Here’s an online exclusive – an archive interview with Joe from issue #83 in November 2008. Asking the questions – Trevor Hodgett.

American guitar slinger Joe Bonamassa is rightly acclaimed for his virtuosity – but what makes him really exceptional is the creativity, inventiveness and imagination with which he plays.

Bonamassa is modest however about his improvisational talents. “Sometimes I don’t think about anything and it just kind of comes out,” he smiles. “And sometimes I’m thinking about what I want to have for lunch the next day or about random personal events! There’s no rhyme or reason but I think the best nights are where I don’t think about anything, where it’s like a stream of consciousness and you just flow through it and get the emotion of it all.”

Bonamassa believes he is continuing to develop as a player. “In the sense that I think I play less and I think my sound has gotten better and I think my phrasing and some of my playing is a little more original and identifiable.”

Not only a great guitarist, Bonamassa is also an effective singer as is evident on his recent album Sloe Gin. “I think singing has really changed my career,” he reflects. “I don’t think I’d be as successful as I am today without singing. It’s just one of those things that makes you a better musician because it makes you think in different terms as a player – you play different stuff, you play less or you play more depending on the vocal because you’re the one singing. If you’re not the one doing it, it’s a different perspective.”

One of Bonamassa’s great influences has been the legendary, stunningly eclectic Danny Gatton. Well, get this: in 1990 I was in New York and I was sitting in Tramps’ club being blown away by a performance by Gatton – who then announced that he was going to bring on a thirteen year old kid to jam with him. ‘On, no!’ we groaned. ‘We’re here to pay homage to Gatton, not to hear some brat.’ Well, the brat was Bonamassa and he totally electrified the audience. “You were there?” gasps Bonamassa. “Wow. Danny was really important to me because he was the one who said, ‘Listen, kid, you’re pretty good at blues but you don’t know anything about jazz, you don’t know anything about country, you don’t know anything about rockabilly,’ so he was the one who for want of a better phrase turned my life from mono to stereo.”

Note: evidence of Joe’s youthful prowess can be found on YouTube here – Ed.

“And I learned a lot of double stops and a lot on the technical side. I learned how to use my fingers and I still use a lot of the stuff that he taught me.”

Bonamassa happily admits that in his youth he was inspired more by British blues bands than by the American originators of the music. “I just thought the British blues was hipper,” he explains. “I thought it was more rock-oriented, it was heavier, it had the Les Pauls and the Marshalls and you’d see pictures of these young kids singing the blues and that really related to me. It had that swagger to it that I didn’t really get initially when I listened to the originals, the American greats, who I subsequently understood. But I was listening to the English stuff and Irish guys like Gary Moore and Rory Gallagher way before I was into Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and that kind of stuff.”

Bonamassa admits to a particular fondness for Rory Gallagher: “You know what: I grew up in a blue collar town in upstate New York and when I saw pictures of Rory – well, I owned those flannel shirts! And when I listen to his music I hear a guy doing it for the right reasons in the sense that he had no pretence. He just was a guitar player and a performer and he loved blues and he loved rock and he loved to entertain people and he did it for the purest reasons. There was no put-together show: it was just like he walked up there dressed like everybody else in the audience and just killed it and walked off and would have a beer with anybody and talk to anybody. Those are the things I could relate to – well, at fifteen, not having a beer – but in the sense that I grew up with people around me looking and acting like that so that’s why I love Rory Gallagher.”

Another British guitarist that Bonamassa admired was Free’s Paul Kossoff.. “He was a huge influence on me,” he acknowledges. “His playing was extraordinarily simple but unbelievably to the point. It was like a series of lightning bolts. It was pinpoint – he said exactly what he wanted to say which was great.

“I also really dug the playing of Martin Barre of Jethro Tull and even the early stuff of Tull with Mick Abrahams I really dug. All those bands that were English and blues-based I was into.”

One American legend who did influence Bonamassa was BB King. “I’ve known him for eighteen years and he’s definitely one of the most down-to-earth people I know,” he asserts. “If he wasn’t BB King he’d just be a cool guy to hang out with. I’ve noticed that the bigger the people are the more they’re like that. There are exceptions but the ones who have the most confidence in what they’re doing feel like, ‘I’m good at what I do and I know it so why do I have to be larger than life?’ He comes over like a normal guy who just happens to be the best blues singer of all time.”

Another legend with whom Bonamassa has played is John Lee Hooker. “That was really wild,” he chuckles, “because I didn’t know that John didn’t play in any other key except for E, D and A – and I was ready to play in G and A minor, so I had to change my riffs pretty fast. So that was a pretty wild experience.”

