From His New Album To Hot Sauce: An Interview With CJ Wildheart

CJ  Wildheart is just in the process of grabbing himself a quick coffee before we sit down and have our chat over Zoom. He's been busy of late with a new solo album ready to go in March 2025, some Devilspit hot sauces to sell as well as getting ready to start on the next album (tentatively titled “Devil") in the next few weeks and a charity raffle in aid of Alzhiemers. Then there's Christmas to get ready for too with his family. There's no let up for him, especially when I find out later that he’s just come down with covid again. If there's no rest for the wicked then CJ really must have been an evil bastard in a past life as he's pure charm and cheeriness in our chat, enthusiastic about his music and life. Life feels good with him, even when the elephant in the room of his previous band The Wildhearts is lingering. Not that he's skirting the subject as he tackles the matter head on.

So you've got a new solo album “Slots", which is what you seventh or eighth one in the past few years?

Yeah, I think it’s like studio album number six or seven. Then I have the best of an album where I re-recorded 15 songs. I have a live album, and I have a demo album as well. So it’s kind of like maybe nine.

How did it all come about? You were involved with several bands in the past -Tattooed Love Boys, The Wildhearts, then Honeycrack and The Jellies. So why, all of a sudden, there's no other people.

It’s just me.

I know Ginger has just put together some version of The Wildhearts. I don’t really pay much attention. You know, me and Ginger, we formed the band together, and I consider Richie kind of The Wildhearts drummer, and either Scott or Danny on bass. So he’s got this version of The Wildhearts. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what he’s trying to do. Me and Richie, you know, we had to draw a line. It’s no secret. Every band has problems, and we just don’t want to be around that drama anymore, you know. And I hope Ginger’s in a better head space. But you know, personally, I think he should just let the band die gracefully. But, if he wants to keep the name alive, you know, I bear him no ill will.

I work on my own because I can. I paid attention all those years ago when all those albums I made in all the big studios of all the big producers, I paid attention, I looked at the science and kind of roughly learned how to make my own music. Honeycrack was a major impact on me. I came out of The Wildhearts, a band full of junkies, alcoholics, reprobates, bastards. I put my hand up. I was all them bits, but I joined the band Honeycrack, where it was four guys that could all sing better than me or play the instruments better, and then you had to make albums. They knew their way around the studio. So I had to step up. I couldn’t be this crappy rock and roll star. So I learned really quickly, and I learned so much from Willie Dowling. Then the other person was Jase Edwards from Wolfsbane. He taught me things. So between them two, they steered me in the right direction where I could eventually make albums on my own. I basically record my albums on my home set up then I go to a studio. I have Jason Bowld from Bullet For A Valentine do the drum machine parts. I program and then I mix with my friend Dave Draper. Now, if I didn’t have that ability, I wouldn’t be able to make albums, but the fact that I do 80% of the work on my own means I can make albums really cheaply, and that’s why I’m talking to you today.

That’s cool and, you know, thanks for being so open about all that. I’ve followed you for quite a while. I remember seeing Honeycrack a couple of times, The Jellies and yourself solo a couple of times as well. It seems like you're really happy with the live band that you’ve got. You’ve just done a brief tour around the UK and you’ve done a couple of shows with Michael Monroe as well. How’s that all gone?

It’s been brilliant. I had a version of a solo band in 2006 but it's just taken me that long finding the right people. I’ve never had the right people in my band until now. I’ve tried people, but they just weren’t right. They were too young. They were shredders. They wanted to show off. They didn’t understand the dynamics of the band. Man, I had a version of the band. We did the live DVD and live album. It was a good version of the band, but it’s not a patch on what I have now. What I have now is four guys who all have chemistry, and we’re all of the same generation, same age. There’s no youngsters in the band. I’m 57 this month. I don’t want to be in a band with a bunch of 30 year olds, no offense, but I’m almost double their age. I’m old enough to be their dads. I don’t want people being in a band where people look at me thinking “you’re my Dad, you’re the same age as my dad”. It’s embarrassing for me. I can’t and I don’t need youngsters around me to make myself look young. I know my age, and I can also outrun them, out jump them.

I’m in a band with people from my generation. They’re my type of people. We have chemistry, and we’re all best mates. And that’s the key, because if you’re best mates..... I tour now at such a level that if I if I go any smaller, I’m going to stop playing. But what makes it bearable for me is....because I am used to touring in tour busses and having full crew and staying in nice hotels. I did that a lot longer than I did touring in vans and hunting my own gear. You know? What makes it bearable is I love my band, and we’re mates, and it’s fun when we go ahead and play. So I’m hoping next year we do a bit more. But, you know, I’m not going to do 100 shows in the back of my van. I’m too old for that.

