The last time I interviewed Michael Cook – known as Cookie – from the Darling Downs (Queensland) alt-country and bluegrass band Rusty Pickups, there was a donkey outside the studio at Possum Creek, where the band recorded. Naturally, when we spoke again recently about the band’s new album, I Don’t Think About You at All (… some days), I checked in on this unofficial extra band member and also on the band’s recent successes, which included a New Zealand tour.

Rusty Pickups were originally a four-piece, then became a five-piece – and are now back to being a four-piece, as founding member Waylon Katz is heading off around Australia on a months-long odyssey which will count him out of any band activity for a very long while.

‘Rusty Pickups is a table we’re all lucky enough to have a seat at,’ says Cookie. ‘Right now his chair’s pushed in, but it’s there for him to pull out again when he wants to come back.’

In this interview Cookie talks further about the ‘table’ that is Rusty Pickups and how it has kept providing for them all, which was the main aim. He has set goals and they’ve kept reaching them, not through crossing their fingers and hoping but by putting in the work and taking chances and opportunities.

It was Katz who wrote the album’s title track, drawing on conversations he’s had in his work as a therapist. Some other songs are written by Cookie, and they are what he calls clear-eyed rather than self-pitying: honest assessments of hard things, including addiction, the passage of time and the unexpected depth of feeling for a very small dog he rescued, named Princess Bubblegum.

The story about that dog is an example of why it’s always great to let interviews flow where they want to go – great stories often result. And it’s also why this interview is on the long side, but Cookie is always interesting to chat to, so a longer conversation is usually on the cards.

Listen to I Don’t Think About You at All on Apple Music

Listen to I Don’t Think About You at All on Spotify

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