Port Fairy Folk Festival international act Folk Uke talk tramps, divorce and their funny dads

The duo of Amy Nelson and Cathy Guthrie are bringing with them their latest release – a concept album with the fairly family-unfriendly title of Star****er.

The songs detail radio DJs asking for sexual favours in return for airplay, “sweet talkin’” men who should just “shut up”, a tune proclaiming that “all I want for Christmas … is for you to leave”, and the title track in which they sing of “being trampled by tramps … not wearing any underpants”.

“We actually were both trampled by tramps,” Nelson laughed.

"We’re calling them tramps and that’s a terrible thing but poetically it goes. They probably weren’t all tramps.” 

“Yeah some of the people who trampled us were probably really nice people,” Guthrie agreed.

“They kept their heels out of my eyeball.”

Nelson said the idea for the album – the duo’s third – came when “a holy woman … said the word ‘star****er’ at my wedding”.

“We thought ‘gosh, now she’s said that word it feels pretty much like a holy word’,” Nelson said.

“It was started by me saying to Cathy ‘let’s write a song called Star****er’ and she said we should do a whole album – we thought it was funny to do a whole concept album about it.”

Folk Uke have always traded in biting lyrics and surprising profanity. Their self-titled first album features songs such as the optimistic S*** Makes The Flowers Grow and the big finale Mother****er Got ****ed Up, which was used on a recent episode of Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black. 

But their new album ups the cynicism, particularly in comparison to the hints of sweetness and sadness hiding among the swears on previous album Reincarnation. 

“Reincarnation was our divorce album,” Nelson said. “We both got divorced (around that time).”

“Did we?” Guthrie asked, apparently thinking of the album in that light for the first time.

“Yeah, I thought of it as a rebirth thing,” Nelson replied. “I guess a lot of what we do is we write songs to make us laugh about stuff that used to make us cry.”

Guthrie said writing such darkly funny songs was never the original plan when they “accidentally” started a band while working at the same San Diego bar in 1998.

“It just happened – it’s kind of been how we deal with things,” Guthrie said. “One of the things we have in common is we both have done that in our lives.”

“I think it’s a lot to do with how we were raised in our families,” Nelson said. “We use humour to get through difficult situations. I think a lot of musicians write songs like we do, they just have the wit about them to not record them. But I think a lot of times you can write a silly song about someone who’s bullying you or (whatever and) sometimes it can take away the power of (that) someone.”

“Laughter is the best medicine,” Guthrie noted. “But sometimes you need antibiotics.”

It’s worth pointing out both members of Folk Uke have fathers who weren’t afraid to use a bit of humour in their own music – Nelson’s dad is Willie, Guthrie’s is Arlo.

“I think it was kind of (who they are),” Guthrie said of their dad’s influence on their funny songwriting style.

“They were just there. My dad’s kinda silly. He’s funny and we don’t really get too serious. We can touch on serious things and then we joke about them.”

Nelson agreed. “Arlo has more humour in his music but in the last few years my dad’s music has gotten funnier too. Have you noticed that or is it just me? We were thinking that we influenced him!” 

“My dad said be careful about the songs you write and how stupid they are because they just might be a hit,” Guthrie said.

“My dad said the same thing!” Nelson exclaimed.

“Really?”

“Yeah he said it when I was impersonating Louis Armstrong and he said ‘Don’t do it! People are going to want you to keep doing it and you’ll ruin your voice’.”

It’s at this point in our world-traversing phone interview that Nelson does her impressive Louis Armstrong impersonation, leaving Guthrie in stitches.

“Oh my god that’s going to be our next album,” Guthrie said. “That’s great!”

“I thought it was pretty great too and that’s why I was trying to impress Dad with it,” Nelson said. “But he didn’t see the value in it. He’s never let me be Louis Armstrong. He’s always trying to make me be myself.”

Nelson and Guthrie are all too happy to talk about their fathers but they agree they get a lot of silly questions about their dads.

“There’s the silly question ‘What’s it like to be the daughter of blah blah blah’,” Guthrie said. “It’s silly because we wouldn’t know how it would be (otherwise). We’ve lied before. We’ve said ‘oh it’s great, there’s cocaine and parties every night and we just ride around in limos and get to go wherever we like’. We joke about it in our families.”

“Or asking ‘Can I meet your dad?’ (is annoying),” Nelson said.

“Everyone wants to smoke with Amy’s dad,” Guthrie said.

Folk Uke are playing at the Port Fairy Folk Festival on March 10-13.