With lawyer's help, Holly Golightly gets US album tour in gear

Sometimes a girl just needs a lawyer. This summer, English garage-rock singer and guitarist Holly Golightly spent months wading through immigration paperwork trying to get a new American visa so she could tour for her new honky-tonk-inspired album, "You Can't Buy a Gun When You're Crying."

It's the first recording as Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs, a collaboration with her longtime stand-up bass player, Lawyer Dave, an outlaw musician from Texas. Unfortunately, Lawyer Dave isn't a real lawyer, so the 40-year-old London native had to find a bona fide one to get her visa application through.

Golightly first performed as part of Thee Headcoatees, an all-girl group that splintered off of Billy Childish's Thee Headcoats in the early 1990s. In 1995, she went solo, digging deeper into original blues, rock 'n' roll, and Americana. Under the Brokeoffs moniker, the songs are a collaboration with a kindred spirit and inspired by honky tonk, juke-joint blues, and old lo-fi 78 recordings.

When we catch up with her and Lawyer Dave, 33, on a five-hour drive from a gig in Houston to one in New Orleans, it's no surprise that she says the South is "definitely my favorite part of America." The duo comes to the Middle East Upstairs tomorrow night.

Q. You've now notched up, what? Fourteen albums?

A. About 17, including the collections and live ones. We're about to do another live one from this tour. We're bootlegging ourselves to recoup some of the costs of the immigration saga. It's a 15-day process that took three months. Earlier on in the year Dave was held at Heathrow for a day and sent home. We've had nothing but trouble going either way.

Q. The title of your new album, "You Can't Buy a Gun When You're Crying," comes from actual American law, which bans the sale of a gun to someone who looks emotionally distressed.

A. Yes. I don't know how it reads in terms of legislation. That's the upshot of it.

Q. The CD cover photo of you and Dave is very American Gothic.

A. We're ghosts. We wanted to be ghosts; you can see the background through us.

Q. You look like Bonnie and Clyde, a pair of rebels.

A. Yeah, that was the idea. Rebels in an old-fashioned, punk-rock way.

Q. The album features just you and Dave playing guitar and singing. Who's playing drums, and how does that work live?

A. Dave has invented a one-man-band drum kit, which he plays with his feet much better than most people play with their hands. You can't tell it's just two people playing if you aren't watching. It looks a bit funny. There's lots of duct tape and levers and pulleys. I'm used to it, so I don't laugh at him anymore.

Q. You mentioned there'll be a new Holly Golightly record next year sans the Brokeoffs?

A. Yes, I hope so. That's when I go back to writing songs without Dave. But we want to do another Brokeoffs record, too.

Q. You work with outsider artists, from Billy Childish to Jim Jarmusch [Golightly added two songs to the director's "Broken Flowers"] to Dave. Do you feel most comfortable with rebels?

A. I've never had a strategy of any type; it's just where I've fallen. Because I've been outside of the radar, except for the fleeting high-profile collaborations, I've just trekked along doing my own thing. There's a sense of comradeship, but I don't know how to do it any other way. I don't think they do, either.

Q. You duetted with Jack White on "It's True That We Love One Another" [from the White Stripes' 2003 album, "Elephant"]. Has the White Stripes' success made retro, scuzzy, blues-rock respectable to the mainstream?

A. They've brought it to a wider audience, and a small percentage of those people will seek out the original blues artists that inspired them. That's what I hope I've done when I've covered old blues songs.

Q. You seem to have a devoted following in Boston.

A. Years ago, the first tour I ever did started in Boston, but the headliner canceled. So we ended up moving it to the Vets Hall. People were charmed that we just got on with it, even if we sounded slapdash. Then I played the Milky Way and all these different places. I made friends when I first got there. Those people still come along. People like what's real.