You recorded with Doug Easley.

Everything we've done with Doug. It's kind of a hometown studio, it's slowly got more attention from other bands. We like the studio, the people are smart and they have skewed ideas once in a while. It might be a good idea onetime to go somewhere else and do something to evaluate what Doug Easley is all about.

You've given up your day jobs?

We haven't really worked much in 18 months. We toured so much it was hard to come home and hang onto them. Things are better. Moneywise it's better, shows are better. Records are slowly selling more. Like I say, we're not really in a hurry. You can't get in a hurry because if you do you make yourself do things you'll later regret.

The name, The Grifters? Is it Jim Thompson?

We were sitting around trying to look for a name and Trip had a Thompson book and this was on the back flap and we found in the dictionary that the word has no European precedent. It was the name given to the guys who ran the Wheel of Chance in the old American carnivals back in the 30s and 40s. So that was kind of intriguing that it was not an old word and was of American origin. So, what the hell. Unfortunately it coincided with the movie coming out.

You had a 7" single LAST MAN ALIVE, was that just England?

As a 7" single it's just England. We thought we would bless you guys with just the single. It's coming out as a video single in America and I think it's going to be released to American Top 40 radio. I think because this kind of music is, I guess, indie alternative is the top selling music. Some aspects that's good. In America the kind of bands that are surfacing now are really mediocre for me. Watered down versions of the original artists that they listened to two years. These bands have influences that don't go back very far. It helps to listen to old stuff and remember that those guys weren't doing it for a record deal, but for the sake of playing music. We laugh when people ask what kind of music scene is there in Memphis. We tell them there's been a music scene in Memphis since about 1920. It really is the important stuff. In hundreds of years it will still be what happened in the 40s and 50s in Memphis and even the 60s with Stax. For a lot of English bands, The Yardbirds, even early Beatles, were influenced by Black music. Sometimes Americans take that for granted, they just don't pay attention to that music anymore.