Photo by Clinton Querci
 
The strange and fabulous career of Little Annie, also known as Annie Anxiety and Annie Anxiety Bandez, is like an index of Dangerous Minds’ musical obsessions. We wriggle in the web she weaves. Some connections are personal: DM’s own Howie Pyro was the bassist in her first band, Annie Anxiety and the Asexuals—Annie says below, “Howie is the reason I ended up on stage”—and DM chief Richard Metzger has mentioned his friend’s encounter with Annie at an Islington anarcho-punk festival in 1984. But then, consider that she’s worked with Crass, Coil, Marc Almond, Current 93, Nurse With Wound, Adrian Sherwood and the On-U Sound crew, Youth, Kid Congo Powers, ANOHNI (formerly Antony Hegarty), Keith Levene, Swans, et al.—and then, consider what a shame it is that every article about Little Annie has to mention all these associations in its opening paragraphs, when her own performances, her own powers, are so extraordinary. That’s why all those people wanted to work with her in the first place.

On Little Annie’s latest album, Trace, she is both the torch singer she claims to be and the streetwise narrator of “Bitching Song,” who patiently explains why, no matter your profession, location, or standing in this world, you’re just another bitch. Her wonderful memoir, You Can’t Sing The Blues While Drinking Milk, published in 2013, is scarce in hardcover (this looks like your best bet), but the Kindle version is a steal at $4.99.

When I called Annie last week, my first question was about Hermine, the hurricane then approaching her current base of operations, Miami. Thanks to Julian Schoen and On-U Sound for putting me in touch with this great artist.
 

Trace (2016)
 
Annie: I haven’t seen the news all day. I was out shooting. It’s like the rest of the planet; it’s getting gentrified, Miami, so I was out shooting some of these Darth Vader buildings that are going up about ten miles up the road.

Dangerous Minds: So you’re taking pictures, you’re documenting the gentrification of Miami?

Well, you know what it is, a friend of mine, she said—because I love buildings—she goes, “These are really ugly, you’ve got to shoot them” [laughing], you know? And they really are, they’re really sinister-looking skyscrapers. I love skyscrapers, but we’re below sea level here as it is, and they’re really like… gunmetal gray. Like, everything you wouldn’t do in this kind of light, just really ugly. Almost so that they’re beautiful. They’re so sinister, they almost have a kind of eerie beauty to them. I just got a high-definition camera finally so I could shoot and print for online stuff, and I thought, “Oh, that’s a good place to start. Let me get my chops going on some ugly.”

Man, it did not disappoint. They’re using all these gunmetal grays; it looks like either it’s the Church of Scientology or Masons, there’s something really… like prisons for the very rich, you know? Really grim.

So how did you wind up in Miami, Annie?

That’s a good question. You know, it was a place I had no interest in whatsoever. I’d been down here with some friends of mine whose father used to live down here; I came down in ’93, you know, and really it was only a place I ever went to go somewhere else.

New York, I had to move, and all of a sudden I realized, even if it was possible to live anywhere, I realized I wasn’t interested in any of it. So I don’t drive—I’m a confirmed non-driver—and I couldn’t think of where I could live on the East Coast that was near an airport for work, or where I could get away without a car. Miami, it’s difficult, but you can be a non-driver down here. And then, I kind of fell in love with it… one morning I woke up and said “Miami.” I was thinking about that today, I was trying to figure out how that happened.

’Cause I could picture you in Cuba somehow.

In my neighborhood? You could be anywhere in Central America or South America. I would say it’s around 90 percent Spanish-speaking, and there’s French. You hardly ever hear English in my neighborhood. You could walk down one street and it looks like Rio, and another street will look like the West Indies. It’s all new for me.

I guess I was starting to dislike myself. I was starting to become one of those perpetually angry [New Yorkers], “This is gone, and this isn’t like this anymore,” so I wanted somewhere where I didn’t know what it was like, so I have nothing to compare it to. I can’t get nostalgic over it because I don’t know what it was.