Inevitably Bonamassa has felt the ire of blues purists unsympathetic to his blues rock style. “It doesn’t bother me,” he insists. “It’s like, my grandfather is 81 and he’s been driving a car for sixty years and I guarantee you his car now does not look like the 1939 Plymouth that he drove then. The concept of the car is the same, it’s the same horseless carriage, but the car does not look the same. It has evolved. And it’s the same thing with the blues so I don’t understand why people vehemently oppose letting blues evolve from where it was in 1929 to where it is now in 2008. That’s eighty years of evolution. I still love traditional blues but I also understand that the music has to evolve in order to achieve something.”

One early blues song that Bonamassa has recorded is Charlie Patton’s High Water Everywhere. “I do these seminars arguing that blues is just as relevant today as it was eighty years ago,” he explains, “so I needed something to prove that. So when we had that big hurricane up in New Orleans and the floods and everything that [song] proved my point that blues is just as relevant today as it was eighty years ago. That was my whole reason for recording it. Plus, it’s a cool song!”

Bonamassa maintains a ferocious international touring schedule. “I’m used to working every day – but it’s not getting any easier,” he concedes. “But I’m very honoured that the music has spread out and I’m very honoured that the music has touched people in a certain way so that it’s given me the opportunity to play, this year, in Mumbai in India, in Belfast, in Moscow, in Tokyo … All my work has paid off because I have a fan base all over the world and I think that’s really great.”

Joe’s web site.

Check Joe out at Amazon UK and Amazon US

Fran: How did you two start to play together?

Marcus: It started when I moved back down to London. I was living in Liverpool for about six years and I moved into a house with Paddy. We’d met a couple of times at social events and gigs but we ended up living in the same house together for about six, seven months.
I depped a gig for Paddy’s guitarist in Paddy’s own band. From there, we got involved in the Earl Thomas project.
Paddy: I met Marcus initially through mutual friends. There were eight of us in the same house. It was after college and university, the first house that everyone lived in London; it was a great vibe, eight musicians.
Marcus: Brilliant! Not a lot of sleeping got done.
Paddy: Constant music and good times really.

Fran: Was that Paddy Milner and The Big Sounds then?

Paddy: Yeah, it was put together after the first album was released, a while ago. In fact we lived with some of the other guys from The Big Sounds: Scott Wiber on bass and Randall Breneman on guitar, handy for rehearsals.
We had worked together on a few other non-blues projects as well.
Marcus: And we’ve done quite a few sessions together and stuff. We did a bit of work together with Sandi Thom. We were in a transition, as I was leaving Paddy was joining. So we had a few gigs together. Then we did some stuff with Tim Daniel, a support tour with Take That and stuff.
We spent a lot of time in splitter vans together. You can’t help but be good mates with people if you spend twelve hours in a splitter van with them.

Fran: Or you end up hating them!

Paddy: One thing we are both lucky to have (is) everyone we work with, especially in The Big Sounds, they are all amazing people. There’re never any big problems. If there are any problems, they get resolved. It’s never come to blows.
Marcus: Or even a raised voice.

Fran: They are a fun bunch of people. Do some of The Big Sounds play on Marcus’ album? Obviously you do, Paddy, and Scott (Wiber) the bass player.

Marcus: Yeah and Alex (Reeves) the drummer; basically it’s very incestuous. My stuff, as your stuff is now (on Paddy’s album in progress), is stripped down and kind of simple, instrumentation wise. You’ve got baritone sax as well.
Paddy: Both our new albums don’t have the big instrumentation like I’ve done before and the stuff we’ve done with Earl Thomas. Marcus’ band is a three piece with Alex Reeves and Scott Wiber, who also play with me and in The Big Sounds with Earl Thomas as well.
Marcus: When you find a group of musicians who are that competent at what they do in an incredible way, like the people we work with, sometimes you look at the stage and think, ‘Wow there’re some amazing players in this band!’. (They are) some of the best players I have ever met. Like Paddy says as well, such lovely people. You find this group of people and you constantly want to work with them because you know what you are going to get out of them. It is just fantastic playing and intuitive thinking towards your stuff. Alex Reeves is a real thinker, isn’t he?
Paddy: Yeah! Everyone in the band, they are very musical about what they do. Despite the fact that they have all got amazing chops and are great players, they work towards the whole and do what is best for the music.
Marcus: Yeah, no one sees it as a showcase or anything; it’s a band.
Paddy: They are all into lots of music as well as blues. I think that is something that our music reflects as well. Although we are rooted in the blues and have always loved it and played it, there’s a lot of other stuff as well and we always try to involve it all.

Fran: Jazz musicians think a blues is a twelve-bar format, whereas I think that blues is about the feeling. There is nothing that you play that is devoid of an emotional feel. Everything you do is a blues in that sense, whatever the rhythm.

