Ginger Sins with Trail of Dead

Ginger Sins with Trail of Dead: Erstwhile Wildhearts man Ginger, currently promoting a new album from his Ginger Wildheart & the Sinners alt-country project, told us about a key …Trail of Dead gig.

Ginger: Best Gig I Ever Saw..(or at least the most life changing)

Early Autumn, 2007, New York and I was finally getting to see …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead play live.

I had been living in NYC for a few weeks, looking at apartments with a view to relocating to the Big Apple. I’d become obsessed with …Trail Of Dead since their So Divided album and was drinking excitedly as I waited for them to take the stage. By the time the show started I was merrily drunk.

There was two drummers and the sound was massive. In fact it was so loud and intense that I became lost in the music, the excitement resulting in repeated trips to the bar. As the end of the set approached I was aware of being way drunker than I had planned to be, at which point a pint of lager was dropped from the balcony, landing on my shoulder, narrowly missing my head and soaking me completely. Without regard for safety, or common sense, I ran up the stairs to find my assailant in a crowd of hundreds.

Remarkably I immediately spotted a guilty and shocked looking fellow, at whom many accusatory fingers were pointing. As I began beating him about the face in a scrappy headlock, my memory blurs into a dreamlike recollection of strong arms separating us, then me being assertively escorted back down the stairs and deposited on the sidewalk outside.

I hadn’t missed much of the show as …Trail Of Dead were soon back on their bus, with my drunken mass following them. I faintly remember trying to talk my way into the band, by way of sacking their guitarist, before staggering off in the rough direction of home. The effects of the alcohol and the seemingly endless walk saw me laying down, lost, to rest in a shop doorway in a bid to sleep off my drunken stupor.

On waking some hours later, I found I was actually a block away from my lodgings with no recollection of how I got here, where I got all these bruises from or how I ended up with such a brutal hangover. Paranoia enveloped me until I called a sober friend and asked him to take me to his next AA meeting, and within the hour I was introducing myself to a room full of people.

“Hello, my name’s Ginger and I’m an alcoholic”

The phone rang later that day and it was Jane, my partner back in England, informing me that she was pregnant.

With this timely wake-up call to get my shit together, I remained sober for the next year and a half. I now have a beautiful boy and sensible drinking habits. And I still adore …Trail Of Dead.

Ginger Sins with Trail of Dead: Ginger Wildheart & the Sinners’ self-titled debut album is out now via Round Records.

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