Sure, I can imagine. I’m from Los Angeles, and that’s changed so much over the last 20 or 30 years. And New York was so fabulous at one point.

Some of it here feels like New York in the ‘80s. Not always in a good way, too. What I do love about it is what I hate about it. It’s very corrupt. You know, like, I love this: their idea of gentrifying one area was to put a strip joint in it. [laughs] And that’s what I love about it. Literally, like New York used to be, like you could walk a few blocks and you were in a different world? Miami still has that flavor. Not so much the beach, but the inland. My neighborhood’s the last old neighborhood which hasn’t been fucked with yet. They want to, but you’ve got a mixture of, like, millionaires living next to Section 8. It’s really like an eclectic, wonderful little neighborhood two blocks from the beach. But because it hasn’t been gentrified, people don’t want to move here, which is why I wanted to move here. I really do love this area.

But L.A., I’ve got a little crush on Los Angeles from the last time I went there. I was with Baby Dee and we played downtown L.A. and it’s so beautiful, the light! The way the light hits things and the buildings.

There’s something special about the light here, for sure.

It was just gorgeous. We played in a place where Charlie Chaplin had a fistfight with Buster Keaton or something, and the upstairs place, it was some kind of—not three-quarter housing, but some kind of housing association… 

But then you go out, by the same token, I would be there all day, and like, thinking like I’m walking through Calcutta to get home, because I’ve never seen homelessness and pain like that! You’ve got these beautiful buildings, and then the homeless thing in downtown L.A., I just felt so bad for people.

Oh, it’s disgraceful. It’s kind of like what I imagine happened in New York under Giuliani. As the city becomes gentrified, they’re just shoving homeless people into different quarters of town where they’re getting more and more pressed together. There are blocks that are just covered with tents.

Yeah! That’s what I’m—I couldn’t believe it. I was outside having a cigarette. I must have had—in less than 20 minutes, ten people came up and asked me for money, you know? Which I would have gladly given. If I knew I was going into that, I would have gone in with food or something.

Miami is terrible. There’s no safety net for people. There’s no social services as such. They blame the homeless—‘cause we are fighting, they want to gentrify this area—and people will say things like, “If we let the developers in, then it will solve the homeless problem, and the rapes will go down.” And I go, “Wait: unload that sentence. You just called homeless people rapists.”

There’s this way that they deal with the homeless, is to criminalize them. New York is terrible, but Miami… and L.A., I love it and hate it.
 

State of Grace (with Baby Dee, 2013)
 
You’re singing my song, Annie. You know Howie Pyro writes for Dangerous Minds?

I love Howie! You know that I’ve known Howie since I was sixteen years old.

He was in the Asexuals, right?

Yeah. Howie is the reason I ended up on stage. Because we were hanging out, we really were like punk kids in the sense of like punk, juvenile delinquent, like little silly kids—we used to put “KICK ME” signs on people’s backs. We were totally juvenile. They asked me to support them, the Blessed, and I’m like, “Yeah!” And I didn’t know what “support” meant. So I had to throw a band together or something. Howie and them really kind of were the ones who—I was writing poetry and doing little bits of I don’t know what, but I didn’t have any direction, I was just being a kid, you know? And it was really because of the Blessed that I ended up in show business. I love Howie; I love those guys so much.

When did you have a sense that you had this voice? I know you didn’t set out to be a performer, and they encouraged you to go on stage. But when did you realize that you had this talent? I just read your memoir, so all this stuff is fresh in my head, you singing at the park in the a cappella group as a teenager…

You know what? It was funny, because I really didn’t realize I had a voice until… actually, very recently. Like, I knew I had a very good sense of… I’m very percussive, so I’ve always had like a sense of cadence. I mean, I was told not to be in the choir, because I was basically a contralto when I was a child. I had this voice—I was a belter, and I could belt like an old gospel singer when I was a little kid, you know? I could belt out old blues songs, and I sounded like I’d been drinking whiskey at age seven, you know what I mean? I had that kind of voice.

