Hi Kim. Tell us about the songwriting for Wreck Your Wheels
The songs are from a lot of different times. I never write specifically for one record, I just write all the time. There are people who can do that, write songs specifically for a record and then just stop when they’re done and not start again untill they have to write another record. But I can’t do that. I just write whenever I have the chance to. I recorded the record in Nashville, and it was really fun to do. I worked with my touring band from he Chinese Boxes tour, and Neilson Hubbard, who was also the musical director for my touring band, produced the record.


How do you think working with your own touring band affected the outcome?
We’ve spent so much time playing together, so when you’re in a studio recording an album, you play differently. The studio we worked in on this record was so tiny that there wasn’t room for an isolation booth for the guitar amp. We had to pull up Neilson’s car to the studio and put the guitar amp in there and close the doors. It was a really small space, so for the most parts we were in the room together at the same time, and when you’ve played so much with people on tour, there’s a certain communication there. At one point, the three guys were in one room playing and I was running the board and singing in the other room. That was our isolation right there. We don’t use a click or anything like that, so you really needed to tune in on each other when you play.


Neilson Hubbard rose to fame over here when he worked with Matthew Ryan a few years back on the Strays Never Sleeps project. Can you tell us more about Neilson?
Neilson works really hard. He’s always working on something. The first time I met him was when he produced a record for Glen Phillips who was in that band, Toad The Wet Sprocket. Glen asked me to come sing on the record, and that was the first time I met Neilson. It’s really fun working with him. He’s just a kind and sweet person who’s open to everyone’s ideas, so it was really more of a cooperative thing instead of him just being the producer and telling everyone on the studio what to do. He plays as well. Some producers come from a technician background, but Neilson’s a musician himself, so he has a different perspective on things.  He played and sang on the record as well.


Some of these songs have sort of a sad ring to them. What do they say about you?
They’re little snapshots of what’s going on in my life at the time when they’re written. The lyric of the song and the music of the song always catches some sort of time period for me, but also, when I play these songs later on, I can always remember how I felt when I wrote them. They bring you back to a certain place when I hear them and I remember where I was, who I was working with, what I was listening to and so on.  It’s never the same old thing.


Without getting too personal, do they tell the story of a songwriter in a happy place in her life? Or is it the opposite?
Well, the thing is, by the time people hear this record, I’ll be in another place. Some of these songs have maybe been around for a couple of years or so. But to answer your question, some of these songs are very personal and some are more inspired by the person I wrote them with. I don’t know if it says anything about me as a whole, cause they’re very different songs. I don’t think the record has a sad feel to it or a happy feel to it. They’re like the best movies – they have a bit of everything.


You’ve lived in Nashville, but you gave up trying to become the Next Big Thing on Music Row at an early point in your career, and you once said that you had grown estranged with the business aspect of your career. Have you always felt better not doing things the ”normal” way?
Yeah, I’ve lived in Nashville for a long time, but I haven’t really followed that path. The first guy I worked with, Richard Bennett, I sought him out because he had worked on Steve Earle’s records, and I was a huge Steve Earle fan. Richard and I decided that we wanted to work together, so we went and talked to labels together. If someone was going to sign me, I wasn’t going to make a record if I couldn’t make it with Richard. You know, I haven’t had a normal career. I was signed so late, when I was 37 and that’s when I made my first record, and I was left completely alone in the studio and I always have been. I don’t think that happens so often these days. I didn’t have anyone telling me which songs to record and how to sing them. But that’s how I wanted to do things, so they let me do it. But the music buisness is kind of all over the map these days, so I don’t even think there is a normal way of doing things any more.


Do you ever regret not just sticking with the Nashville way of doing things? I made a conscious decision at one point not to do that. When I was touring my first album, I had written this song called Believe Me, Baby I Lied. We hadn’t recorded it, we just played it, and Trisha Yearwood’s people kept calling me up saying ”we want that song”. I said no cause I was planning on recording it, but  one night I went to the Station Inn in Nashville and saw Gillian Welch and David Rawlings play. And that’s when it occured to me that that was what I wanted to do, play music that I would be proud of and not something I thought might be a big hit on the radio. So I called the other two people I had written the song with and said ”let’s let it go, cause it’s not a song I want to sing over and over again every night for the rest of my life.” It went to number one for Trisha, so we made some money off it as well. But that’s when I decided I wouldn’t go the Nashville country radio way.


So you don’t regret not keeping that song for yourself either?
No. I mean, it’s a good song, but it’s not something that really means a lot to me. It’s more of a good, commercial song. Making something I’m proud of means a lot more to me than being famous.


You spend a lot of time in London. What is this attracts you with our great capital?
Five or six years ago, I started going over there. My album, Glimmer, was recorded over there, and Giles Martin (son of Beatles legend George Martin) is a  good friend of mine. I just kept going over there, spending more and more time, meeting a lot of new people, and I just reached a point where I would miss London and miss my friends when I wasn’t there.


Is it very different playing with British musicians than Nashville musicians?
I guess it is different, because the people I’ve played with in the UK aren’t really country. They haven’t grown up on country music, they’re not country music fans, so their references aren’t country or bluegrass. They come at it from a different angle. But a lot of times, the people I’ve played with in Nashville didn’t come from a country music background either. If you grow up on it, you have a different take on playing it I think, but I never listened to country music either before I started writing songs myself.


Kim Richey’s Wreck Your Wheels is out now. Go to Kimrichey.com for more info and tour dates.