In the halcyon days of alt.country, say ten or so years ago, Blue Mountain was in the thick of it. Heck, they graced the cover of the second issue of No Depression, the alt.country bible. The Oxford, Miss., trio got its start in the early 1990s and their fusion of traditional roots music, especially the blues and gospel that surrounded them, and good ol’ rock’n’roll was right in the pocket with bands like Son Volt, Whiskeytown, and the Old 97’s. Led by the husband and wife team of guitarist Cary Hudson and bassist Laurie Stirratt, Blue Mountain released three albums on Roadrunner and two on their own before the marriage and band dissolved in 2001.
Time healed some wounds apparently. Last summer they reunited for a couple of shows, including a spectacular performance at Twangfest, the annual summer roots rock extravaganza held in St. Louis. Since then they’ve toured quite a bit and now are set to simultaneously release two records, Midnight in Mississippi, a collection of new songs, and Omnibus, a set of old songs newly recorded. Blue Mountain celebrates the discs with a CD release Saturday at the Continental Club. After the break, a conversation with Laurie Stirratt from her home in Oxford.
Geezerville: I saw the show at Twangfest, which was a little more than a year ago now. Was that the first or second show the band did after getting back together?
Laurie Stirratt: That was the first show.
G: Wow. How much practice did you have before that?
LS: We spent about a week and a half, maybe two weeks, in Oxford before that. I was living in Chicago at the time. We rehearsed two or three times and everybody remembered the songs really well. I think we’re better musicians than we had been when the band broke up because we’d all continued playing. So it sounded really good.
G: I can’t believe that was the first show.
LS: Someone sent me a recording of it and it sounded pretty loose, but it had a lot of energy. It was fun.
G: Yeah, it had a lot of energy. How much better have you gotten since then? I can’t even imagine.
LS: It’s a lot better, a lot tighter. I think we’ve settled into the pocket more.
G: There’s got to be a lot that’s different now playing in this band. What’s the biggest thing that’s different?
LS: It’s definitely a different dynamic because Cary and I aren’t married any more. We’re really good friends and we’ve repaired a lot of it. Our relationship is a lot better.
G: How have gas prices effected you?
LS: It’s a scary thing because if it goes as high as they say it’s going to, I don’t know how we can afford it. Our expenses are so high on the road, it’s unbelievable. I toured a little bit with my brother [Wilco bass player John Stirratt] and with [Danny Black’s] Healthy White Baby after Blue Mountain broke up. But when we got back out on the road, I was stunned. The price of hotels have gone up too. It’s definitely caused problems.
G: Let’s talk about the new record. Were these songs that Cary had already written?
LS: He wrote most of the songs on this record. We collaborated on more than half, but I own the record label that the album will come out on. So I was concentrating more on the business end of things than the creative end. Cary had some of them already written, but some were done after we got back together.
G: Whose idea was it to re-record the old songs?
LS: I think Cary brought it up first. We talked to Roadrunner and we knew there wasn’t going to be any way that we could get our hands on the masters for right now. So we decided that would be our only option of making any money off those songs since we wouldn’t be able to sell the CDs. I haven’t gotten a statement from Roadrunner in like eight years [laughs]. Much less a royalty check, of course, which we’ll never get with the amount of money that they say we owe them for the three releases. So this was the only thing we could do. At first, I was like “I don’t know,” but then I started reading about how many people have had to do that. I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world. Just as long as we didn’t replicate the songs. We just kind of did it as live as possible with very few overdubs, to make it sound like a live session.
G: Are you saying the Roadrunner discs are no longer available at all?
LS: They are digitally, but two of three records are out of print. So people can’t even buy them. The worst part is that they won’t let us have them. They made a fortune off Nickelback. It would make a big difference in our livelihood, where it’d be a drop in the bucket for them. They used to be the biggest independent label in the world, but they’ve been bought out by Universal.
G: So that’s another layer of lawyers you have to go through.
LS: Right. It doesn’t look good. I don’t think we’ll ever get those masters back.
G: I read in another interview that you referred to yourselves as geezers and I said to myself, “No they’re not.” [Stirratt is 41, Hudson is 44.]
LS: I talk to my sister about this a lot. She’s a painter and she’s ten year older. It’s funny in the art and music world, I think it’s more difficult for older musicians and artists to break through these days. That’s not to say you can’t have a great career. Blue Mountain is never going to cross into the mainstream and be a huge band. It just seems like you have to be so young to do that these days.
G: I wanted to talk to you about quote-unquote alt.country. At the time you first came onto the scene you were lumped in with that and not unreasonably. I’m wondering how you feel about that.
LS: I think it’s cyclical. It’s just weird that back then there were so many new categories for music. I just don’t understand why it has to be categorized so specifically. To me our band sounds like a lot of bands I love, the Faces or the Rolling Stones. Those bands had big country influences but were never categorized as anything but rock’n’roll. I’m not saying I was upset being lumped into that category. I just think it’s kind of a strange thing.
G: Being a writer and someone who has championed the music for a long time, the artists that are coming up now and trying to do something similar are missing the spark that I heard back then.
LS: I agree and I’m sure there are some bands out there that are doing something different, but to me the sound has become so generic. There’s nothing that reaches out and grabs you.
This article appears in July 25 • 2008.