I’ve been friends with Richard Coker since the mid-1980s. I’m normally not this direct/borderline irreverent when interviewing a person. But Richard is one of the most intelligent and unflappable people I know. I’m fairly certain I could wildly opine that his birth was instrumental in the breakup of the Beatles and he would not blink an eye, plus he’d likely have a balanced challenge of my absurdity. This is not the first time I’ve interviewed Richard for this blog, in addition to his solo acoustic work (which we discuss in this interview) he is also a member of the Crumsy Pirates (aka the subject of the blog’s first interview). My thanks to Richard for his tolerance of my questions and his willingness to discuss his new release, a collection of twelve-string songs, Loa.

Tim O’Shea: You sing with a British accent at times, don’t deny it–and it’s never intentional, I know. Does it annoy you when people think it’s an affectation on your part?

Richard Coker: I’ve loved British music all my life, but I have never purposefully tried to sing with an English accent. No one’s accused me of affecting it, though. Maybe said accusations are lacking because so few people are familiar with my music. However, linguistically speaking, there are far more traces of British Isles speech among Southerners. Appalachians still use Elizabethan words (at least they did before satellite dishes). Perhaps, too, when I’m singing I favor softer, more Englishy, vowel sounds. I like the way they feel when I sing them.

O’Shea: How many songs have you written over the years?

Coker: I’ve been writing songs for over twenty years. I still have lyrics for over three hundred songs. My current acoustic set has about seventy songs to it. If I had to guess, my total song output is somewhere around four or five hundred.

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