Renowned singer and songwriter Bessie Messersmith is known for country music hits like “Strike that Iron” and “So So Blue,” but none more than her smash single “It’s My Wedding Day (And I Got My Goddamned Period).” But some of Messersmith’s lesser-known and longest-lasting songs are her most critically acclaimed, like “This Shotgun Shoots” and “It’s My Dog, Fred (Feed It, Already).”
The Murky Fringe sat down to talk with Miss Messersmith in a cozy coffee shop in the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama. Occasionally she provided coherent responses.
The Murky Fringe: Thanks so much for sitting and talking with us this afternoon.
Bessie Messersmith: I lost another tooth yesterday.
MF: Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.
BM: Fuck it. Highway runs just the same, don’t it.
MF: I, uh… Hmm. I actually don’t know what that means. But I’m so sorry about your tooth. So can you tell us a bit about your life as a songwriter—spanning nearly six decades now, it seems. Remarkable.
BM: Writin songs ain’t but burying family, but doin it on the radio. Ain’t nothing different between those two.
MF: Ah, okay. Burying family on the radio. I think it’s phrases like that one that has made you a mainstay on the country music scene for so long. Isn’t it true that you once played for twelve hours straight at the Ryman auditorium in Nashville?
BM: Bite your damn tongue, young man, we’re in Alabama.
MF: I’m sorry? Yes, we are, and it’s so lovely here. I’ve enjoyed being in Mobile and traveling around.
BM: I’m from Alabama and that’s where my parents and their parents and their parents come from.
MF: Yes but what about Nashville? The Ryman? What about Tennessee?
BM: No. Fuck Tennessee. How much’n more clear can I make it?
MF: Okay thanks, it’s clear. You were quite famously drunk for, well, several decades. What happened with that?
BM: Goddamned granddaughter of mine, she was always crying about it. “Grandma why are you drunk” and what not. I love that little pissant. Couldn’t bear to hear it anymore.
MF: That’s very sweet that you—
BM: No it ain’t sweet. That hellion’s high-pitched squeal, tellin you, sounds like a stuck goddamned pig. I’m sayin in like a literal way—I couldn’t take it to hear her cry. Like I was gonna kill myself. And thing is, I live up in their attic. My daughter’s attic. That’s where I live. Fuck you and your whole drunk family for judging me for that.
MF: No, no, that’s fine. The whole of the Murky Fringe staff has lived in our parent’s homes well into our 30s.
BM: I could tell that just by watching your homosexual-style walk when you got here.
MF: So. Your most famous song, “It’s My Wedding Day (And I Got My Goddamned Period),” what is that song really about?
BM: You’re goddamned kiddin me, right.
MF: Oh, well, I think most people assume it’s a euphemism. Er, sorry—most people assume it’s really about something else.
BM: I know what fucking euphemism is, you asshole. It’s when you kill old people and them who’s vegetables.
MF: No, it’s—
BM: Listen. I got my goddamned period, okay? At the altar. That song wrote itself. Easiest goddamned song I ever wrote.
