[Music: "I Seen what I Saw" from Sackcloth 'N' Ashes. David Eugene Edwards, dressed in black and wearing sunglasses, enters an accordion shop, in Rotterdam. The next scene shows DEE looking around in the shop, he picks up an accordion and starts to play the intro of "Low Estate".]

Interviewer: So David how do you like this shop?
David Eugene Edwards: It's amazing all the accordions. I mean just the amount of old accordions it has. I'd loved to have a whole house.

I: Are you looking for old instruments all the time when you are on tour? Are you going to shops?
DEE: As much as I can. There's not that many of them. Some stores will have just one accordion or two brand new ones, the type that I don't play, like a piano accordion or something. Yes, I'm always on the lookout, trying to find one. I had one that was a hundred years old, that I played for three years and ruined it, because it was so old. I played it every day, so it fell apart.

[Music: "Harms Way" from the Effenaar in Eindhoven 2/7/97 (European notation).]

I: How did you get in touch with accordion and bandoneon music? When did you hear it first?
DEE: I don't know when I heard it first, but when I first became really interested in it was through cajun music, which is a totally different style of accordion and sound than I use, but that's how I got interested in it. I had a cajun accordion at one time, but they're just very light hearted. There's no minor bassy sound to it, it's very upbeat dance music [makes "takkatta, takkatta" sound] and I like the more [makes low roaring sound]. It's like a whole orchestra in itself.

I: That's also why you prefer vintage and ancient instruments?
DEE: The sound of them, they have a hollower sound. Not all the time, but there's a certain hollowness to the sound that I like. A deadening of the wood, the wood is old, settled and it has its own character. There's more mood to it. New instruments are very hard for me to play. Very cold.

[Music: "Harm's Way" from the Effenaar in Eindhoven.]

DEE: There's patterns that are worn into a certain instrument like this accordion. Whoever was playing it before, they had a certain style of playing. They had a favorite way of playing or a certain song or key. So a pattern get worked into it. And when you play it that pattern is still there. Certain notes will come out, jump out at you more than other notes, because they weren't used as much. The notes that were used constantly are much softer and quieter. I like those notes.

I: Can you illustrate that on one of these instruments?
DEE: I'm not sure how in tune they are. They tend to go out of tune.

I: This is a bandoneon from this shop.

[DEE picks up an accordion from the shop and starts to play the intro of "Low Estate".]

DEE: It's very old and soft and deep at the same time.
DEE: That's a good note there.

DEE: Look at it. I don't know why I like the way it looks so much. It's old and dirty. I don't know I just like it that way.

I: Do they have to be worn off a little?
DEE: I think so. The one I play is so much louder. It's sixty years old, but it's still really deep. It's bigger, the reeds inside are not as used, they're thither. It has a thither sound. So I'm trying to break it in, so I play it a lot [continues to play].

DEE: When we're writing a song and I'm playing the concertina it sets its own mood. The drums and bass play along with it, rather than it playing along with the other instruments. The other instruments have to come and play with this instrument, rather than the other way around.

DEE: I don't play the instrument like people normally would play the intrument. If you went to school and you had learned how the play this instrument and you'd saw me play you'd say [makes "tuttuttuttu" sound]: "you don't know what you're doing, you play it the wrong way, your technique and fingering are all wrong.

I: But you don't care about that?
DEE: No I don't, because I get the sounds out of it that I want to hear. I make the music on it that I want to hear.

I: It that similar with all the instruments you play?
DEE: Yes, I never had patience enough to take lessons. So I just had to teach myself how to do it. All the instruments I play, I play the way I taught myself to play, which is not the way other people tell me to play them.

[Music: 16hp doing an acoustic version of "Black Lung", on a crossroad in a forest.]

DEE: My music is not a specific kind of music anyway, it's always changing, it always has different instruments in it. This little world that I've lived in or have been brought into.

I: Record stores file it under rock.

DEE: Yes, and they put in under country sometimes, they put it under folk. A smart record store will put it under alternative, and they'll put it under country, and they'll put it under folk. So wherever you are you can get it.

[Music: 16hp playing "Low Estate" at the Effenaar.]

DEE: There's not too much music of modern times that I would call beautiful. It's been lost to money and greed. Especially in America people don't play music in their homes. It's not a social thing anymore. There's music everywhere, it's on the radio, you hear it in the street. You hear it constant and there's so much of it, it's such a big industry, that you just grow numb.

[Music: 16hp doing a acoustic version of "Bad Moon Rising" at the crossroad.]

DEE: Music is my way of reacting to everything around me. Which is the way I think it should be used. Basically music is a gift from God, which is to be given back by giving it to other people in a repectful way, and treating it as a way to earn money necessarily. It's ok if you earn money making music, but if that's your intention ... I don't see it as a job. I think it's something that is given to you to do something good with.

[Music: 16hp playing "For Heaven's Sake" at the Effenaar.]

DEE: My parents were very much into living in the past in a way. My grandfather who is still alive now, he still lives very much like 50 years ago. That's just the way they are. I'm sure it's the same too in Europe. You have people who still live as a hundred years ago, the rural people, the farmers, shepherds.

[Music: 16hp playing "For Heaven's Sake" at the Effenaar.]

I: Your grandfather was a preacher. Did that influence your music or lyrics?
DEE: Yes, I have a great deal of respect form him. That is not why I sing what I do, and do what I do, because of what I believe in. It's very similar to what he believes in. A lot of the things I do he would think was ... evil, but he loves me, he doesn't cast me out. But yes he had a great influence. I spend so much time with him. Always at church. I went to church two or maybe three times a week. Sometimes living in the basement of the church, so I always heard the music, the organ, the choir.

[Music: 16hp playing "Phyllis Ruth" at the Effenaar.]

DEE: All these images of my childhood come back to me every night when I play. I'll be playing a song, playing the accordion and singing, but my mind is elsewhere thinking about what I'm singing about. Like a relative of mine, like "Phillis Ruth". "Phyllis Ruth" is about an aunt of mine who is very special to me. That's what I think about when I sing the song. Sometimes I realize that I'm playing an instrument and singing at the same time and think about something completely different. My body is just working like a machine, but my mind is gone elsewhere.

[Music: 16hp playing "Phyllis Ruth" at the Effenaar.]

DEE: You're not gonna get away from anything, no matter where you go. You're not gonna get away from greed and corruption and lust. You're not gonna get away from it if you leave rock and roll and go work in the field. You're gonna have it in the field too. Your gonna have the same thoughts and desires, maybe for different things, but it's the same thing. So I don't think rock music is a bad thing that I should be ... There's things about it which are bad and I don't like, which I wish weren't a part of it. But I think that about everything. I wish that about television and cars. There's a million different things we'd probably be better off without.

[Music: 16hp playing "Phyllis Ruth" at the Effenaar and credits rolling.]

Transcribed by Erik.