SPENCER CULLUM
Loose change
From Romford to East Nashville, SPENCER CULLUM has taken a peripatetic journey from pedal steel to pastoral psychedelia. Tom Pinnock hears how secret societies devoted to the Grateful Dead, “krautrock wormholes” and sojourns accompanying country superstars in Las Vegas have propelled this sonic upstart into bold new directions. “It’s more about gradually trying to find my identity…”
Spencer Cullum in June 2022: “like this weird timetravelling spirit”
Photo by ANGELINA CASTILLO
“I’M not the biggest fan of Vegas,” says Spencer Cullum, hunched over his laptop high in a hotel over Nevada’s Sin City. “I’ve already seen two vehicles on fire from my window. One of them was a
party bus in flames at 4am, right near a gas station! Downtown here is just crazy.”
Cullum, born and bred in Romford, Essex, is about to release his second album, Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2, a sublime set of eccentric folk and psychedelic exploration. Such music, however, doesn’t get your name in lights in Las Vegas alongside Adele and Penn & Teller: so right now Cullum is here as the pedal steel player for country blockbuster Miranda Lambert.
“She writes great songs,” he explains, “and she lets me play what I want, but it’s still bizarre, these massive crowds. It’s nice playing for a female country artist, though, because the crowd doesn’t go into that ‘bro country’ territory that seems to be taking over America.”
“It is a bit of an anomaly, isn’t it, Spencer in Las Vegas!” laughs BJ Cole, pedal steel maestro and something of a mentor to Cullum. “An ongoing gig with somebody like Miranda means you don’t have to look around for work too much – you can relax and do your own thing.”
Most of the time, then, Nashville-based Cullum is playing country music, but over the last few years he’s branched out with his more eccentric Coin Collection project. On their self-titled album and its follow-up, due in April, Cullum explores the pastoral psychedelia of Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers, and the more austere folk-rock of Fairport Convention, with a naïve and easy-going charm.
“This whole phase of my music is new to me,” he explains. “Writing songs with lyrics and doing – Idon’t even like saying it! – the singersongwriter thing, still feels uncomfortable. But I like that feeling of fear… I’ve had a lot of help from really good singer-songwriters in Nashville, like Andrew Combs and Caitlin Rose.”