I recently spoke with Sally Timms, co-lead singer of The Mekons since 1985, the year she stepped into the band on their breakthrough album Fear and Whiskey.
The Mekons formed in Leeds in 1976 under Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh and have outlasted nearly every other band to emerge from that same British punk explosion, shapeshifting through country, folk, dub, and art-punk without ever settling into one shape for long. Before joining, Timms recorded the experimental film score Hangahar with Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks in 1980 and fronted the all-female outfit the Shee Hees.
Timms has run a parallel solo career the whole time, moving between lo-fi electronics and alt-country with releases including Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat, To the Land of Milk and Honey, Cowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments for Lost Buckaroos, and In the World of Him, a record of songs written by men, sung from their perspective. Her song “Horses” was later covered by Will Oldham.
The Mekons are currently touring behind Horror, a new record on Fire Records built around what they’re calling horror-folk, tackling imperial legacies with the same nerve they’ve had since 1976. Catch them in the UK this fall at The Prince Albert in Brighton on October 22 and The Garage in London on October 23. She and Langford also just played Mini-Mekons at Solid Sound Festival, stripped down and acoustic, mining the deep dark Mekonic lake for classics and rarities.
A voice that’s been called intimidating and a sweetheart in the same breath. She joined Radar to talk about all of it.
Radar features discussions with artists and industry leaders who are creators and devotees of music and is produced by Dylan Hundley and The Vinyl District. Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer, and the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.