You’ve got some shorts lined up in Japan as well, haven’t you? Which I know from talking to you in the past, how much you love Japan, so that’s got to be an absolute big buzz for you.

I can’t tell you how important it is that I’m going back to Japan to play a couple of shows. We lost our record deal for The Wildhearts in Japan, and consequently, because of the drama which had nothing to do with me. I lost my solo deal as well, and it’s taken me four years to get another solo deal and for someone to actually just give me a chance and realize that, you know...... I love my band, The Wildhearts. Notice I say my band, because it is a band. Me and ginger started together. I didn’t audition. This wasn’t like, you know, Britain’s Got Talent. We started a band, you know, I loved, I loved the music I made with it, but it closed a lot of doors for me by the proximity of me to drama, which was nothing to do with me. It cost me my solo deal in Japan. I’ve managed to get another one, and the fact that my solo band are going out to Japan in March to play a couple of small shows, it just means the world to me. After nearly 40 years of making music and playing shows, it’s one of the biggest events ever.

I’m stoked for you, because I know how much kind of love and energy you put into everything. That’s something that’s always really struck with me, not just how open and honest you are, but how positive you are about everything as well.

I’ve always been so, like many artists out there, you know, I’ve had my moments of severe depression, and I’ve lost both my parents in less than two years, both to Alzheimer’s. My dad was my hero. My mom was the strongest woman I ever, ever knew. My parents were always there for me, and we were tight, and losing, losing them.....it’s not something you take lightly. But the way my parents brought me up is you crack on, you carry on, and you deal with things accordingly. There’s been moments when I’ve been depressed, but I look at the positive things in my life, you know? I have a beautiful son, a beautiful wife, I have a great band. I don’t sell millions of albums, but I’m still making music, and I can just about call it a job. So you celebrate those little things. And that’s the problem. People always look at the big things. It’s like, right? You’ve got a car that works. It’s not an Aston Martin. I’d love to have an Aston Martin. I have a Lamborghini. I’ve got to be grateful for having such a shit car ha ha ha! You know what I mean?

Look at the little things. I’ve got two bottles of my hot sauce (Devilspit) left. No one’s gonna be able to get any hot sauce until Spring 2025. That means I’ve sold out of all the hot sauces I made this year. That’s a victory.

The hot sauce, that’s really cool. I think that kind of took a good few people by surprise. But I remember, you always posted on Instagram and things like that about your cooking, so you’re doing the hot sauce is the next logical step. So how did it come about? You’ve mentioned it’s based on a recipe from your from your mum.

My mum was from the Seychelles and my dad, he’s from the West Indies, but his family were in India. I grew up on a lot of very hot food and spicy food, but I always saw my mum putting in hot chilies, hot sauce in everything, and you just couldn’t get hot sauce back in the day, I mean, you had tabasco. Even now some of the hot sauce, no offense to like Levi Roots, but that’s bad shit. So, my mum made her own hot sauce, because nothing was hot enough, or it was just spiced up vinegar. We made our own hot sauce, I grew up on that, and by the time I was 11, I was copying her, putting it on my food. It was a revelation what spicy food does to a lot of people. There’s a natural ingredient in capsaicin, I think it’s called. It’s a natural antidepressant, and it’s packed full of vitamin C, as much as any citrus fruit. So you tend to find spicy food releases endorphins, and it’s really, really good if you do suffer from depression. And I just became addicted to hot sauce at a really young age. So when I had the chance, I had an album called “Mabel” and I wanted to make a hot sauce to go with the thing based on my mom’s recipe. And there was one hot sauce company who said “We will make a hot sauce based around what your mum used to make”, and all the other hot sauce companies want to be just a label on their hot sauce. Their sauce was shit, so I wasn’t going to put my name on it. It’s like, no offense, but it just wasn’t very good hot sauce. And so that’s why Devilspit is really unique. There isn’t another hot sauce like it on the market, because it is based on my mom’s original recipe, so it’s close to my heart.

Yeah, it’s got such a unique flavour as well. There’s s a really nice tang to it, as well as the heat. I find a lot of hot sauces that kind of put in loads of Reaper chilies just to kind of say it’s hot, but there’s no flavour to it, whereas yours is so much flavour and so much heat as well.