Marcus: I feel the same way. As long as it is coming from the soul, with some sort of emotion behind it, you’re not playing with your head but with your heart, that’s the blues.
Paddy: It annoys me at a jazz gig when people say, ‘We’re going to do such and such a tune. It’s OK, nothing complicated, it’s just a blues!’ It’s not just a blues.
Marcus: A lot of the stuff you like best is the stuff that isn’t twelve-bar, like the old Muddy Waters stuff and Robert Johnson. There’s no twelve-bar about it!
Paddy: It’s just so free and everyone flies…

Fran: Marcus, how did you become a permanent member of the Big Sounds?

Marcus: I just turned up and they never asked me to leave. (Laughter)
Paddy: That was when we first started working with Earl Thomas, or he first started working with us. It was 2007, when I first met Earl in America. Then he came across and did a one off gig with our friend Todd Sharpville. Scott Wiber the bass player was on that gig as well. Earl got talking to Scott and found that he played with me. Earl needed a band; he was booked for Burnley Blues Festival, as Earl Thomas, and for the Paul Jones’ (show on Radio 2) broadcast. He gave me and Scott a call to put the thing together and it just made sense to get the whole band together. We had a warm up thing together at Dover Street (Wine Bar). Originally Randall Breneman, who always plays with me in the big band, couldn’t do it. We asked Marcus to dep for him but, at the last minute, Randall could do the gig but rather than tell Marcus to have an early night, we said, ‘Why not? Just come and join in as well!’ and it worked really, really well. Randall and Marcus, they’ve known each other a long time.
Marcus: We went to university together. Usually, if he couldn’t do a gig, I would be the dep for it, so we never really got to work together on anything. So it was great that we had a project like this.

Fran: Did everything start happening after that?

Paddy: Yes, through the recording for Paul Jones, Earl loved our vibe, we loved what he brought to the band. When we did the recording for the BBC, we thought, ‘This sounds great! Why don’t we record a few more songs and put it out as an album?’ Then we thought, ‘No, keep the BBC things for another time and just let’s just do a new album.’
Marcus: Yeah; it was great fun recording that!
Paddy: It was awesome fun. We all brought songs to the table, so it rapidly became rather than Earl with a backing band, much more of a collaborative thing. Randall brought three songs, I’ve got a couple on there, Earl brought some, everyone brought their own arrangement ideas.
Marcus: It was very quick, within about four days, two days rehearsing, two days recording, we had an album.

Fran: Some of the songs are so emotional; your Right To Your Soul, Paddy and Earl’s It’s Better To Have Loved and Lost. It’s a dream band. In Earl Thomas, you’ve got this gorgeous bloke who can really sing and is an incredible front man and not just a backing band but an array of talents, all of you out there, not so much starring but the whole combination is incredibly good. Earl’s lucky to have you. Your band is a lot of individual characters, who are all creating the whole.

Paddy: A lot of people say similar things, that it is something very special, something they haven’t seen for a long time.
Marcus: We always say when we go on tour it’s just like going on holiday with your mates really. We all go together, have a great time, play some great music, then, at the end of it, you get paid! (Laughter) The money seems like a bonus at the end; brilliant!

Fran: So the Earl Thomas with Paddy Milner & The Big Sounds album came out in 2009.

Paddy: Yes, although it never actually had a proper release. Essentially it’s been something we have been selling at gigs; selling quite a few actually. That’s where the strength of it is.

Fran: This is a really good example of what you do live.

Marcus: I think we really replicate that quite well, with that extra excitement that you get from a live gig. When I listen to that, I still feel it’s an exciting record. It was done live, all nine of us in the studio together playing our arses off.
Paddy: There were quite a few literally spontaneous arrangements, quite a few first take of things we’d only talked through on the day in the studio.

Fran: That’s the way to make a blues album. You could just sit in a bar and make one.

Marcus: That’s how the old Alan Lomax recordings were made. They would record a guy wherever they could find somewhere quiet enough to do it. They’d just stick a mic in front of him and it’s some of the most beautiful music that’s ever been recorded.

Fran: Someone was telling me that Freddie King would walk into the studio and put his amp down next to the vocal mic; when the producer protested that they would get leakage, Freddie said, ‘Yeah!’ That’s what it sounds like live.

Paddy: We do a version of “Pack It Up”, a Freddie King song. We did a blues festival this summer, in Spain in Antequera (near Malaga) and we played it. At the end of the night, this guy came up and it turned out to be (record producer) Mike Vernon. He said, ‘It’s good to hear “Pack It Up”. I produced that track with Freddie King!’
Marcus: I’m glad I knew that afterwards, not before. (laughter)

Fran: Did you have an A&R Man or producer for your album, Marcus?

Marcus: My label was very good. They just seemed to leave me to get on with it. They seem to be supportive of what I do.

