Just prior to Concrete Blonde‘s tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its landmark Bloodletting album two years ago, I spoke to Johnette Napolitano for accessAtlanta (which you can read right here). That was actually my second time interviewing Napolitano and both experiences have lead me to the conclusion that it’s hard to keep up with her creative energy. For Concrete Blonde fans, that’s a good thing considering that the band recently released a white vinyl single for two new songs: “Rosalie” and “I Know the Ghost.” And after touring the world over the past couple of years, the band (rounded out by guitarist James Mankey and drummer Gabriel Ramirez) is currently on an East Coast tour. In the midst of that tour, Napolitano takes a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the possibility of a new Concrete Blonde album and her various other music projects.

I talked to you a couple of years ago just before your first rehearsal for the Bloodletting anniversary tour. Now you’re on tour again and have a new vinyl single, which is something you may not have anticipated last time we spoke. How did the new music and tour come about?

It just seems to be the right thing to do. We did that seven-inch single on white vinyl, which was fun to do. I don’t know how that idea really came about. It just seemed like the right thing to do. At my day job, that’s what I used to do is get masters to the plant to get them made into stampers and all that. That was my job, so I know a lot about vinyl and I just thought it would be fun to make a single. Obviously you can download anything digitally, but it was really fun. We took it out of the box and just went, “Oh, this is really cool.” It’s like it used to feel, that excitement when we made our first record. I think for Gabriel it was really cool because that’s how this band started was on vinyl. We’re excited about it and people apparently want us to play. That’s nothing that I take for granted. There are waves, especially in this fabulous entertainment industry we’re in, where trends come and go and things ebb and flow. The last thing you want to do is get out there and think everything’s cool and have six people show up.

Since that Bloodletting tour, we headlined a festival in China last year, which was a really amazing experience for all of us. We’ve been to South America a couple of times. As a matter of fact, we have to go back there in March or April because two days before a Brazilian festival I fell off one of my horses and broke four ribs and four vertebrae, so we’re going to make that up. Most of our touring in the last few years has been foreign. The States are a difficult place to work, as anybody in this business will tell you, because it’s like five different countries in one. You may do well New York, but nobody in Mississippi gives a shit, or vice versa. It’s really painstaking to make sure you’re connected in the right places and doing the right things to make sure people come because all you’ve got to do is one bad tour and nobody will come again.

The two songs on this seven-inch are stylistically very different from each other. One is very punk rock while the other is almost country…

Much like our first record.

Exactly. Are those the only two new songs you’ve been working on or do you have other new stuff that might be released soon?

I do. I always have a million half-finished things laying around. I’m my hardest critic and a song really has to earn its place before being immortalized. I love both of those songs. “Rosalie” just came to me in one piece while I was sitting on the porch of my cabin in Joshua Tree. It just blew in with the wind. It was just perfect. When that happens, all you’ve got to do is catch it. And with “I Know the Ghost,” “The Ghost” was a poem I wrote for a book called Rough Mix, which we have on sale, and I really liked it and loved the idea of setting it to music somehow. I also wanted to do something that we didn’t have to take that seriously; just a good old-fashioned West Coast punk feel because our roots are in West Coast punk. That’s when everybody started making their own records. That was a big deal and everybody was doing the DIY thing big time back then. That’s when Black Flag’s first record came out and Agent Orange and all that. Brett [Gurewitz] started Epitaph with a seven-inch single from Bad Religion, which both Jim and I worked on. But everybody was doing that then, so it makes sense. And on a very basic level, the sound of vinyl sounds good with certain stuff. Country music on vinyl just sounds so pure and right; and punk on vinyl sounds pure a right because there was a lot of that going on on vinyl. Now they have plug-ins to simulate the sound of vinyl if you record digitally.

The book is another thing you mentioned last time we talked. I’m glad to see that it’s out now.

Oh, yeah. It’s steadily selling on Amazon, which is really all I wanted to do. I want it to be a series and I’ve started another one on this tour. There are so many songs that it’s basically explaining what some of the songs are about. Then it has miscellaneous drawings, poems and things that don’t seem to fit anywhere else. I also did a CD series called Sketchbook and I only do 1,000 of each, then they’re gone. It gives me incentive to do another one because I have a loyal base of people who want every one I do. That’s really cool. I like that sort of approach. It’s not just throwing stuff out there for mass consumption; it’s custom little things for people who want them. People do appreciate that they have something special that is not going to be there once it’s gone.

You always seem to be working on musical projects with various other musicians. What else do you have in the works right now?

I’m still working with David J and David is all over the map. We’re working on a project called Tres Vampires with a DJ named Shok out of L.A. We’ve got three tracks down, only one mixed, and a video that really needs some re-editing. It’s hard to keep up with David J. He’s one of the most driven artists I’ve ever known. He really is off the planet and I’m a big fan.

You were also working with a flamenco group in New Orleans called Ven Pa’Ca and talking about opening your own flamenco club there. Did that ever happen?

I spent a lot of time down in New Orleans after my dad died and opening a place down there was definitely not as simple as I thought it was going to be. New Orleans is a scary place if they don’t want you there. I was at the airport and two big white men came to the bar where I was sitting and said, “Can we join you?” I said, “No,” but they sat down anyway. I was pretty much told that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be opening anything down there. It was pretty scary. I’d heard that New Orleans is no place to fuck with, but I don’t know who they think I am or whether they didn’t dig what I was doing. I had rented Preservation Hall for one day and shot flamenco with Leticia from Ven Pa’Ca. We did a version of “Mexican Moon” and it was really cool because it made sense for me to have flamenco there. But that’s not what the place really is about. New Orleans really doesn’t appreciate you deviating from what they want to go down, basically. That really did freak me out because they were just like, “We’ll bury you down here.” It was very creepy. I don’t know if they thought I was related to Janet Napolitano or what. It was really strange, so I kind of put that idea to the side because I think playing down there with the big boys is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

You mentioned that you’ve been working on other new songs. Does that mean we might see a new Concrete Blonde album in the near future?

Everybody keeps asking me that, but I’m afraid to make that commitment with the band, to tell you the truth. We have a relationship that is difficult sometimes, like anyone else who’s been together for so many years. It’s really important that nobody get too comfortable. That’s why I got pissed off at the band in the first place because everybody got really comfortable and everybody started taking things for granted. I like that we’re doing this, I like that there’s a single and there is new music, but I know I’ll never again in my life go out and tour for seven months at a time like we used to do in the old days. As a matter of fact, what has been the main factor in the last couple of years for me is I don’t like to leave home for more than a week out of the month. It throws me off balance and I really need to be home because I’ve got goats and horses and all that. But it’s not practical to do that. On the East Coast we’ve got to do it for two weeks to make it work, but it’s hard for me to be gone for that long. It’s hard on personal relationships and your life and it’s not worth it. To keep that balance is the most important thing for me and if it takes doing things in little spurts so everybody keeps it together and stays nice to each other, that’s great. The minute it’s not fun, there are a million other jobs to do that pay more.

As we just talked about, you also do various other musical projects with other people. So you seem to stay busy even when you’re not working with Concrete Blonde. Are you working on any other new musical projects?

I am pleased to be working with Billy Howerdel on the new Ashes Divide record. I just spent a couple of days not too long ago doing some heavy duty writing with Billy, which is always intense, but a total pleasure. It’s a beautiful record; I’m really pleased. I just love Billy Howerdel. He’s a great guy and I love his family. I’m just envious of him because he has a beautiful wife, beautiful kids, he makes beautiful music and he makes amazing food. That motherfucker cooks like an angel, so anytime you work with Billy you know you’re going to get fed really well.