
have a new record, I just take my damn guitar and I go playing. I went home to
play in the fishing villages, I went to Singapore with Roland
Van Kampenhout and played in several little bars at night. I don´t care,
I´m not waiting for the business to say when I can sing, screw that! I have
friends all over the world that love to hear me sing. When I´m in Nashville
and there are some friends on stage, they´ll just drag my ass up on stage
and I play in Nashville!
FM: How was that 97 tour back in the States?
B: Well it was just locally, one of the most thrilling and satisfying things
I did. It was coming home and showing what I had accomplished with confidence.
I was socially unacceptable back in the seventies, I was a complete outcast. I
just kinda went na-na-na-naaa. I went on stage with some of my local heroes like
Jimmy Hall who used to be in the group Wet Willy, for me he´s one of the
best blues players in the world and he´s also a great saxophone player.
When I was sixteen I wanted to marry him! I also did a double with Roger Mcguinn
which was a great honour for me.
FM: You said before that you wanted to push some artists through your
web site, who will be the lucky one next time?
B: My first dream is Pieter Jan Desmet,
I´ve been following him for a long time and I believe in him sincerely,
he´s creative and physical and I just love physical artists. And so is his
partner Jeffrey. I´ll do anything for them because I´m a fan. I like
make publicity for Belgian bands in the States, I took dEUS,
Hoover and K´s
Choice to a friend who has a record shop back home and he stocked them. But
what they achieved is thanks to them!
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This interview was done by and appears with kind permission
of
entertainment shop
date interview:
July 1999
Beverly Jo Scott
"Amnesty For Eve"
CNR , 1999
Beverly Jo Scott
"The Wailing Trail"
Sony, 1995
Beverly Jo Scott
"Honey & Hurricanes"
Sony, 1993
Beverly Jo Scott
"Mudcakes"
Sony, 1991
Read my review of
"Amnesty for Eve"
Read a bio of
Beverly Jo Scott
Beverly Jo Scott
"Amnesty For Eve"
CNR , 1999
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