LOUISE HOLDENfrom I Draw Slow
What's on your rider?Four pints of Guinness and a Wispa for the fiddler.
What would be on your fantasy rider?Birch root moonshine and a back rub from Hank Williams.
What's your pre-gig ritual/ routine?Scramble to write the same setlist we've been playing all tour, tidy up the band (except for the banjo player, who gets woken up by his own hair).
How do you get to the gig – limo, taxi, walking?Usually it's a fight over who's going to drive because taxi drivers won't take Konrad's double bass – or Konrad.
What's the best gig you've been to?The 20-minute set played by John Martyn in Whelan's in 2009. He wasn't expected; he played May You Neverand Solid Air, and he died very soon afterwards.
And the worst?Kenny Rogers, Midlands Music Festival, 2007. I loved him. Then he lowered a screen featuring Coolio rapping into the middle of The Gambler, and I fell right out of love.
What are your favourite venues?We always enjoy playing the Cobblestone in Smithfield because people go there to listen to the kind of music we like. We once played the Point and it was like singing inside a hangar, but I'm sure it's much nicer now that it's the O2, so can we please come back?
What's your crowd-pleasing number? Goldmine. It's the story of a bordello girl who falls in love with a fiddle player and everyone seems to like it. We also have a rousing murder ballad about a miller's wife who runs away with the daughter of a lighthouse keeper.
Groupies. Would you?What do you think I'm doing right now?
Have you a special stage wardrobe?Yes. I like to mix it up between Frontier Strumpet and Cowboy Widow. I can't get enough tweed.
Any useful stage tips?Don't eyeball members of the audience suggestively. I've been told it actually looks menacing.
What's your best tour story?We once played a bluegrass festival in the mountains in Pennsylvania (where I first tasted birch root moonshine). The audience was a mix of Deadheads and Amish families. A lightning storm knocked out the power. The stage was in a natural amphitheatre, so we played Amazing Graceinto the valley in the pouring rain and all had a bit of a moment.
I Draw Slow play Dublin tonight