That’s the art. Any any fool can make a hot dish. Any fool, can make the hottest hot sauce in the world. You just get chili extract. Just put it in a bottle and there you are. You’ve got something that’s going to probably strip your face off. It doesn’t taste of anything. The art to making good spicy food is having taste and heat. It’s really important. I grew up on tasty and hot food. And I had the greatest food. My mum and dad were amazing cooks. People used to come around to my house and they were “you grew up on this food?” I went “Yeah.” They thought “no wonder you’re such a food snob!” I didn’t have fish and chips until I was 15, and that was a revelation. I was quite surprised that someone gave me a dish of food, but I had to season it myself. Yeah, that’s just weird. There’s reason why in England and Britain, they eat so much salt. Because you’re asking a lot of people to put their own seasoning on there, and you tend to put too much salt. Now that’s why they have so much salt in this country.

The new album “Slots” is kind of following on from your previous one. Again, it’s very far from being that the chilled, happy guy, you write really nasty, vicious punk stuff. Is it your way of getting the bad shit out?

Yeah, right. I’ve ostracized myself from people who cause chaos in my life. One of those chalices was The Wildhearts. There was a lot of chaos around that band, and it was fun for decades, but I’m too old for that shit now, so that’s gone. So, I’m surrounded by people who are really nice and they don’t really cause me much hassle and so I tried to keep my life on a level. But when, when people hurt me, or if people rip me off, I put that negative emotion into music. So you will get those nuggets of vicious emotions, and all that energy goes into a song or music, I think it’s a really healthy way of channelling. There’s a song called “Bent” on my new album, and it’s about someone who was a friend of mine who really hurt me on the week my mum was dying as well and and it really affected me. I couldn’t believe someone could be so conversed, and it was someone I gave a lot of help to. So I wish them all the best I always do. And, you know, I think you treated me like a cunt mate. So I’m going to write a song about you. The minute I wrote that song, the minute I sung that song, whatever feelings are had gone, they’re not brought to me anymore. At the end of the song, I have the girl, the old lady from “Poltergeist” said this house is now clean. And that’s what those songs do. They exercise the demon, and that’s why I have those. So I need someone to rip me off or slap me for the next album,

I’m sure, the way the way the world's going there’s gonna be plenty of opportunities for that over the next few months.....

Know what? The easiest thing in the world right now, the way the world is, is to write an angry song. There is so much shit and just chaos in the world at the moment. I mean, there’s a song on “Slots” called “Coma”, which is all about what happened during lockdown. And I still think that’s really affected us. Well, we were hit by COVID and hit by Brexit, and that was like double whammy. We still haven’t recovered.

I totally agree that it’s weird to kind of see a society now that has gone through a major pandemic, major financial upheaval. I was at work last night stocking shelves and things like that, and the guys were chattering away on the headsets, talking about what was happening with North and South Korea at the moment, and all I could think is “this is nuts, man, it’s not supposed to be like this.”

It’s absolutely crazy. I mean, we had those riots this year. I feel embarrassed when I look back at the last couple of years. One thing just makes me want to hide in my shell is when we were saying hello with our elbows. You know, my son is going to look back at us, and go “did you do that?” “Yeah, I did for about a week” and he'll go "you’re a dick.”

We were all dicks at the time.

It’s horrible when you look back and you think, what’s that. And then Brexit, it killed my foreign trade by about 99%. I don’t sell abroad. It’s just people didn’t see what it did to the little people. No one buys my sauce in America. Hardly ever. No one buys my albums anymore, because just getting it out there and all the customs and stuff like that in Europe, it’s ridiculous. It’s one of the reasons why I might have to get a part time job come Summer to run alongside the music, just so I can carry on making music. I’m not a proud guy. I’d rather get a part time job, you know, whatever that job, be it delivery guy, working on a garage, maybe an only fans site, you know? I’m only joking. I am a bit cheeky.

You’ve got to be though, you know, you can’t let everything get to you, because, like you say, you end up walking around. We’re all carrying the Brexit weight and all this negativity. So, you know, you’ve got to kind of balance it.

I mean, there’s so many angry people out there. And yes, having passion is great, but passion just doesn’t have to be about being angry. Passion is when you hold someone you love and you hold them tightly and tell them you love them. Passion is when you go to bed and make love. Passion can be angry. You can be passionate about a football team if you’re that way. But it’s not just anger all the time, you know. It’s like you’ve got to get the balance right.

Definitely. One song that really kind of took me by surprise on the the new album was “In The City” by The Jam. It was just like, what? I didn’t see that one coming. I thought if you did do a punk cover it would be something, you know, something like The Clash, or something like that. How did that come about? I mean, it’s a fucking good song to start with.