It’s only in the last couple of years where I’ve realized the ability I have, you know, like the physicality of singing? I realize that it’s not something that everybody has. ‘Cause I didn’t know what I was doing, I would luck into things, but I never knew how I got there, from point A to B. I just did it because it had to be done. I think it was on the Swans tour: I go, “Wow, now I’m understanding what people say, singing from the diaphragm, and the rest.” I actually didn’t realize what I was born with, you know? I’m shaped like a singer. Some of it actually happens from singing, you get a wider ribcage just from singing. But it was only really recently, I go “Wait, I could do that!” Or that I actually trusted my abilities. I always kinda knew my abilities as a writer, and to keep time: I write like a drummer or a conga player. But it was only really recently that I knew I had something.

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Make it all the way through a career [laughs] before you start realizing. Because I’ve never had a pretty voice. I can do that, but if it was pretty, it was by accident. So now I go, “Oh wait, when I do this, this happens. Oh wait, I can get from this octave to another octave.” I’m only just starting to grasp what I’ve been blessed with. Yeah, so, just recent! [laughing] Last few months.

Well, you had an instinctive sense probably of how to work an audience, right?

That, yes. Live, I’m able to… hear people. Even if it’s silent, there’s something I hear from them, a dialogue that I’ve always kind of tapped into. And I don’t know why…

That’s why acting was so hard for me. Acting, I’m starting to learn, you’ve got to access a different part of you. But where there was something on stage, maybe it was what people get from gospel or something—I go into the zone, and when I’m in the zone, I’m able to supersede any ideas of myself, or anything. It’s probably the only time in my life I’m not in my head. I’m totally not in my head. I’m totally not conscious. It’s the safest place in the world, the stage, and it’s because it’s a dialogue, and I don’t know what it is but that’s something I’ve always had, which is why the stage felt so good. You know, to look straight in people’s eyes on stage. 

I mean, recording, I spent my On-U Sound years really getting into the technical side of, not the machinery, but of sound and of craft and the music part. But that other part, that was something that was always there. And it was a problem acting, because I’m so much myself on the stage, and when you go onstage and act, it’s not about being yourself. I mean, I’ve lost parts because I go in and I start rewriting the script in my head. And they want an audition, and you go in, you start going, “That doesn’t feel honest,” and acting isn’t honest. It’s about being believable.

When you’re singing with an audience, it’s absolutely about trusting that they can be themselves and you can be yourselves, because you have a moment of—fuck, it sounds really pretentious, but it’s almost like Zen—you’re so in the moment. Your mind can’t wander; if it does, you’re not in it. You don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks. You know when it’s right. It doesn’t happen all the time, of course, but fortunately, most of the time, where you’re absolutely in this kind of weird communion with other people. It’s such a gift to be able to go there.
 

Songs from the Coal Mine Canary (2006)
 
You’re an ordained minister now, Annie?

Yeah. I became ordained basically because I did needle exchange for a while. My main function was, I was outreach, so I’d be on the stroll with sex workers at night, like if they need condoms or syringes or something. But it almost became your beat, where anything that happened within a certain mile radius, I felt like, I gotta deal with—you know, you get a drunk that would fall down, break their arm.

What happened was, I had to call 911. I got the ambulance, and I asked where they’re taking the guy, ‘cause a lot of time with drunks, they would drop them off around the corner, and I wanted to make sure. And they go, “Why, who are you?” And I was standing in front of a church, so it just came out of my mouth, I go, “I’m his minister.” And they go, “Is that your church?” And it was St. Mark’s Church, which is huge, and I go, “Yeah, that’s my church.” And their tone totally changed. It was like, “You don’t understand, we get so burnt out, we pick up the same people day after day, and then they’re right back in the street again,” and all of a sudden they wanted to confess. So I go, “Wow, this could work, you know? Maybe this minister thing isn’t a bad idea.”

