SOL: You consider your music to be rock played by a punk and country perspective. What are the kind of punk artists you enjoy the most?
Warren: I am completely old school: Buzzcocks, Clash, X, Dead Kennedys, Husker Du, Crass, Minutemen, Mission of Burma, early Sonic Youth, and so on. One of my favorite bands of all time is Minor Threat. I want to do a folk album of just Minor Threat covers!
SOL: Have you lived any of the stereotypes that surround rock, country, and punk? Did you try to experience all 3 to an extreme level and then decide that just combining the 3 on an intermediate level would suit you best? Or did this combination of genres come about in a different way?
Warren: The combination came out in a different way. In fact, I really don't believe that such genre categories are terribly meaningful and they are certainly not pure! Punk rock is a form of folk music, which is simply an oral musical form in which people learn songs and musical styles person to person, generally ignoring formal musical training. Rock and roll also emanated from folk music (of which country music in America was one subgroup) and has, unfortunately, moved away from its oral tradition-- you can now "learn" to be a rock and roll musician at music schools all across the country. You can learn exactly how to play guitar like a shitty punk rhythm guitarist, how to hold your hand (in the "wrong" place) to make what used to be considered mistakes, etc...
I grew up listening to folk music because my mother was a dancer who had been involved in the folk music scene and the culture around it in the early 1960s: Bob Dylan, the Weavers, Odetta, and others were the soundtrack I grew up to before discovering pop music on my own. As a teenager I was turned on to underground music scene in Los Angeles and ended up going to punk and folk shows in the mid 1980s and never looked backwards. & I never lost my love for folk and country music, because it did not seem like a stretch to combine these with punk motifs. And early cowpunk bands like Rank & File and X certainly incorporated rockabilly influences, which made my body and soul feel good when I heard them way back when.