It’s a great song. And whenever used to see them, like on YouTube doing it live, they’re always playing it like faster and it’s really pumped up. And I love, love the fact that it’s got the Pistols thing as well (note: the opening riff is very similar to the Sex Pistols “Holidays In The Sun"). I don’t know which way it came, but I think someone told me it was Montrose who was the original band who had that, and The Jam and the Pistols took it. And I just bought such a classic punk riff. When I first when I moved back to England when I was 15, I’d grown up in Singapore, Germany, Malaya, and I moved back to England when I was 15. I could play and I wanted to be in a band. I became friends with two skinheads. They used to try and pick on me. They didn’t realize I’m an Army brat and my dad’s West Indian, and I stand my ground. It freaked them out. This Asian kid didn’t run away crying. He just took his jacket off and said, right at this. And they turned out to be Jam fans. One of them was a bass player, and it was my first time playing with a proper musician. We'd just do Jam covers, get together like a band. So it’s a nod back to where I started.

It fits in so well with the the album. It’s all very punching your face, but there’s so much melody as well. You know, you scratch at the surface and there’s all these, these poppy hooks. How do you manage it?

You know what? I’ve always got to get to the chorus as quickly as possible. One of the things people talk about The Wildhearts, there's these 11 minute songs and they’re great, but it’s just a band showing off. The songs people always remember are the ones where we got to the chorus quickly. “I Want To Go Where The People Go”....“29X The Pain"..... You know, if you’re going to sit someone down and say, right, listen to The Wildhearts you’re not going to play “Sky Babies” or “Rooting For The Bad Guy” because you would you want to keep them like hooked. So I’m a firm believer in short songs. Less is more, get to the core as quickly as possible, and never forget that pop sensibility. You know all the best bands in the world, at the root of their sound, regardless of what style that they play, the ones you remember, it's all about that chorus.

I had a quick listen to some of your older albums in preparation for this chat, starting with Mable. Even though I hadn't listened to them for a while but I was still surprised at how much of them sounded fresh and were so stuck in my head.

When I write songs, I don’t spend hours or days or months writing songs. I’m about to start my next album in the next two weeks and it’s called “Devil”, but I want it in the bank by April. So I started this month (December) and I have a listen to some ideas on my phone. It will be a chorus or a riff or an intro or just a couple of chords, and then I’ll sit down at my studio, and then I write the songs to order, basically, so I don’t agonize. I don’t go to some sunny island with my notebook and with an acoustic guitar and write songs. I write as I’m working, and I think that’s one way to keep the music really fresh. I don’t get bored by songs as well. So sometimes when I record, I’ll literally just play a part once on the spot, make it up, and never go back to it. Just play them, and then I’m on to the next thing. Then you tend not to over analyze it, or become obsessed with getting the right intonation, or anything like that. So it’s definitely more of a feeling.

My heart is really with punk. It took me a while to realize. Musicians find their groove and my groove is punk. That’s where my heart is, and it’s like it’s taken me decades to find that group. I’ll never make a country album.  I can’t think of even worse. Or folk album or acoustic album. The older I get, the more fire I have in me.

The music industry is in such a shit way at the moment. It seems that every artist you speak to, no matter what level they are at, it’s rough for everybody, and it’s good to hear kind of you’ve gone, you know, I’m just going to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and that’s it. What advice would you have any kind of, like, young musician trying to get through now? Gone are the days of releasing albums, touring and relying on that as an income.

You know, it’s really hard. I work. I have a manager, you know, who helps me on the rest. Call label side and booking gigs. But, you know, I do 90% of the stuff on my own. I have my own label and I send stuff out. I have my own shop and as most of my stuff is mail order my hands touch everything. I've packed it, I've folded that tshirt. It's because I care about what I'm making but it's also because I have to save money. If I have to make a living from this then if I can do the job I'll do it. There's no shame in that. Yes, i was playing in front of 1500 people last week spring Michael Monroe in London with a sold out show, but the next morning I'm packaging up hot sauce. Every night I go to the merch stand to try and sell something. That's the thing you need to wheel and deal, you need to work hard. The minute you think you're a pop star, if you're not at number one you're no different to the guy who works in the garage or the butchers. You just have a different job to do. The minute it goes to your head then you've failed. Keep your feet on the ground and so as much as you can yourself.

CJ Wildheart’s new album “Slots" is available from his webstore.

Check out our review of 'Slots' here.

Interview - Scott Hamilton

Photos - G's Gig Shots