- What’s the story with the Winnebago?
Oh that was fabulous, just a really special time of my life. I had a lot of sadness after my mum died and I was just desperate to get away so I bought I one way ticket to Nashville where I threw myself into the music scene, met a lot of lovely people and started a romance with one of them.
He was a poker player and he just loved what I was trying to do. I was trying to find a band so I could record and do the classic road trip thing but I didn’t have a social security number so I couldn’t buy the lovely purple bus that I wanted. He kindly, behind my back, set up a poker game and I won.
So he took me to this warehouse and one of the things he’d won over the years was a 1978 Winnebago so he said ‘go on my insurance’. I did it all up, I got a new soundsystem and some new plastic bits in the engine and just took off and it really was that lucky.
He was really great. He now has a wife and children and we’re still very good friends. He was an angel in my life then because I was very vulnerable at the time.
I was very head strong, I just wanted to do my road trip and have some solitary time and he just loved what I was trying to do so he helped me do it. You meet some beautiful people along the way who just get you and he was one of them.
- Was travelling alone when you were that vulnerable daunting?
Yes but you know what, I didn’t have one bad experience. The only bad experience I had is when I locked myself out of my own van and I had to break in and climb through the window at the petrol station with my arse hanging out.
People kept stopping me and I was like ‘but it’s mine!’ but that was the only bad experience, the world feels like a more scary place than it is, people are really quite nice.
- Do you think it’s possible to be ‘real’ when you’re being constantly styled for photoshoots and interviews and being put under the spotlight?
I’m going to give it a bloody good try. Someone tried to put false eyelashes on me the other day and I said ‘no way’, I’m very much my own woman and I’m coming to this in my late twenties rather than my early twenties like a lot of my contemporaries.
I’m a bit of a ball-breaker really, I’m genuine and I’m not going to be changing in any way at all. I have my own vision for what’s going on.
- What’s your biggest ambition?
My biggest ambition is just to keep releasing music that I absolutely love and doing honest and good songwriting and if I can keep doing that for the rest of my life I’ll be happy. Also, I might as well like to buy and old vintage Porsche.
But no, if I can just maintain my position and not disappear next year then that’s great, that’s all I’ve ever wanted really and that’s why I’ve fought through and carried on believing in myself.
Alice Gold’s debut album Seven Rainbows is out 4 July.
FemaleFirst Antonia Charlesworth