Fran: I really like your voice or voices. On the first track, you sound like a tuneful Tom Waits and on a couple of songs, Don’t Wanna Come Home and What Good Am I To You, you sound like Eric Bibb.

Marcus: I love Tom Waits, thank you! Someone once said to me (that) I was Tom Waits and Van Morrison’s love child! (Laughing!) I think he meant I have a gravely voice.
I do like Eric Bibb. I have been to see him live a couple of times. Eric Bibb sounds really folky to me, lot of the time. That version of “Angel” the Jimi Hendrix song he does on Painting Signs album, I saw him do it live. It was just him and a piano, no guitar on it and it was just one of those things that moves you to tears, just beautiful.

Fran: Your harmonica playing on God Only Knows makes it like Stone Fox Chase.

Marcus: Yeah, I am a very functional harmonica player. I’m not very good but I get a good rhythm out of it.

Fran: It has that raw quality to it that is spot on.

Paddy: Yeah! It’s all about the vibe. I think that track has a great vibe, great lyrics!
Marcus: …and a good groove to it.

Fran: There is a great variety of material on the album, an eclectic mix. Why did you choose these songs?

Marcus: I wrote them all after finishing the first record. It just reflects where I was going. I was doing a lot of travelling, playing around the place and a lot of solo gigs. When I look down the list, I can pinpoint one and say ‘That’s what that was about. I must have written that song about such and such an event,’ but only after the fact; I never know while I am writing them. Like Paddy said, we both listen to a hell of a lot of music. Obviously, we always listen to blues but other stuff that we are into stretches right out. We want to put those influences into the music we play, to make it something that is ours.

Fran: So it’s an anthology of your songs rather than a concept album.

Marcus: I suppose the concept is I just want it to sound like me.

Fran: Well, your singing with three different voices is unique to you. Did you do singing when you were at LIPA? (Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts)

Marcus: Singing was one of the reasons I left LIPA. I didn’t have any money and I had a band but we didn’t have any vocal tunes so we couldn’t get any gigs; we just played instrumental stuff. It was all well and good but no one really wanted to hear it. I decided to sing out of necessity so we could get some gigs and earn some money and eat food.

Fran: Did your family sing?

Marcus: My dad was a singer in church. He does like great singers. He would play me John Lennon, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin, Geno Washington and people like that. He would tell me that these are good singers. This is what you want to do if you want to do music.

Fran: Lots of people, who have had guitar lessons, never have singing lessons. They imagine that you only have lessons if there is something wrong with your voice. Singing in the wrong way can damage your vocal cords.

Marcus: A lot of people don’t realise that singing lessons are not to try and change your voice; it’s to make sure you can carry on singing like you do, forever.
When I got to LIPA, it was great for my personal development because I had only been playing guitar for a couple of years. To see the talent that was there, and there are some really talented people, at our college, when you go there you’re surrounded by all these people who are incredible in so many different ways, it really does make you up your game. You look around and go, ‘OK, these guys are my contemporaries and are way better than me. I’ve got to work hard here!
It’s the way you approach it; you could go ‘Right, make me a star!’ or you could go to any college really and go, ‘OK what can I learn from the people who are around me?’ That’s something we have always taken to musical situations any way. Working with The Big Sounds, the amount I’ve learnt, in the two years I have been with them, far outweighs anything I have learnt there, in Liverpool.

Fran: Paddy, when you were at uni, was there any emphasis on performance?

Paddy: I went to Kings College, in London. It was very different from LIPA, much more academic course, based on western classical music. I was into loads of different music, very contemporary as well, so looking at lots of concepts in music, philosophy and theory and politics and how it fits into musical life. There was performance, which was taught at the Royal Academy of Music, so you had lessons there. I chose to take jazz lessons there, develop that side of my playing. More than anything, it made me listen to all sorts of weird and wonderful music, some really odd things and open my ears to loads of stuff that I would never have come across before. I can’t say that a lot of that has gone into the albums I make, or the songs that I write, but it has made me aware of this other world of music.
I have been giging since the age of thirteen. It’s something I have always done and something I was always going to continue to do. It was a bit difficult sometimes, like when I was on tour with Eugene “Hideaway” Bridges or Eddie Martin, Todd Sharpville and played with Big Joe Turner for a bit. I’d often go away for a couple of weeks and have to come up with excuses for the tutors. Being the classical professors that they were, they just did not approve of me missing college to play blues. Had I been on tour with an orchestra, it may have been different.

Fran: You turned out all right; I am sure you are a credit to them.

