An interview with Caroline Monroe

There is no alt or pop preceding the country music Caroline Monroe performs. Her jukebox-suited, prefix-free songs like "See Rock City" and "She Regrets Her Tattoos" are folksy narratives with a touch of Southern sass and twang. Monroe has been at Full Moon Studios in Watkinsville working on her debut with the help of local longhaired country outlaw Fester Hagood. Be on the lookout for "Ghost Town" soon and catch Caroline and Fester tonight at Wild Wing - it's a FREE SHOW!

Athensmusic.com recently caught up with the lovely Ms. Monroe:

Take us through the Caroline Monroe musical timeline.

Well, when I was a kid, piano lessons lasted about six months - with a woman that must have been a hundred years old. I remember she had long skeleton fingers.

Fast forward ...

Throughout college I played guitar, just for my friends mainly. During my senior year I played in a rock band called Umpteen. It was fun, but not really my vocal style - so I picked up my guitar and started playing country. I had my first solo gig at DT's [recently], and it was the first time I can remember playing in a bar where people were actually listening ... whispering.

You know, like a million people will read this interview and they'll see these hyperlinks to your MySpace page and the Web site and they won't be able to hear your music. What happened to the songs?

(With a grin) Well, um ... pretty much nothing is mixed yet, so it's bad advertisement for myself (laughing), and the studio I'm at! I'm probably gonna put one of those songs back up though.

We hear that the new album is coming along nicely. So many notable locals sitting in-lets name-drop.

Oh yeah, we got Randall Bramblett on organ, piano and sax; William Tonks on dobro; Rick Fowler playing guitar; Greg Veal and Mike Steel on bass; Don Spurlin on guitar; and Fester Hagood plays harmonica and guitar. The pedal steel parts are still up in the air. We have a few more instruments to record, a few vocal harmonies - mixing, mastering. Hopefully in a month or two you can get a copy of "Ghost Town" around town.

Share with our athensmusic.com readers something they won't learn anywhere but here.

I love a glass of Riesling, and I can light matches with my toes.

Posted by David Eduardo at May 11, 2006 08:54 AM