FR: I have known Chuck Prophet and Dan Stuart since the mid 80s and last met up at the Green On Red show in Amsterdam last summer which was great. Chuck is one of the greatest guitarists and that is the direction my music is going these days. I suppose we are all people who, both, knew and respected Jeffery Lee Pierce of The Gun Club. Stanley Booth, Tav Falco, the whole Memphis thing around Jim Dickinson and Alex Chilton also unites us in taste and connections.
Those Green on Red shows were good, I liked the re-scheduled Astoria gig in January last year, the anti-Iraq War slides shown during the encores were a powerful statement.....
JA: I’m also hoping to see a book which I wrote with Frank called Hashishin out with Sidecartel in the not too distant future. I had a big success in Ireland late last year with a book of Irish history and I’m doing a sort of sequel to that which should be out before the summer.
I have a handful of other projects on the boil but I tend not to talk too much about future plans because future plans are just fantasies until you’ve signed a contract and been given a release date. My main project is my third novel which is a long way from being finished. I’m pretty confident that a couple of filmic projects will come to fruition. I also intend returning to activism in a pretty serious way. I’ve been working in front of a computer too long and I’ve let some people get away with stuff for too long.
FR: I am working on a movie project with a French film director which involves me mixing my training as a historian with writing an epic movie. I have been working with The Master Musicians of Joujouka for the last year for the first time since Hamri's death in 2000. Last year I was down there six times and brought the musicians to Porto to play an amazing show at Casa Da Muisica.
The CD Boujeloud which I spent four years working on was released at the end of 2006 and is getting a great reception. It contains all the music from the Boujeloud ritual, The Pipes of Pan. The musicians had a good year in 2006 and they are keen to promote the real Sufi music of Joujouka globally. They were visited by Billy Corgan in March when he was researching the new Smashing Pumpkins album.
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