Marcus: Damn right, you can play the arse off any classical piece as well! (Laughter!)
There is nothing that says you have to stay the full three years. If you go there and think, ‘I’ve learnt a lot from this place. I’ve got what I need,’ and I’ve met Scott Wiber and Randall Breneman, who I still work with to this day. So it was always important but I didn’t need a degree. My mum needed the degree. My parents came to my graduation. I played at it but I didn’t graduate. They hired my band.
I reckon we both knew what we wanted to do, pretty early on. As soon as I touched the guitar, I was like, ‘That’s it now!’

Fran: How’s your next album coming on, Paddy? Is it still a work in progress?

Paddy: Well, it’s being mixed at the moment. It’s all recorded. The core idea is built round piano, percussion and voice. A lot of the piano parts that I write have a very busy right hand, coming from the old boogie tradition. I have often found electric bass conflicts a bit with the left hand, so I wanted to do something that has the punchiness of the drum kit but has bottom end. It was really fun, it was Alex Reeves, again, part of the family, who played not so much a drum kit but percussive drums. He had a really old a 1920s bass drum, which was tuned really low down so it’s got this bottom end that sits nicely under the left hand of the piano. It’s just a slightly different sound, rather quirky, not the traditional sound. There are a few tracks where perhaps it needed to bit more bottom end, so I added some tuba to it. A good friend of mine, Reuben Crowther, who I was at school with, he’s a great tuba player and he’s played in lots of New Orleans funk bands with tuba and bass.
Marcus: It’s brilliant with the tuba; a lovely, lovely little touch.
Paddy: I guess it’s a bit of a nod to the old New Orleans sound. There is definitely a New Orleans influence on quite a lot of tracks, a rolling piano sound. It’s quite an eclectic mix; a few covers, Muddy Waters’ “Louisiana Blues”, I just love the song. Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen”, which I have taken apart and put back together in what I hope is a complimentary way but has its own sound. Doing covers, you either have to be bringing something new to it or be as faithful as possible; I hope I’ve brought something new that works. There’re horns on a few tracks and a cello. That will be out sometime in 2010.
Marcus: I have heard the rough mixes and it’s a real treat.

Fran: What else are you doing?

Paddy: I’m a regular member of the Ronnie Scott’s Blues Experience, with Tony Remy, which started a monthly Monday residency at the club in 2009. We’ve had some great nights, always sold out, with special guests including Jack Bruce, Earl Thomas, Matt Schofield, Earl Green, Eddie Martin, Todd Sharpville. Marcus will be guesting with us in 2010 and there’s talk of some blues legends sitting in with the band over the next few months, so it should be an exciting year for the blues at Ronnie’s.
Also Marcus and I are looking to doing some more work together, just the two of us.
Marcus: We tried it out at The Ramsbottom Festival. That was good fun.
Paddy: A lot of fun! We come from the same direction but, I guess, express it in slightly different ways.
Marcus: It works well with piano and guitar and we both do a bit of percussion and vocals. It was a really good sound that we got.

Fran: It always is, every which way!

Marcus Bonfanti: What Good Am I To You? (P3MCD025 2009)
Marcus Bonfanti: Hard Times (Guitar Label 2009)
www.marcusbonfanti.com
www.theguitarlabel.com

Earl Thomas with Paddy Milner & The Big Sounds: Earl Thomas with Paddy Milner & The Big Sounds (IX) (ETPMBS01)
Paddy Milner: Old, New, Borrowed, Blue (a working title) will be out in 2010
www.paddymilner.com
www.bigsoundsmusic.com
www.earlthomasmusic.com

What does your bill aim to achieve?

Firstly, we want to resurrect the ‘two-in-a-bar’ exemption. We think it should be limited to unamplified and minimally amplified music. We want to introduce, secondly, the exemption for venues with a capacity of up to two hundred. Thirdly, and this has nothing to do with alcohol licensing, we want to allow schools and hospitals, where they have music playing, to be used as a venue but no alcohol being served.

There is a lot of confusion as to what is covered and what isn’t. Apparently, if it’s a private performance, in a school or a hospital, that’s fine but say for instance you invite your next door neighbour or it’s a charity fund raiser, that then turns it, possibly, into a public performance. The trouble is that the temporary event notices are not really fit for purposes either because you are limited in the number of them. Also, if for instance your local authority is too busy, it may take the view that you haven’t applied in time. Again, for a small event where you just want a few people, we don’t think the current law is adequate. We think that this bill would actually create a great flourishing of live music. Let’s face it; a lot of people have got their first breaks in small venues. When you look back at people like The Rolling Stones, The Who, that’s exactly what happened to them. It’s true of some modern artists, but probably a diminishing number, like people like Corinne Bailey Rae.

The government encourages people to get fit and play sport, which is good, but some young people want to play music instead, so they should be encouraged.

Absolutely! They want to sing and they want to dance and play music; they don’t all want to play sport. I quite agree.

What can we do?