Also, I would get a lot of people coming up that I was serving, who would say, “Do you think God hates me for being a drug addict?” And I go, “No! What does your using drugs have to do with anything?” So getting ordained, I could say, “Look, I’m sanctioned legally by the state of New York to say God loves you, you’re just fine right as you are.” ‘Cause self-hatred keeps people in this cycle of hurting themselves, you know? And I’m a big believer in harm reduction, because drugs do work for some people. Most people are self-medicating for depression or whatever.

I’ve gotta check out what my legal status is outside the state of New York, but it came in real handy. Especially when you’re dealing with somebody—you realize that the thing with being marginalized is that no one wants to deal with you. It comes in real handy when you’re advocating for people. I’ve got a collar. On 9/11, throwing on a collar gave me access to places. Suddenly, you just get a little bit of leeway to be able to kind of help open the door for people. It was funny, I remember it was like the day after 9/11, and I was wearing my collar, and I was hanging out with these homeless kids going, “Man, you curse a lot for a priest! You got a dirty mouth for a priest.” So I said, “Fuck yeah, I do.” They were kinda getting annoyed at me; they thought it was, like, sacrilegious. But you know, anybody can go in and buy one; you don’t even need like a license to go buy a collar. I woulda done it years ago. Who knew? [laughs]

Yeah, it’s like if you walk around with a clipboard. Like, certain visual cues give you access to different places.

Yes. I was watching that documentary about Philippe Petit, who walked across the Trade Towers on the tightrope? And it was a clipboard, a clipboard got him in.

Is that right?

He would pose as a journalist, or an architect. And that was the old days, when you probably didn’t need 80,000 pieces of ID to get in anywhere. He’s one of my heroes. I just love somebody doing something like that for absolutely no reason, which makes it even that much better. It was such a joyful… I love stuff like that.
 

Short and Sweet (1992)
 
Getting back to the music. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t play an instrument.

No. I can play a bit of percussion, which I’m going to start studying down here. It would be crazy to not exploit something that Miami does so well, which is percussion, and percussion instruments which you can get everywhere. I write melodies, but I can’t notate—I can’t read or write music.

When I was a kid, you had to be rich to have a piano. I wish I had… if I played piano, that would be so great. But it’s the same with manuals, anything where I have to study it. I went to one singing lesson in my life, and I got bored. For the last album, I did demos where I would do the percussion and stuff with my voice, I tried to do it on GarageBand on the Mac. When I found out I could record on the phone, I was like, “This is great!” Because I was writing melodies, getting up in the middle of the night, I got 30 or 40 melodies, songs that are written half-asleep. Because it’s easy. If I played the piano, oh my Lord, you know?

People were asking about my photographs, and they were all on the phone, which means I can’t blow them up. They’d look like ghosts. The criteria for the camera is, do I have to read the manual? If I have to read the manual, I can’t do it. But if it’s intuitive—and it’s the same with music, I can intuitively know what will work, but getting it actually recorded or down… that’s why I do everything now with my voice. But I’m thinking it’s time to get like a MIDI keyboard and start faking it.

Because on that early Crass single and Soul Possession, you made a lot of those backing tracks, right?

Yeah, I made those backing tracks on a little four-track, on a Teac, and using a Casio keyboard, which were great. I learned how to edit quarter-inch tape from Adrian [Sherwood], but I couldn’t figure out how to play it back, so I would measure [laughs]. I did a whole track, I mixed a track not being able to hear it; I did it by sight. So I have that kinda idiot savant thing of sometimes being able to make stuff work. I should start a game show, Name That Sample. I could pick a sample from anything. Play me something, I will pick that sample out in a minute. And now it’s so much easier, I should really knuckle down.

