There is a Knee feature in this month's Skinny.  Just for the record here's the full transcript of the interview.  I was emailed the questions and this was what I returned.  Also, Theo Parrish was raised in Chicago but his music is associated more commonly with Detroit, where he lives now.
WKx

.. .. .. .. .. .. ....

-Where are you from originally?

I was born in Southsea in England but we moved around a fair bit when I was young.  We first came to Scotland when I was three.  I have spent the majority of my life in Fife and Edinburgh

-Where are you based now?

Leith

-How long have you been performing as Wounded Knee?

Since 2004.  My debut gig was on my 29^th birthday at Silencio at the Counting House in Edinburgh.

-Were you in any musical project before?

I used to be a DJ.  Many moons ago I was a resident at Shark, the Wednesday night carnage at the Cavendish.  That was a valuable experience: trying to get tanked up civil engineers to dance to Moodymann records.

-What do you do, when you are not being Wounded Knee?

Oh I’m always being Wounded Knee

-How would you describe your music, to the uninitiated?

It’s future primitive music.  Janus music.  21^st century folk music.  Dubh Wop.  Portable port a beul.

-How did you decide to play acapella? What kind of equipment do you
use to create the loops etc?

I used to make entirely instrumental music with machines and then I started to incorporate my voice and sing a bit.  I got some good feedback from certain people and was encouraged by that and over time I have developed my voice so that it is the focus of my music making.  It’s very practical when your voice is the principal instrument.  You can play all the time, anywhere, and it is so intuitive.  I use an Akai Headrush II loop/delay pedal.  It’s my rhythm section basically, but it’s been important for me personally not to feel beholden to any technology in order to make my music.

-Musically, who are your inspirations or influences?

Ooft there are too many.  Theo Parrish.   

-Your style is quite unique. How did that come about? Is there anyone
you particularly admire?

I try to be true to myself and I admire that in others.

-How did you feel about the NME's apparent dislike of your material?

The NME is the enemy.

-Every live performance you do seems to be quite different from the
last. Do you purposefully try to keep changing things?

I just try to see every live performance as unique and I am grateful for the opportunities I have to play my music to an audience. To play live presents an interesting paradox for me in that on the one hand to really get into it I have to try and get into a zone where I almost forget there is an audience there but at the same time I respect the situation enough to introduce myself to the audience before I play.  One thing that runs through every performance is to start from nothing and see where the music goes.  That’s where the variety comes from.  

 ....

-What do you hope people take away from seeing you play?

I hope that I can inspire people, get them going.  Take them places.  Show them things.  And make them smile.

-What have been your best and worst live experiences to date? I
imagine the Retreat festival must have been quite a highlight?

Both Retreat festivals have been really good.  I’ve played down in Luton over the past three years and that has always been really enjoyable.  I have put on some shows myself over the years and enjoyed the Tremors shows we put on at the tea room down on Silverknowes esplanade and in the artist Scott Laverie’s Yurta, a construction sited in a hidden garden off the Royal Mile.  I have put on a couple of shows called Downsizesound where all the artists have to play without any mains electricity and they have been really exciting and I am hoping to do more of those.  Any shows where I’ve stripped down to my purple pants have been quite something for the audience I’m sure.  I played at DCA and Ingleby galleries this year and they were both good to do because I was able to play for a lot longer than normal; Dundee was about two hours, which was a blast.  My two worst live experiences were in Brussels and Den Haag and that’s because I was shite and didn’t do my music justice at all.

-How do you go about the song-writing process?

I have a notebook to jot stuff down.  I get material from various sources: books, newspapers, conversations, my brain.  My earliest songs were usually just a couple of lines but more recently I’ve been stitching more of those lines together to create longer songs.  I like that collage, cut-up process where you can piece together words and phrases and make strange narratives.  I’ve collaborated with the artist Catherine Street and her text work utilizes these techniques and she has influenced me of late.

-You seem to be quite an active member of the Edinburgh 'anti-folk'
scene. Do you enjoy the collective feel of that?

I wasn’t aware of an Edinburgh anti-folk scene.  I think it’s a strange term.  I’m an active member of a vibrant Edinburgh music scene.  There’s a strong D.I.Y culture in Auld Reekie and I’m glad to be part of that.

-How do you feel about events like Retreat gaining more attention and
greater attendance?

It’s great.  It would be even better if everyone involved got paid too.  I think Retreat deserves some funding.

-Which other local bands would you recommend, or enjoy playing with?

