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country." Cash was more like Elvis. "I thought of country as a late-night adult
thing, slightly sordid."

On the Mekons' first U.S. tour in 1986, friends shared albums by George
Jones, Ernest Tubb, Jimmy Rodgers, Jerry Lee Lewis and others. He really dug
honky-tonk music. Back in Leeds, Langford and his gang would hold country-
themed parties, wear cowboy outfits, drink Cajun martinis and "get stinking
drunk."

"I could really identify with it," he said. Music from the 1950s, the
southern U.S., they had threads he recognized. Good country music is really
"white urban blues" - three chords. Never interested in singing folk-blues with
an American accent, he found kindred spirits in a Merle Haggard song or "Long
Black Veil" found on Timms' Cowboy Sally 1997 CD, and also on Johnny Cash
at Folsom Prison from 1968. Timms also does a stunning rendition of Dolly
Parton's "Down From Dover," a sad tale of a pregnant, unmarried woman
shunned by her parents and deserted by the father. She gives birth but the wee
girl perishes "and dying was her way of telling me he wasn't coming down from
Dover," Timms' strong voice sings.

"It's such a weirdly campy but morbid song, which suits me," Timms said
in early July, me in Calgary, she in Chicago. "It's a really pretty song ... and it's
over the top." She has sung the tune since 1985, along with other classics like
"Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and "Horses".

Also a Chicago resident, Timms has a part-time job and has had articles
published in Chicago Tribune. She won't say what the job is, telling me
politely but firmly that it's none of my business. "It's not a very interesting job."

Timms has a stock reply to how she got into country: the Mekons were
doing it England long before Uncle Tupelo surfaced, and English performers
were singing country in the 60s.

"I don't really know what that term means," she said of Alternative
Country. "In most cases alt-country just means crap." Many bands are like "fast
fish waiting to pounce on the passing waves."

Influenced by her friends' musical tastes, country seems oddest to Timms
because she's English, she said. She also likes "the subject matter."

"Country songs I choose are closer to folk music than country," she said,
citing artists like Willie Nelson and older material. "I'm a folk singer, essen-
tially."

As for my latest favorite song, "Glue", Timms said she asked Jeff Tweedy
to do it but he was busy. Thankfully, in my opinion, Andre Williams was
enlisted. "The idea," of doing the duet with Williams, "was just very amusing to
me."

I suggested her cooing declarations of love sounded like Jane Birkin on
the immortal Serge Gainsbourg song "Je t'aime . . . Moi non plus". Timms sends
shivers up the spine while Birkin's orgasmic shuddering was controversial in
1969 and still makes the man squirm, if you know what I mean, and I think you

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