We’re from Tennessee and Kentucky, so we’ll always be taken for inbreds for Yankees to patronise.

Singer JD Wilkes, guitarist David Lee and bassist Mark Robertson make “American Gothic rock’n’roll, madcap murder-polkas and blues”. They hail from the southern states of the USA, and we caught up with JD over a crackly phone line to Kentucky.

You’re getting warmed up for your European tour. Your stageshow is pretty full-on…

We give it all we’ve got, even if we’re running on empty. We bring a jolt of energy and charisma, some old-school vaudeville vibes. We work a lot of props and sideshow banners into the show. I’ve been hurt a bunch of times on stage – it’s like death by a thousand paper cuts. I don’t remember lacerating myself on my buttbone. And those mystery wounds on my legs? Oh yeah, that’s when that guy was throwing me up into the rafters. We invite a certain amount of chaos. It’s like being a medium, or these hoodoo priestesses that go into another place. They’re writhing about, but they’re still in control of the ritual.

Did you learn that from the churches you went to as a kid?

I went to a church school that preached fire and brimstone. The school toned it down a bit, but when it came to the church services it was the whole deal; speaking in tongues, people jumping pews like hurdles. It was their own punk rock show, a cult of personality built around a leader. But isn’t that what rock’n’roll is all about?

Do you ever feel discriminated against, coming from the south of the USA?

Totally. The northern states corner the market on open-mindedness and tolerance, but they’ll still say we still lynch people and are ignorant. But think of Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and all these brilliant minds who came out of the area. Ignorance is universal, it exists all over the world. There’s class problems and racial strife in the south, but at least we’re working it out shoulder to shoulder. At least we’re in the trenches with one another. We might be a big dysfunctional family, but we make it work. In the north they like to ride their high horses and be all open-minded, but they’re the ones living in their gated communities. They’re all sectioned off in their little ghettos. The southern white male is the only one who you can ridicule mercilessly and still be politically correct. It’s an age-old problem that southerners have to fight. It’s like at the Grand Ole Opry in the past – they’d want to wear their best clothes, not their overalls. Just because you’re playing a banjo doesn’t mean you have to be chewing on a wheat straw. We’re from Tennessee and Kentucky, so we’ll always be taken for inbreds for Yankees to patronise.

You’ve said you’re moving away from the Southern Gothic to the American Gothic. What’s the difference?

Southern Gothic is all about the social grotesqueness of life in the south. American gothic is more ghostly, more about the West and other regions and cultures. America is a melting pot, and there’s all these styles of music to unearth, like The Clash did in the UK – they were into ska and reggae. A lot of Johnny Cash-sounding music came from polka, Czech and Latin roots. Country music is an amalgam of different styles – you could say it’s the original American Gothic. Songs of pain and struggle, but incorporating Appalachian, western and polka influences. It’s kind of like a musical experiment which seems to have gone awry at the moment, and become pop music wearing cowboy hats. The ShackShakers are part of that great experiment. There’s nothing inconsistent.

What are ShackShakers fans like?

A mish mash – folks who are middle-aged and some old timers. Live, we get a lot of hellbilles, rockabillys and blues fans. They’re into the surrounding elements of the band – the county fair, hobos, freakshows, weird stuff that happens. I’d rather them talk about that than the band. This band is a love affair with the American old tradition, and we excite people, get them excited about their own culture. It’s a short history, a haunted and dense history. And we packed a lot in. The civil war thing hangs over our head to this day. A lot of ghosts stalk about. I’d rather people talked about those dramatic elements than what I did onstage.

Save My Face!

David Lee (guitar) was recently knocked off his trusty pushbike by a hit-and-run driver and copped some nasty injuries. He wasn’t insured. Make a donation to his medical fund at Pompadorks.com