second, you’re not a fan, or a journalist, or a stranger. You’re meeting on common grounds.
When we get talking about an author close to both our hearts – Kurt Vonnegut – I ask her if that interest, that scientific side, ever took shape outside of music. “I was a biologist,” she says. “I worked for four years in a lab – I’d probably still be doing that if I wasn’t a musician.”
In my head I wanted to meet Chris in a whiskey bar in Mississippi, where the bartender (a jolly guy named Jack – Jackie to his buds) serves us our usual – and a little something extra. He tells us it’s on the house and leans across to light our cigarettes and we begin talking about writing and music and writing.
I can still dream. I can still have that – but there’s a helluva lot to hold on to in the meantime. The bar we meet at – The Windmill – is awesome. Records tattoo the ceilings and act as makeshift lights, the locals all have a smile and a beer in their hands, old heavy candles get lit before it’s dark outside, because it’s always a little darker inside, and a big dog guards and barks on the rooftop of the bar – there’s an atmosphere. And it’s that, it’s always that, that makes me yearn for that individualism and freedom. That stuff that they call the American dream.
“I don’t think I notice American culture in other countries much,” Chris notes, when we talk about America outside of America. She adds: “I don’t see Coca Cola as essentially American anymore – it’s just Coke. The best thing about travelling is being able to try the local cuisine or a new beer or drink.”
FYI: her favourite drink in England is Crabbies. “We don’t have that in America. It sucks.”
Written by Carlotta Eden. Find out more about Chris Pureka at www.chrispureka.com, and listen to her song 'Shipwreck' below.