Probably if I had learned to write music, I wouldn’t have come up with those sounds, though. So it was out of necessity. It’s a blessing in a strange way, because it’s forced me into—I thought I was making disco tunes, I really did. I hear something, I go, “Oh, wow, that’s what I was doing.” The process was different, but the outcome is very much the same.

People thought I was crazy. I did some track… I can’t remember, it wasn’t for the miners, it was probably for the Animal Liberation Front. And Youth came in, played bass to it, and I couldn’t figure out how to do the playback, so I had to mix it [laughs] with the metronome in my head. And it worked! It worked. I don’t know how, I probably couldn’t do it again, but all that stuff worked. In a way, it was great. If I played piano, it might not have ever gotten to that. I had to use alarm clocks, sounds of trains—which is what kind of got me writing in the first place. My father was a printer, and the printing presses used to make melodies. I would hear melodies from the presses, or melodies from the subway sounds. That’s how I became avant-garde. I didn’t know what the avant-garde was. It wasn’t like I wanted to be obtuse, it was just I didn’t know how to do anything else.

It wasn’t like I was an industrialist, because I didn’t know what “industrial” meant. I was just fanning away to be able to do my work without having any of the skills needed to do it. Now, that’s no big thing; it’s not crazy to use an alarm clock, but then, thinking back, I was like, goodness. The desire to get it done outweighed the impossibility of it. I used what I could, which was really exciting.

It kind of links your work to hip-hop and dance.

Absolutely. And that’s what excites me. The other day, I was in a cab, and I don’t know if the guy was mixing live on the air, or what, and I go, “Damn, this is what I was doing when I first started!” And I love that. This guy was mixing up a bit of Bob Marley with some techno with some God-knows-what, it was fucking great! And I love hip-hop for that, I love rap for that. And disco as well. It’s so much more adventurous than rock and roll ever was.

That’s why, when I was working with Adrian, the reggae guys, they got it. Using whatever feels right. They got it. They heard the same things I was hearing in a sound of a train going by. They got it, and started doing percussion to it, and they heard the melodies too.
 

Jackamo (1987)
 
I interviewed Adrian Sherwood a couple months ago, and one of the things I talked to him about is this overlap between the On-U Sound crew and the Crass Records people. What are your thoughts about what drew those crowds together, or what they had in common?

Originally it was because we were using the same studio. That’s how I met Adrian, was because Penny from Crass said, “You gotta hear this guy. I think he’d be a good one to produce your album.” But there was also, I think, what Adrian is so great at is his inclusiveness, taking disparate people with a message. With Adrian, it was always—what did he say, he hates that, like, “Let me put my tongue in your ear, baby” music. And Crass hated that too, you know? There was that thing that it should have some kind of meaning, even if it’s just a sonic meaning, be of substance, you know?

Adrian worked with people like Ari Up and Mark Stewart and Judy Nylon, mix that in with Bim Sherman and Style Scott and the whole reggae thing. Well, for one, in England, the punk thing and the reggae thing were more tied together anyway. There was always that. And I think with Crass, musically, their references were Miles Davis and all over the place; it was more open than, let’s say, a rock band might be.

Crass’s music is very strange. I still think that people don’t hear how strange it is.

It’s true that the similarity between On-U Sound and Crass was that they’re both really from their own place. We were all on the outside of what was going on, and for me it was a really natural transition. It was really easy. What was being addressed was the same thing. The whole punk thing for me, what I hated about it, was it was supposed to be “Be yourself”—as long as yourself is the same as everybody else. When it became a genre, I was like, “Wow, this isn’t individuality. I could close my eyes, I don’t know who the fuck I’m listening to.” I think Crass managed to kind of stay out of that, as did On-U Sound. They didn’t become a cliché sound and message. Both managed to kind of do so without the industry, with very little support from what was out there, which is amazing. Especially then. There was no internet or anything. You had to get it to people using the grid that was available to get across to people. It was kind of miraculous, actually.