My theory is that politicians spend more time in pubs when the election is on. So if musicians and pub owners and music fans really get to grips with this issue, in the next three or four months, there could be a fantastic impact on all those new MPs being elected, when they come back into the House of Commons after May. There are going to be a huge number of new ones. I think in order to get a majority, the Tories have to get another 130 or 140. In addition to that, they’ve got great swathes of MPs, probably forty or fifty resigning because of expenses problems and retirement and all that stuff. So you could be talking about two hundred new Tory MPs alone. I haven’t worked it out for Labour, but it does mean, by making something an election issue, getting a petition going, during an election, questions whenever someone turns up at a pub with their canvassing rosette or whatever it happens to be, such as, ‘Do you support live music?’ That’s a hell of a way of sensitising people to it.

Does a new parliament mean the issue will be back to square one?

Not necessarily! My Bill may be back to square one but the government may have changed. There will be different views as to whether a (capacity of) 100 will be adequate in terms of the proposal by government – the legislative reform order they’re proposing – and the Tories back my bill and have said so in the House of Lords. Who knows, the Lib-Dems may hold the balance of power and may say the price for our agreement will be to back my Live Music Bill, though I doubt that will be quite the deal.

May be it will be in the package! I recall that the Swedes delayed European Union copyright legislation because they relied on the youth vote to keep the government of the day in power. Young people want to have free downloads and so on. If you want to capture the votes of young people, you have got to be seen to be doing something for them.

Absolutely and this is a very popular policy. I can’t tell you the amount of traffic that we’ve had via the internet; on things like Guardian Online, whenever we’ve had a piece on there and the general response has been fantastic actually.

I don’t recall it was a problem before, having two musicians in a bar, and it was more flexible getting a music license before. Why was this legislation brought in, in the first place; was it to combat problems at raves?

Funnily enough, I’ve looked back and nobody really understands quite why ‘two-in-a-bar’ should be done away with. Everybody thought, I think, that there was a logical exemption under the original 2003 Bill and it just turned out to be fresh air. That’s the weird thing. There’s a section called 177, which on the face of it looks as though it’s going to be an exemption but it’s never been invoked. So that’s really the answer. We fought quite hard to keep ‘two-in-a-bar’ and the government said, ‘Oh no, no, no; here’s much better provision!’ and I think we were all sold a pup really.

Because the music license is tied in with the alcohol license, I have heard that publicans who might want to have the occasional music night have had to make blanket applications to have music in their pubs. This has caused friction with the pubs and their neighbours who put up objections fearing that the pub intends to turn into a seven-day-a-week rock music venue.

I quite agree. That’s the beauty of having a reasonably worded exemption for small venues. Two hundred, I think, is relatively modest, although some people say, ‘Two Hundred? That is outrageous!’ and others say we should have more and others say let’s split the difference.

A lot of small venues and clubs would be very happy if they got anywhere near two hundred people turn up. A lot of blues gigs they would be happy to have forty to sixty people turning up mid-week. They would consider they had done quite well. I suppose if you ask for exemptions of venues with a capacity of up to 200 people, you might get exemption for 100.

Precisely! It’s intended to wind up people as well, so they actually bother to engage to get what they really want.

Now, you’ve been a businessman most of your working life and you must have a cultural interest as you are the Liberal Democrat spokesman for culture, media and sport. What’s your main interest?

I’ve always been a believer in the arts, theatre and music and so on. I have fairly catholic tastes but I listened to Lightnin’ Hopkins in my youth, along with the best of them. In terms of relating to your readership, that kind of music was what I was brought up with. That and soul music in the early sixties and then of course we had all the British bands as well, the Stones and so on. The blues and soul music was absolutely core to what we were all listening to in those days.

I like going to informal gigs, more, in many ways, than going to the big events. It’s all very well going to the Wembley Arena or the O2, but actually one of the most pleasurable things is going along to a place when people are jamming. We want people to be free to experiment and not be so formal that they have to get licenses every time they want to perform.

I have an interest in it obviously as it is part of my political job, so to speak, to do it. One of the reasons I do the job is because I find it very enjoyable and I like fighting on behalf of performers and artists.

There are other jobs I do. I do quite a lot working on the visas situation, for visiting performers, which is terrible at the moment. A lot of festivals find it very frustrating. They invite foreign artists and they cannot get them into the country. Ridiculous restrictions! At the moment, we have this rather weird approach to culture in this country, particularly when it involves small festivals and small events, which is quite disproportionate.

When I went to the All-Party Parliamentary Jazz awards, I was interested to see which of the Parliamentarians were at the event. Most of the others were in the bar watching football.

That’s a classic example because you know you don’t need a license if you show live football in a pub. You do if you have music in the same pub. That is the ludicrous nature of the act.

