OMC: There is a special love affair that occurs between every home recording musician and the sound of themselves being played backwards on a tape. It's like having fallen in love with the devil.

WEW: I used to never want to do things I couldn't do live. Even things with full band on the record, I still perform stripped down live. For awhile I was even afraid to do that. These records are going to be around long after I'm dead, so I might as well do what I can to spruce them up a bit. I'm not ever going to go crazy and make a record that's full on arrangements and strings ... though that might be kinda fun.

OMC: It seems as though artists in bands inevitably want to attempt playing solo, and likewise, many solo artists want desperately to form a band. I get the impression you were probably in a punk band at one time or another.

WEW: I was! (laughs) We were called Lost Cause. We wanted to sound like Minor Threat so bad ... but 10 years after Minor Threat had already broken up. We were like "okay, let's just play as fast as we can." We played a couple shows, but I just realized that I couldn't pull it off. I love that kind of music, but it just wasn't me. It felt unnatural. I thought, I'll leave it up to the pros and just stick with my roots, the guitar and banjo.

OMC: Having toured with Murder By Death, Clutch and Ten Grand just to name a few, is there a conscious effort to tour with bands and play clubs where country or folk can be brought out of its usual?

WEW: I've done a handful of folk festival type things, but I'd rather play rock clubs with bands. I want to have the only banjo in the room. You get to stick out, and people pay attention. When it's old-timey folk hour, there's a hundred other guys trying something similar. In this scene is where the hunger is. When you go to folk jams, there's a different culture or vibe to it.

Going back to Minor Threat, when I first discovered them it was like "Wow, these guys put out their own records. They started their own label. The whole DIY concept was like, "I don't need a booking agent or label." I could book my own shows, make my own CDs and if I could do country folk stuff through a punk channel, then I could tour with bands I love. It was strange to me that it worked. It's just the kind of music I enjoy, and I don't tour with bands unless I dig them.

OMC: When asked why the Sex Pistols toured the American South, John Lydon said, "You should always go where you're not wanted. Otherwise you're just preaching to the converted."

WEW: Exactly. Thankfully it's always gone well. I've never encountered many disrespectful people. There were only a few occasions. When we were playing black metal clubs in Germany and the other bands had the makeup and they were not kidding. I was like "oh shit, there going to f*cking beat my brains. They're going to gut me and make a stew out of my brains. I read that Lords of Chaos book," but it was great and the crowd loved it. After that I felt like I could play anywhere.

I just did some shows with The Pogues. They're one of my favorite bands of all time. I played three nights with them in Boston and that was a case of playing a sort of similar kind of music. I mean it's Irish folk, but it's still rooted in a kind of folk music. [MacGowan's] style of songwriting could have been written 200 years ago. Playing those shows was a real honor. When Shane MacGowan passes you the wine bottle, you know life is glorious and you're feeling really good.

OMC: There's a tendency in punk to retain the exuberance of youth, just as blues and country strive more for the authority or world-weariness of age. How do you think your work reconciles both?

WEW: I think punk is a youth-oriented thing. You don't think the same at 18 as you do even at 28. It feels like bringing the two bookends together. Seeing the kid in the Misfits T-shirt next to the old timer who came because his son is into it. I like the mixture of crowds, making those worlds collide.

I grew up listening to an older style of writing, so it's stuck in my head. There's also a sense of dissatisfaction with aspects of your surroundings. The idea that I only know a few chords on this banjo, but that's all I need to write a song about how pissed off I am. It's not that different than country music. Two sides of the same coin. I don't know how I put them together.