This was before home studios and everything. Now it’s much easier to just do something. You want to get something done, you can usually find somebody with home equipment. I did a couple of albums with Paul Wallfisch. We did 95 percent of them in his basement. In those days, you had to find a studio, get dead time where there wasn’t a lockout where you could get in there and work in the middle of the night, and get the stuff distributed and the rest of it. It was not easy, but they both managed to have major influence. And they’re both oddballs, you know what I mean? Both gangs of misfits, which I love. It was wild. It was wild.

We lost Alan Vega earlier this year. I know he had a big influence on your life. Did you stay in touch with him over the years?

No; I saw him a couple of times in England when they came over. I ran into him… oh, gosh, it was at least ten years ago or something. And I wasn’t sure if he remembered me, I mean, I was a little kid when I met him. He was so kind to me, he was so kind, and kind of fatherly. Like, “Stay off the hard stuff, kid,” making sure I ate, you know. But no, we hadn’t stayed in touch.

He was incredible. I saw them in, it must have been ‘77 or something, but you know I didn’t realize they were going for years before that. I couldn’t believe it when I heard Suicide, I was like “Oh my God!” It was one of those moments, it really was. Like, “Man! What is this?” It’s wonderful, and it’s scary, and talk about being able to touch an audience. It was like a revivalist meeting, it really was.

I’m glad that they started to get recognized before he left us, that people like Bruce Springsteen and stuff started to give them their due, because they really were important. So important. They were just so fucking original. There’s nobody who’s come close to that. You know, you can’t fake it. And I can see them, like, with Beyoncé, you know what I mean? They could have fit into so many situations. It was so fresh.

I remember buying that album and being at my parents’ house or something. “What the fuck is that? Who’s that screaming? Who’s hurt?” That song was terrifying, “Frankie Teardrop.” Nobody sang about killers, before or since. It’s really wonderful.
 

Soul Possession (1984)
 
In your memoir, it seems like Sinatra is a presence through most of the book. Were there Sinatra records in your house when you were a kid?

No, not Sinatra. You’d hear, like, the neighbors playing Sinatra all the time. It was actually in England; it was this kid—it’s so funny, I was just thinking about him. Well, “kid,” he’s my age, we were kids, and he brought over his father’s Sinatra records for me. And I was just like wow.

So you didn’t hear it in Yonkers, you heard it in England.

Yeah, I mean I heard a little bit of Sinatra, but you related it with people who’d kick your ass, you know what I mean? It was like the neighbors, who didn’t like us anyway, used to bang Sinatra when they washed their car or something. I kinda didn’t really get it until I was in my 20s, and somebody came over with those Sinatra records, and I just like devoured them. My mother would talk about his phrasing. And then he’s got that—what Marc Almond has—the ability to choose a perfect fucking song.

The other thing is, too, the problem with Sinatra was, I was growing up during his bad years, when he was doing “Hey Jude” and all those terrible cover versions. Everybody got lost for a while. They were all doing it, they were all covering songs that they shouldn’t be covering, that weren’t that great to begin with, to try and be relevant. It was when I heard the earlier Sinatra, like Songs for Swinging Lovers and those albums, I was like “Man!” That ability to tell a story in a few minutes that will break your heart, he just had it. It’s a very European thing he has. He was like a chanson, like Piaf had it, that ability just to set a vibe…

He understood—and I’ve learned this since I love doing covers—you can’t do them till you understand what they mean. You have to live it. I’ve seen so many singers, like, they’ll do their second or third album and instead of taking a break, maybe there’s [pressure] to get something out, and all of a sudden they start doing standards. And you can hear… I recorded “Hier Encore (Yesterday When I Was Young)” three times, and I didn’t know what that song meant. And then I recorded it a second time, and I thought “Well, I know what it means now,” and I go, no—the third time, I really know what this fucking song means now, you know? Now I’ve earned the right to sing it. Because you’ve got a certain number of minutes to expose the guts.

