Pokey LaFarge – Rhumba Country interview

Singer-songwriter Pokey LaFarge reveals to Vintage Rock how living off the fat of the land helped redefine his sense of purpose as an artist and inspired him to craft his boldest album yet.

With his pomade hair and retro attire, Pokey LaFarge is an enigmatic artist who, on the surface at least, appears out of step with the modern world. However, as Vintage Rock soon discovers, that would be a very simplistic characterisation of an amiable singer and authentic songwriter. Within minutes of us meeting to discuss his new album, Rhumba Country, we discover a highly observant and warm-hearted man who, at the age of 40, has already experienced a varied career of musical highs and personal lows.

His latest solo studio LP is full of soulful surprises and tales of the unexpected, the seeds of which took root while farming on his land in a post-pandemic Maine. “I had just moved to Camden, Maine, opens Pokey, “and I didn’t really know what I was going to do. Covid was still going around and I wasn’t really able to tour consistently. I thought I’d take the opportunity to learn something different, so I started farming.

Sowing The Seeds Of Love

“Maine is very rural, with strong fishing and farming communities, so it felt like the natural thing to do. I must admit, there was a time when I considered purchasing land and just going old school. However, I found it all very inspirational and songs would just come to me. Soon an album started to form. The connections, both metaphorically and spiritually, came about through farming and I wrote a whole record in the fall of 2022. I felt I was ready to go and record it the following January. But, while I had a lot of special songs, it wasn’t quite at a level I wanted it to be. So, when I went out to California for the winter, I started writing another record and most of those tracks appear on the album.”

There is a sunny sense of positivity permeating through the new album but, as Pokey reveals, that’s not always been the case. Claiming there was a time when he’d glorify sadness because he’d lost sight of who he was, LaFarge admits he once saw his music in dark blue. So, given that Rhumba Country is such a technicolour triumph, Vintage Rock wondered if his optimistic outlook stems from his recent marriage to the singer Addie Hamilton?

Summer Lovin’

“I wrote three songs for this record [So Long Chicago, It’s Not Over and Made To Be Loved] with my wife who is also my creative director,” LaFarge continues. “I trust her completely and if I have an idea that she doesn’t like at first, I know I’ve gotta work on it to see if I can make it better. 

“I love the creative process and writing a record, but being alone for too long with your own thoughts can be very dangerous. From the outset I’ve always wanted to write lyrics that were simple to understand but also poetic and had multiple interpretations. I wanted my music to be bouncy, upbeat, and joyful because that’s the music that excites me.

“However, as a person who was never considered good at anything and never had any money, it was difficult when people started telling me that I’d ‘made it’ because I’d achieved a certain level of fame… That period was when I was the most unhappy I’d been in my entire life. For three or four years I was making records that just weren’t me and I was miserable.

“I really was ready to die. But, after I started following Jesus, my life started to transform. I connected with my future wife and was able to get back to who I was as a person and musician. I once again started to try to spread peace and love through my music.”

Kaleidoscope Of Sound

With Rhumba Country, Pokey has certainly achieved what he set out to do. A kaleidoscope of sound, with elements of mambo, rocksteady, soul, and R&B appearing across its 10 rhapsodic tracks, the record is a warm listening experience. Case in point being LaFarge’s reimagined cover of Ken Boothe’s Home Home Home, which is stripped of its reggae backbeat and given a country flavour.

“I have to remind people that genres, in a lot of cases, are very limited,” Pokey thoughtfully observes. “We consider country music something that has to have a lap steel and a fiddle, but when you take the lap steel and the fiddle away is it no longer a country tune?

“When you listen to music from all around the world, everywhere has its own country music, and I think that’s best exemplified by reggae. That’s Jamaica’s country music. The more I listened to reggae music, specifically that reggae beat, I realised that if you just flip it, it becomes a soul or country beat, which are largely the same.” 

Wit & Wisdom

Another noteworthy highlight on the album is the soulful, R&B-tinged, Sister Andre which was inspired by the true story of a French nun who’d recently passed away at the age of 118.

“I saw the name Sister Andre and immediately thought I’ve got to write a song,” recalls LaFarge. “I imagined the conversation you could have if you’re sitting with a 118-year-old woman, who had lived through World War I, the flu epidemic, World War II, on and on… She would have had so much knowledge and wisdom. What would she say to you? I was noodling around with something on the guitar and it originally had a reggae rhythm, but I tinkered with the groove and it ended up taking a soul route.”

The Illinois-born singer spent his formative years in the Midwest following his own path. He adopted the name Pokey in his late teens while hitchhiking and busking. “I was hanging out with all these different street kids,” he explains, “and it seemed like all these different musicians and buskers had fake names. Pokey was just a name that was conjured up at that time.

‘Born A Little Differently’

“Where I grew up, you go to college, get a regular job, have a family, and live in a suburb. You didn’t necessarily have a lot of supportive people around you who were into the arts. I guess I was just born a little differently. 

“In the late 90s I started going to libraries and was renting 10 CDs at a time. I’d burn them and go get 10 more… blues, rockabilly, jazz… With a whole library of music at my fingertips, I would study the inlays of the CD and follow certain record labels and see what other albums they’d released. I’d follow the producer, the musicians, the sidemen. The trail keeps going and it never stops, there’s always music to discover.

“The Grateful Dead was one of the bands that really got me into the old stuff at a young age because they were playing so many older artists. They were playing Jimmy Reed, The Meters and Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Bill Monroe… So that band kind of set me up. Ry Cooder was also a big influence.

“I wasn’t into modern stuff back then. I tend to steer away from trends. Bluegrass music was my first passion and I’ve always been interested in more organic music. I can’t really listen to anything that’s too esoteric or artsy, I need to hear the song. Bill Monroe was my idol and I started out playing the banjo because of him. The richness of acoustic instruments is like a thirst that can never be quenched.”

Hotter Than A New Dance Craze

When VR opines that the Rhumba Country track So Long Chicago has a bluesy swagger reminiscent of The Band, Pokey responds, “I love The Band. I discovered them out of my love for Bob Dylan and they were another band who had so many old influences: likewise Grateful Dead, CCR, Led Zeppelin… I really like The Kinks. Their songs are so simple and they really don’t try to hide their accents. They’re being themselves, being English. That’s what folk music is, it’s about where you’re from, and I think that’s what I like about them.”

Talking of the UK, LaFarge will be hitting these shores in August for a string of dates as well as festival appearances at Beautiful Days, Towersey and The Long Road, before returning in the autumn.

“I really enjoy performing and there’s some aspects of travelling that I still enjoy,” he offers. “I’m thankful that my wife gets to travel with me, but I feel for the people in my band and touring musicians who have to be away from their partners and families. 

“It’s not like any other job. You travel throughout the day and when we get to the evening that’s when we actually start working. The loneliness of life on the road, and the absolute crazy exhaustion of the rigorous routine can do your head in. Touring certainly heightens what’s already there inside you and that’s when substance abuse comes into the equation. But I actually think that more musicians these days are taking better care of themselves.”

On The Write Tracks

So, will LaFarge be using his time on the road to start work on new material? 

“I’ve already started writing a new record,” he admits. “It’s going to be super funky. It’s hard when you write a record then it doesn’t get released until a year after it’s done. But you gotta go out there and play the songs and, maybe later in the year, I’ll be ready to record again.” 

For more information on Pokey LaFarge and Rhumba Country, click here.

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