Yes I find the idea that an audience of blues fans needs more regulation than a crowd of football fans quite amusing. They are almost never any trouble.

Yes, the implication is absurd.

When I asked Tessa Jowell (who was then the Minister for Culture, Media & Sport) why there should be more legislation for fans of live music in a pub than for football fans, watching a match on screen in the same pub, she offered no explanation at all.

I bet she didn’t!

Is there anything else that can be done?

I hope that all your readers will find the Number 10 web site petition on live music. It’s number 11 at the moment and we’ve got nearly fourteen thousand signatures. I would love to get to fifty thousand signatures or something like that. It has until July 27th to get there. They can also write to their local MPs and accost politicians during the election campaign and ask them what they are going to support the live music bill. Then they should make an impact.

Explanation of the petition:
Under the Licensing Act, a performance by one musician in a bar, restaurant, school or hospital not licensed for live music could lead to a criminal prosecution of those organising the event. Even a piano may count as a licensable ‘entertainment facility’. By contrast, amplified big screen broadcast entertainment is exempt. The government says the Act is necessary to control noise nuisance, crime, disorder and public safety, even though other laws already deal with those risks. Musicians warned the Act would harm small events. About 50% of bars and 75% of restaurants have no live music permission. Obtaining permission for the mildest live music remains costly and time-consuming. In May 2009, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee recommended exemptions for venues up to 200 capacity and for unamplified performance by one or two musicians. The government said no. But those exemptions would restore some fairness in the regulation of live music and encourage grassroots venues.

Sign the petition here.

Find part 2 here.

Asking the questions: editor Fran Leslie.

You have been invited to play at the Chicago Blues Festival and I see that you are doing a workshop entitled The Art of Slide. How did that come about?

In July of last year (2008), I was playing with the Norwegian band at Fitzgerald’s, a blues club in Chicago, and while the band did a number to give my voice a rest, I went to the bar. A well-dressed, bearded gentleman of about my age was sitting there and he told me that Elmore James wasn’t the one who originally recorded “It Hurts me Too”  (I had introduced the song earlier as being recorded by him). I said, “I know. It was Tampa Red.” That seemed to please him. It turned out he was Barry Dolins, who works for the mayor’s office and organizes Chicago’s arts and cultural events. He is a great slide guitar fan and told me that part of the 2009 Chicago Blues festival was to be in honour of Robert Nighthawk’s centennial and that he wanted to book me for it.

Months passed and it wasn’t until about February of this year that I heard anything more about it. Details followed and it turned out that, besides the main show on Sunday evening, on Saturday afternoon, I am to do a slide guitar workshop alongside Elmore James Junior, Lil’ Ed and John Primer. That should prove to be interesting. I have done some workshops during my concerts in India about ten years ago, so I am not as freaked out as I could have been! They are actually fun to do.

Actually, it wasn’t until recently that I began to appreciate him and his influence on electric slide players. I had long appreciated the old country acoustic blues sliders like Blind Willie McTell, Furry Lewis and Son House, but I had had the blinders on for many years regarding other electric slide players beside Elmore and Homesick James!

So just before recording ‘Precious Little’, I heard a couple of tracks by Robert: ‘Sweet Black Angel’ and ‘Cryin’ Won’t Help You’, and I just loved his special slide vibrato reminiscent of Tampa Red, who I found out was his main influence. In fact, I based the main slide riff of ‘Bitter Lemon’ on his style.

Anyway, hearing that early stuff by him, I could see his influence on Earl Hooker and even Elmore in some cases.

How you feel about playing slide?

I love it more than ever! And through some biographies, history has revealed that finger-style blues guitarists such as B. B. King, Otis Rush, Albert King and even Eric Clapton developed their finger trilling style by wanting to imitate the bend, sustain and vibrato of the slide guitar! These fellows are masters of it, of course, and I believe B. B. was the first. Correct me if I am wrong!

But while in a dressing room during a Fleetwood Mac tour with B. B. in 1969, he showed me how he wanted to do what I do with the slide like his cousin, Bukkah White. He then played the opening line of Elmore James’ ‘Sky is Crying’, demonstrating how when he first started playing guitar, he discovered that bending the note up and down with his finger he could make it sound like a slide. It was a little amusing for me to watch, having seen the British rock guitarists like Beck, Page and Clapton doing the same thing, but B. B. was as thrilled as a little kid to show me this, as though he had just discovered it yesterday! A dear, humble man!

Unfortunately, I wore him out on the tour bus drilling him for info about Elmore! Finally, after wearying him with questions about what he thought of Albert and Freddy King, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and so on, he said, “You know, somethin’? They’re good, but basically they’re copying me.” End of subject. And although those mentioned have their unique style, I think he was right.

