EXCLUSIVE: Judy Dyble interview (Part Three)

As regular readers of the Gonzo Daily will be aware, I am a big fan of Judy Dyble's latest album Talking with Strangers which Gonzo are releasing in the USA next month. It is a fantastic record, and I cannot praise it highly enough. Regular readers will also be aware that last week I telephoned Judy and had a very pleasant chat, which almost immediately was swallowed into the interstices of the internet aether. However, after various rituals and supplications at the altars of the Gods of hi-technology, we managed to retrieve them, and today, we are posting the last bit of a three part interview which (I hope) goes some way towards explaining the talent of this extraordinary lady...

And - by the way - if you missed yesterday, you can read Part One Here and Part Two Here

JON: Well, I look forward very much to finding out what happens next.

JUDY: Me too

JON: It is exciting isn’t it?

JUDY: Yes, it is one of the reasons why I do this, to see what happens next.  ‘Cos I have no idea, I’ve just spent my life saying yes I’ll play with you, yes why don’t we do this? It was a kind of accident that I joined Fairport, it was an accident that I joined up with Giles, Giles and Fripp and Ian, and an accident that I met Jackie McAuley.  It is quite interesting that Trader Horne was going to be a trio, and the third person in it was going to be Pete Sears who went off to America and joined Lee Stevens and then he was with Jefferson Starship, and Hot Tuna  and The Grateful Dead and all those sorts of bands, and he is still working with them all I think.  So there’s a connection.

JON: I’ve just done a film with Jefferson Starship.  I went and filmed them when they played Southampton back in October.

JUDY: Oh right.

JON: And I really, really wish that I’d been involved with you beforehand – I would have loved to have filmed the gig you did in London

JUDY: I did invite Rob, but he ….

JON: Rob was in America. We talked about the possibility of filming it but then stuff got in the way..

JUDY: Oh what a shame.  Yes, I don’t think we were in contact then were we?

JON: Not really.  I am sort of a guerilla film maker.  I usually have one or two more people with me, a bag full of cameras and just film what happens.

JUDY: Oh right, well you could so easily have come to London – mind you we didn’t go on stage until 10 o’clock and that is way past my bedtime. <laughs>  I did have a friend who did film it, but I haven’t heard whether he’s managed to edit it down for anything yet.

JON: In the 30 years between Trader Horne and coming back into it again, did you do any other stuff at that time that wasn’t released or were you just doing other things?

JUDY: There were a few things that I did. Before we left – I married my late husband and we left London in ’73, and started a cassette duplicating thing.  I had done two or three things that were recorded, one was with Mike Batt,  another was something with  a guy called Peter Barnsfather, who has done something quite famous since and I can’t remember what it is. And did one or two things with Adrian Wagner who was the first moog synthesizer man, and then he was with Hawkwind and did that sort of stuff so there were odd bits and pieces and I am looking to release a kind of anthology of those things which I might do with a company called Drag City, a little vinyl release, I don’t know.  There’s  a man who does a kind of graphic comic called the Galactic Zoo Dossier which sells out immediately he does one because it is all hand written and hand drawn and everything, and he has his own tiny label on Drag City and he wanted to do a small vinyl release of these rarities because that is what he is into. I did want to do a whole anthology, but I am running out of energy.

And that was about it. It was only after we had hung up the phones that I realised that I hadn't asked her about singing on The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter or her cover of Greg Lake's C'est la Vie, or any of the other things that I had meant to do, so I think we will have to do it all again soon. Or at least I hope so.