The Wee Rogue.  His incredible music once made me cry and it has been a thrill to watch him grow as a live performer.  Fordell Research Unit are always a pleasure to hear live and loud.  Over in Glasgow Nackt Insecten has a trio called Moon Unit who can take you interstellar.  Everyone needs to see Kylie Minoise and Usurper at least once in their puff.  Generally I would just encourage folks to get out and hear more local live music.  Support your local artists and they will support you. 

-Yours songs are obviously very lyrical, almost old Scots
story-telling. Is this any conscious effort on your part, to keep that
art form alive?

I think you might be talking about other people’s songs I sometimes sing.  Hamish Henderson talked of the idea of a carrying stream.  Indeed there is an annual festival in his honour in Edinburgh called The Carrying Stream festival.  It’s a lovely phrase, very poetic.  And it is a concept I am mindful of when I sing a traditional song like “O Can Ye Sew Cushions” or “Glenlogie” or “Hares On The Mountain” but also something more contemporary like R.E.M’s “You Are The Everything”.

 

-What are your upcoming plans (tours, releases, etc?)

I’m doing a fair bit of recording at the moment.  I’m hoping to get something released pretty soon and am getting material together for that.  It was really exciting to have my first “proper” album released this year and I’m grateful to Steven at Benbecula for putting Vistas out.  I learned a lot from that process.  I was so used to self-releasing material and it was good to work in different way and get his input and get a dialogue going where we would thrash out what we both wanted to go on the album.  I’d be up for doing that again. 

He got up and went to the dresser and took out his patent music-box which made sounds too esoterically rarefied to be audible to anybody but himself.  He then sat back again in his chair, put his hands through the handstraps and began to entertain himself with the music.  What he was playing could be roughly inferred from his face.  It had a happy broad coarse satisfaction on it, a sign that he was occupied with loud obstreperous barn-songs and gusty shanties of the sea and burly roaring marching-songs.  The silence in the room was so unusually quiet that the beginning of it seemed rather loud when the utter stillness of the end of it had been encountered.

Friends,

long live Theosophy

WKx

Do not
allow
yourself
to be
programmed

I favour
a Nationalism
that champions
the notion
of otherness

Bach?
Acht,
mair Offen that not
I suppose.
There's anither
John Sebastian
I prefer to that cunt

That spiritual pain is conditional on knowledge goes without saying, and it is easy to see that it will increase with the degree of knowledge.  We can thus express the whole relationship figuratively by saying that the will is the string, its frustration or impediment the vibration of the string, knowledge the sounding-board, and pain the sound.

Try not to overdubh it

tHIS iS tHE wARNING

What is displayed is a surging, pounding, maelstrom of song, into which has been drawn material from the most disparate sources: love songs, hunting songs, flytings, eulogies, laments, and even swatches of versified folk narrative.  Very few....make a unitary impression of connected meaning.  Elements have become locked together, and have disengaged, some changes probably occurring in the free flow of improvisation - the result perhaps of the whim of some long-dead soloist - and others (one senses) corresponding to a deep underlying aesthetic pattern.  As in rowing songs documented in various cultures - for example (to remain in Scotland) the 'dreg songs' of the oyster fishers of the Firth of Forth, also investigated by Francis Collinson - hard physical labour imposes its own overmastering will on diverse material, often producing (when the song is heard) a surprising impression of coherence and unity.  Publication of MacCormick's texts clears the causeway for a detailed structural analysis of the morphological relationships which might well be shown to exist between the various 'mobile props' and lyrical commonplaces which sustain these truly fabulous song-poems.  It is the study of this sort of material, like the study of the Yugoslav folk-epics which have lived on into this century, which can help illuminate the nature of 'Homer's music'.
  The poetry of the waulking songs - which the modern Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean has referred to as one of the finest achievements of Scottish culture - resides in its nature as the intimate song-poetry of the women.  Here, at the waulking-board, where the surge and beat of the song often reaches a pitch which one can only call ecstatic, the whole inner life of the women comes to the surface in uninhibited self-expression; desire, scorn, reproach, desolation - all the sexual joys and agonies of the women come pouring out like a burn in spate.  One feels, at times, that all this emotion is only bearable because it is confined between the banks of traditional formulaic utterance.  One understands, too, the good sense of the Hebridean doctor who (according to Alexander Carmichael) advised a woman suffering from some mental or emotional disturbance to attend the waulkings.
 

bless this
stawner hoose
mix it wi
make me believe
in you
patti jo
naw?
ho!
like
arthur sayz:
first thought
best thought