Marc Almond has that: the ability to pick a song and understand it. Same with Scott Walker when he did Scott 1, 2, and 3. Otherwise, if you’re just covering something, either you stay true to it or you totally reinvent it, but either way you’ve got to understand what you’re singing about. Sinatra, I was like “Wow, okay—that’s what these songs mean.” And they mean more the more you go on in life. He was a torch singer, you know? He really was.

It was funny because when he died, I think I went to Midtown or something, and I go, “There’s gonna be crowds of people in the street.” And of course there was nobody. [laughs] I was the widow Sinatra, here.

If you try to sing along with Sinatra, it’s almost impossible. I don’t know when he stopped to breathe. His phrasing is just out of this world!

I read somewhere that underwater swimming was supposedly the secret to his breath control, but others said he didn’t really do that, so who knows.

I know he was a really heavy smoker, as far as the Camel on his rider, and a drinker. The underwater swimming is good for that. I do that, just ‘cause I prefer underwater swimming.

He’s another one I wish I went to see. But it was always like, especially when he was still performing, I go, “Who has like £100 to go to a show? That’s crazy!” At the time [it was], “I live on that a month. Ah, I’ll go someday.” You realize, some people, they’re not gonna be someday. And also, the problem with Sinatra when I was growing up was he went from being the far left, and then he got pissed off with the Kennedys or something, and started becoming this representation of, like, the worst of America, you know? I didn’t wanna love Sinatra, till I loved him. I can’t imagine him ever not being relevant. Or I could be wrong. He was one of those rare…

And the other thing, also, he was always called a punk from Jersey in my house. Like, “fuck him,” you know? He was always beating people up and calling people cunts, and this and that, which now is no big deal, but then it was like, “Who the fuck does this guy think he is?” And you think of Palm Springs and golfing, he just seemed like a major Republican or something. But he actually helped break down a lot of the color lines and stuff like that.

You know, I grew up just saying, “Oh, he’s a mobster, he’s a mobster,” but he’s a mobster that could sing whatever he—The man could sing. Break your heart. Just beautiful.

So finally, what do you have coming up?

I’ve got quite a lot coming up. I’ve got a book of my art coming out through Timeless in Toulouse who did the Coil books, Sleazy’s photographs and John Balance’s artwork. I’m not sure when that’s out, that’s gotta all be in by the end of September. I’m gonna be on tour of Eastern Europe with Swans in March and April, which will be great. Paul, who I work with, is off with the Swans for the next eighteen months, but we’ll be together on that tour. I’ve got a track coming out with HiFi Sean from the Soup Dragons. It’s an album—Bootsy Collins is on it, Alan Vega’s on it, I did a track, Yoko Ono. It’s like some serious dance track, which I had a great time with. We just sent in the video for it this week. I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces in the works. I guess I’m gonna start writing the next [album]. I mean, the industry’s so crazy right now, and the last thing I did was crowdfunded. It’s weird to ask people to support something when you don’t even know what it is you’re doing [laughs], and I’m not quite sure of the function of record companies anymore. But finally after all these years I’ve got my own website up, so I’m gonna be working on some new stuff. I don’t know what they’ll be. I have no idea yet, but they’re starting to kind of formulate in my head, just a little bit. I love touring, I really do.

Well, it sounds like you love to travel, period.

Yeah, I really do—I mean, it’s gotten so fucking difficult, with like eighteen hours at a fucking airport going through security and the rest, but I still love it. I just love live audiences. I mean, I love traveling—I realized I’ve been traveling all my life and I haven’t seen very much.

That’s a musician’s life, right?

Yeah, it really is. I’m obsessed with Naples at the moment, I gotta get to Naples.

Little Annie’s official website is littleanniebandez.com. Below, watch the video for “Dear John” from Trace on Tin Angel Records:
 

 
The stone classic “As I Lie in Your Arms” from Jackamo:
 

 
“Because You’re Gone Song,” words & music by Little Annie & Paul Wallfisch