“Well I think that it’s really unfortunate,” Coco muses in her instantly likable, bubbly yet gravelly, cadence. “I did this interview with a New York magazine, I think, about a week before. He took some of those things that I said out of context, and kind of attributed a different tone. I understand journalists, my sister’s one, it’s all about the angle they want to put forth, or whatever. It was a fun and fine interview, and I certainly didn’t say anything bad – I know because our publicist recorded it. She listened to it twice and said, ‘You didn’t say that!’ And I’m like, ‘I know!’ So [Imelda] read it and was just furious. They called our booking agent and said “you’re off the tour,” and I was like, ‘Get her on the phone, I’ll talk to her.’ But she wouldn’t talk to me, so I talked to her tour manager and explained what happened, and said that if we actually meet you can see we’re really nice people, any one will tell you that. I would never in any way say anything weird or mean before I even met you,” Coco proclaims. “That’s not how I roll. She had her mind made up and that was it. So we turned around and came home – stopped in New York and hung out with some friends, then went straight back to Nashville. It was ridiculous,” she declares.
When they have been allowed to fulfil duties as tourmates, The Ettes have done so with a diverse range of big name acts. Coco lets us in on why she thinks her band’s style can complement artists ranging from The Black Keys and Dead Weather, to late-great punk-rocker Jay Reatard. “It comes from a real place. To me and all of us in The Ettes, the beat is just so important. It really is what drives us all, it’s what we notice about other music,” she ponders. “I think when people come see us they’re always a little surprised how heavy we are, because we are a three-piece with two girls in it, y’know. So we’re always more intense and hard-hitting then they might of expected.”
The Ettes’ prolific body of work balances that ferocious rock ‘n’ roll with Coco’s soaring vocals, a dynamic which comes naturally to the band. “When the beast wants to be let out, I let it out. I was working with Greg Cartwright with our side project Parting Gifts, which some of The Raconteurs guys are in, Dan Auerbach from Black Keys is in. I wrote this song, this straightforward Jerry Lee Lewis piano rocker, and Greg started messing with it, turning it minor. He’s form Memphis, so he just Memphis-ed it up. It went to this place that was soul. Then he just said, ‘Ok, now sing it.’ And I was saying, ‘Oh no, I can’t sing like that, I can’t sing soul!’ But my friend Rachel from Detroit Cobras was telling me, ‘White people can sing soul!’ But I had this sort of mental block. I can sing country stuff, I have a decent scale and range with my voice. I’ve been singing for a long time, I just sing the way I sing. I don’t know why,” she chuckles.
