An Interview with Beth Ditto: The Ex-Gossip Front-woman Goes Solo

Several months ago Beth Ditto was contacted by fashion designer Stella McCartney, who was about to launch her new menswear range – at Abbey Road studios (naturally). Would Ditto come along and sing ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’, the empowerment anthem which had helped the singer’s now defunct band The Gossip conquer the world? Ditto hummed and sighed – before politely declining.

“It didn’t seem right,” she tells Hot Press in her Arkansas twang. “The Gossip was over. It seemed like such a pathetic thing to do. As if I was living in the past. It wasn’t relevant to where I was at.”

Yes children, this was before Donald Trump won the election. At which point, Ditto’s opinion swivelled 360 degrees. “As soon as Trump got in, I was like: ‘I take it back’. It’s important that we put it out there – put the message out there.”

Ditto is about to embark on the solo career she used to tell herself she didn’t want. From age 15 she was lead singer with The Gossip, a group that climbed out of the indie underground to become a lightning rod for American progressives, with the proudly queer Ditto an articulate and big-hearted spokeswoman. But everything changed – in that it fell ruinously apart – when guitarist Nathan Howdeshell found Jesus and moved back to Arkansas. “It’s painful for me to talk about,” sighs Ditto (real name Mary Beth Patterson).”Not because he’s born again but because I’m uncomfortable discussing the whole thing. I don’t want to portray him as something that he isn’t. I love him very much and I know he loves me. But it’s hard, at 3am, when you’ve been having fun and drinking all night and suddenly you’re having a conversation about heaven – and you don’t believe in heaven. ‘We’ll meet again in heaven’ – what are you even talking about?”

Ditto’s new album, Fake Sugar, is a logical next step for the now 36-year-old. The Gossip was all about the tension between her big, bluesy voice and Howdeshell’s post-punk shredding. Shorn of the indie angst, on the new LP Ditto enthusiastically reconnects with her southern US heritage – her rich gospel voice paired with swelling horns and stomping soul guitars. “It’s funny,” she says. “The Gossip were around for a really long time. Our first record was in 1995. There was definitely a southern element. Of course, back then Nathan and I were teenagers fresh off the turnip truck and very angry about the South. It was still close to home. Fake Sugar is more nostalgic. Even with the bad memories… I’m seeing them through a soft-focused lense. I realise they make me who I am. Back then, I wanted to become someone else.”

She takes no pride in saying it but it surprises her not in the least that the people with whom she grew up – poor, white, poorly educated – carried Donald Trump shoulder high into the White House. While liberal friends in her adopted home of Portland were stunned at Trump’s victory, to Ditto it was horribly predictable.

“The South has a lot of racism, a lot of cultural fear, a lot of homophobia,” she says. “That’s what rural poverty brings – if you see anything different, it scares you. I’m not excusing it. That’s how it is. I went back recently for my niece’s graduation – it was fun. I visited all the old places where I grew up. The rusted train bridge, the old water tower where I scrawled my name – it’s a beautiful, beautiful landscape. And then something comes up and I know that I can’t fucking be here. I fear for my mental health and for my wife.” (In 2013 Ditto married to her former personal assistant Kristin Ogata in Hawaii.)

In Trump she recognises a familiar archetype: the hate-monger who tells downtrodden people what they want to hear. “It’s always been hard for me to understand why poor people vote for rich guys. The truth is it’s all because of god. They believe this person will protect their whiteness. ‘This guy will make sure they stay on top of the food chain.’ That means more to them than their wellbeing.”

Ditto has been performing George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’ on her latest tour. “He never gets the credit for what he did for the queer community. He was the first – he stood up and came out before a lot of people. We should never forget him and the hits he took for all of us.”