Lissy Trullie Recalls German Swine Flu Scare

It's been quite a year for New York-based singer/guitarist Lissy Trullie. She got signed to Downtown Records and recently rereleased her debut EP, 'Self Taught Learner,' which features a duet with Adam Green on Biz Markie's 'Just a Friend.' She's also performed around the world, which led to great experiences marred by a swine flu scare in Germany.

"We had a little bit of a rift in the road when my bassist [Ian Fenger] got swine flu. We had to cancel a bunch of dates," she tells Spinner. "We noticed him getting sick in Hamburg. We played the show there and then the next morning we took him to the hospital because he was shivering and moaning, really kind of in agony, in physical pain."

At first, Trullie and the band didn't realize how serious the situation was. "Nobody thought it was the swine flu," she says. "We actually joked about it, which, looking back on it, was stupid. But yeah, it sucked. We had to cancel a bunch of dates, which I felt really bad about. Even the doctors in Hamburg didn't know what was going to happen to him so we were all just scared."

Since the doctors didn't know how bad Fenger's illness was, the band all had to stay in their hotel while things were sorted out. "I had my guitar. There was a television but it was pretty much in German and we watched a lot of German music videos," she says. "We had the Internet but that got boring after an hour. We were silly a lot. We took a lot of pictures. All of us gave all of our books and magazines to Ian because he was stuck in literally just a hospital room, kind of 'E.T.' style, quarantined. We didn't have any reading material, so we were really bored."

Fortunately, the ordeal was over fairly quickly. "We were quarantined for a couple days in Hamburg and then we got released to go back to London but still in 'quarantine,' so we couldn't leave the van once we got in it, because technically our van was contaminated already. It was ridiculous," she says. "We had masks and had to get checked out by the health authority in London. They basically said 'If you continue to take your Tamiflu and nobody's sick, then you're fine.'"

Trullie, who never got the much-hyped virus, is currently working on her debut full-length album with former Suede member Bernard Butler.