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‘I ate acid for two months straight. It was the best time of my life’: Americana anarcho-punk Sunny War on booze, drugs and the KKK

The Tennessee musician ran away to hop trains and drop acid, then went viral after being filmed busking. Her sterling new album features her hero Steve Ignorant – and resists the rise of the right

It is a fantastic record, more evidence of a songwriting talent who has attracted the attention of Willie Nelson (who covered her song If It Wasn’t Broken on his last album) and Mitski, who invited War to support her most recent New York shows. It deals in Americana deeply rooted in blues – War is a devotee of Elizabeth Cotten, whose song Freight Train became a skiffle-era standard, and plays guitar with a distinctive “crab claw” finger-picking style more commonly used on a banjo – but also displays her longstanding love for anarcho-punk. Sunny War being interviewed with a friend in Venice Beach in 2011; she plays the guitar from 8min 57sec.After getting clean, she started self-releasing albums, signed to a local label and then to the longstanding Americana institution New West – home to Steve Earle, Drive-By Truckers and Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett’s the Coward Brothers.

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