Hello and thanks for being with us for another episode of Sode Jerker on songwriting.

I'm Simon, here with Brian, and joining us today is an American singer-songwriter, actor and seemingly

inexhaustible creative wellspring.

During a staggeringly prolific career spanning well over three decades, he's toiled under an

array of guises, released a plethora of esteemed albums

and worked with the likes of Johnny Cash, Jonathan Richman, the High Lammers and Steve Albini,

to name a few. His current release, The Purple Bird, produced by his old friend Nashville veteran

David Ferg Ferguson, arrived in February of this year, and we were recently afforded the

opportunity to quiz its creator about his writing process. We're delighted to welcome the brilliant Will Oldham,

aka Bonnie Prince Billy, to the show. Will was born in 1970 in Louisville, Kentucky. His mom was a teacher

and a talented artist, while his dad was an attorney and accomplished photographer. Our guest's

first passion was acting.

He took drama lessons from the age of nine, later joined the actors' theatre of Louisville,

and appeared as a teenage preacher in the 1987 John Sales movie, Maitwarn, while still at high school.

He briefly studied semiotics at Brown University in Rhode Island before dropping out to further

pursue acting. Around the age of 19, having moved to New York, Will began teaching himself guitar,

which eventually led to his earliest attempts at songwriting.

It was a couple of years later that he wrote what he considered to be his first proper song,

Turkey Vulture.

He continued to work diligently at the guitar and his writing, and began developing a fascination

with old-world folk ballads from the British Isles.

Having stepped back from acting to focus fully on music, Will laid down some of his songs

...