About the band being from Seattle, the "city of grunge"...

"I think it's a strange fit in a way. I mean, in some ways we started out at the same time a lot of the grunge bands did, so in that respect I think, in terms of the musical community in Seattle we have no problem fitting in. I mean, people there know us, we know them, and we were obviously signed to SubPop, which was the grunge label, so we had a lot of connection with that whole scene. So at least as far as it being a community it's never been a difficulty. Stylistically, on the other hand, we kind of sit off to the side and always have. But I think the Seattle scene was always, and to this day is, always a lot more diverse than what it's know for being. I think it's like if you go to a city like Memphis and it's known for the blues, but there's a lot of other kinds of music happening there."

About whether the band has ever considered throwing in the towel...

"I think there have been times. The last few years have been fairly good, so it hasn't been very difficult, let's say for the last three years or something. But I think that right around the time that New West Motel came out in '93 there was a lot of speculation within the band whether it was worth still going at that point. Since then I think things have steadily gotten better and I think we've improved as musicians and we're really happy we stayed together. I think we feel, at least within the band, that we're doing the best work we've done, now, so we really feel like "Wow, we're glad we stuck on." Because now, even artistically, it's starting to get good for us."

About being better appreciated in Europe than in the US...

"I'm not sure it's really a question of appreciation. I think a lot of our problems there have been really music business problems -- bad relationships with our record company and thus, people don't really get a chance to hear us. Because we've always really done well when the albums have come out, critically they've always been very well accepted. I don't think it's a matter of people not understanding what we're doing. I think a lot of it has been basic mismanagement, a lot of confusion as to how the records are supposed to be dealt with in the 'commercial marketplace.'"

About recording "Devil's Road" at Germany's famous Conny Plank studio...

"It's sort of strange how that came about. We knew that we didn't want to record in Seattle, because as you've pointed out, we've been a band for 12 years and have done all our recordings there, and we just felt that we had kind of used Seattle up in a way, at least for now, as a creative place to make an album. But we found out about this studio in Germany through The Tindersticks, they had done their second album there, and we had heard of this Conny Plank studio, because a lot of 'outsider' music like Brian Eno, Nico and all those kind of people had worked there. So it just seemed like the perfect combination: it was away from Seattle, the studio had kind of a legendary status to it, and it was isolated so that we could just go there and focus on what we needed to do.

Brian Eno played synthesizer and sang back-up vocals on "Late Train to Mercy", from "Scavenger". How did they come to choose working with him?

"We never chose him to begin with. He walked into a studio where were working, and so that's how we met him. It was completely by accident. The fact that we worked with him for even six hours was sort of a miracle. In the end he started talking with us and we had some drinks and one thing led to another and all of a sudden he was behind the mixing console working on a song with us. So it was very much a chance thing-- two entities just meeting in the night. then we've never seen him since then and he's never heard from us. It was a strange little event."

Chris allegedly described the Walkabouts as an "old-fashioned" band once. Is that true?

"Someone actually said that to me the other day, that I had said in an interview that we were an "old-fashioned" band, and I don't ever remember saying that. But if it means that we're concerned about songs and things like that, I take it as a compliment. That, to me, is what this band is all about-- finding songs. That's why we do a lot of other people's songs. Some people say "Why do you do so many cover versions?" and the main reason we do that is that what we're concerned about as musicians is songs, so it doesn't matter if we write the song. We're looking for something to respond to. I think in this day and age, with techno music, songs are becoming not a lost art but it's not the only focus of music, so we try to hold onto that really tightly and encourage people to listen to songs."

About the Walkabouts' relationship to the American roots-rock scene...

"I don't know if it's a 'scene' as much as there's a type of band and artist out there that we probably feel some kind of affinity with. Sometimes those people are Australians, like Nick Cave or someone like that. The thing I always liked about a lot of the Australian bands like The Triffids and Nick Cave is that they were taking these really American kind of song motifs and then doing something with them. They respect the tradition but they don't kiss the tradition's ass-- they're more concerned about starting there and then moving on somewhere else. I think bands like the Violent Femmes in America would be a good example, and then what we do, and there's others. There's a love for this love for this thing we call American music and at the same time we don't just want to be traditionalists and stop there. I think there's a desire to bring it into the contemporary scene."

What kind of music does the group listen to on the road?

"Dub-- lots of dub. We call the back lounge in our bus The Dub Lounge. That seems to be all we listen to this whole entire tour. I think when you're on tour there's certain kinds of music that you want to listen to. You don't really want to listen to loud music, generally, and I don't think that when you're riding on the bus you want to sit down and listen to that serious singer-songwriter music where the lyrics are really important-- it's kind of a distraction. We listen to a lot of instrumental music. Tortoise-- we've been listening to that album a lot, and stuff like that. Ambient."

About touring...

"I think we decided this week that we were homesick. It certainly takes a few weeks. Touring is not just "fun", but it's part of what we do-- it's why we're musicians. I understand people who complain about touring but it's not something that we have any problem with. We figure it's just one of these things we do. We WANT to do it-- it's not just that we do it to promote the album. We want to go out and play live. that's what musicians do. We don't have any big hang-up about it. But after being gone a certain amount of time, you start thinking about where you live, and your friends, and that kind of thing. We've been out about six weeks now, so this is about the time we're starting to think: we've got two weeks left, so we can afford to start thinking about going home."

About signing to Virgin, a "major label"...

"It was a big step for us. We had released albums on independent labels for 7 or 8 years. There's this conventional wisdom that either you move on to a major label pretty early or you're stuck making records for indies for the rest of your life. We sort of did something that not a lot of bands do-- we were around for 10 years and then got signed to a major label. But for us it's just been another step and it hasn't really changed how we think about anything. I mean, they gave us money to make an album, we went and made the album we wanted to make, everyone seems at least moderately satisfied with how it's done, so they're going to give us money to do another one. That's basically how we worked with the independents. The only problem with a major label is that you just don't make one phone call-- you have make, like, 30 phone calls just to get something done. Everybody has their own little job, where with the indie, you call the guy that owns the label and you discuss things directly. Other than that it hasn't been that much different."

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