As for me, after hearing Elmore James and so wanting to play like that, as I said, I paid little attention to other electric sliders. But I did pay attention to the black finger-style blues players, particularly Otis Rush and Albert King, and in contrast to their desire to make their guitars sound like a slide, I wanted to make my slide guitar sound like them! To me the vibrato is everything, by the way. It doesn’t matter what gymnastics are going on around it, if the vibrato doesn’t grab me, forget it. That’s why the slide is so beautiful; its vibrato is so smooth and varied.

Anyway, I would try to duplicate their trills and phrases with the slide, and I even used a Gibson Flying V for a while in hopes that I could get a sound like Albert King. I was largely unsuccessful until I threw away the pick about twelve years ago. I had always known that Albert King and Albert Collins used their fingers to pluck, but I did not have the confidence to step out and try. I was more or less forced into it when I traded my vintage Gibson SG for a Paul Reed Smith. It was a 24 fret, wide-thin neck model and I couldn’t get used to the narrower frets; I was inaccurate when striking the strings with a pick no matter how hard I tried. But I was shocked to discover how nimble my right hand fingers were (hmmm … a late starter!), but seriously, that was probably due to my piano training, and a completely new world of slide guitar opened up.

You see, towards the end of my days with Fleetwood Mac, I was losing interest in playing the slide, in playing music period, actually. I felt I had dried up. When I joined the Children of God in 1971, I felt a new lease of life for it, partly due to participating in the many different styles of music floating around the group, but mainly due to a newfound inspiration to play. Then after about seven or eight years, although I would play it on occasions, I lost interest in the slide again. I was content to just noodle with finger-style lead like Mark Knopfler, whom I had just discovered. He was the first guitarist to grab my attention in ages after the 60’s and 70’s onslaught of Les Paul guitars and Marshall amps.

It wasn’t until the mid nineties, that I regained interest in playing the slide, and since then I have hardly wanted to play anything else. Finger lead, rhythm guitar, even the piano, just don’t give me the same satisfaction!

The technique these days for me when playing slide guitar is in the ability – like playing a harp – to pluck a string with say, the forefinger on the second string, while deadening the first and third string with your third and thumb respectively, thereby silencing unwanted harmonics and tones from the other intruders! I hope that’s clear! I don’t usually like having to get so technical with this kind of thing, especially regarding blues, as I find it can kill the mood and mystique! But I think those that are playing or wanting to play slide will get my gist. When playing with a pick, I used to try to accomplish the same thing by dampening the unwanted strings on the bridge with the ball of my hand. It didn’t always work, which is painfully obvious to me when listening to some of my old 60’s recordings, especially the bootleg live stuff!

But then I was just learning; I had a ways to go. I was, after all, only 20 years old or so! Since when should a musician’s development reach a plateau at that age? It was not so in bygone days, when writers, poets, musicians and artists did not reach their zenith until their latter years. Victor Hugo, Dickens and Handel are prime examples. I think the modern James Dean dogma and the never-Neverland, Peter Pan eternal youth fantasy, which dictates that only the good die young or accomplish anything worthwhile is a discouraging load of bollocks, to put it in the British vernacular.

More on technique: I hold the slide on the little finger of my left hand while dampening the strings behind it with my forefinger, this helps to eliminate unwanted harmonics from behind the slide, and to ensure steadiness and accuracy. Oh, and I have to be sure to play right above the fret bar itself, and not between! Of course, I have noticed I look at the fretboard less and less over the years, as I often have my eyes closed. As a point of interest, for about a week when I first started learning slide, before I got hold of a copper tube, I used a glass tumbler. I couldn’t see the frets, but that did help me to develop accuracy in pitching by ear. Like playing a violin, I suppose.

What kinds of slide do you use?

Up until about the time of recording ‘In Session’, I had always used brass or steel slides, but then while in Norway I happened upon a ceramic one called a ‘Moonshine Slide’. I really liked it, and used it extensively on ‘Precious Little’. I had found that the metal slides (especially the lighter steel ones) left an annoying scraping sound as the notes died, which can be okay on some things, but I wanted the tone to be purer. Although many slide players use them, I never went for glass slides – almost too smooth in my opinion. I wanted a little grit and the ceramic and porcelain ones seem to hit the sweet spot! Alas, they’re fragile and I broke three (two ‘Moonshines’ – the ceramic one, and one ‘Mudslide’, its sister, made of porcelain). So I decided to contact Jim Dunlop, which distributes them, to see if I could get a deal on purchasing them in bulk!

Their response was not so hot, but in hopes of trying again, I absentmindedly Google-searched ‘Moonshine Slide’, instead of Jim Dunlop, and it took me straight to the site of the woman who makes them, Terri Lambert in California. She’s a ceramicist who got turned onto slide guitar about twenty years ago and decided to try making slides out of porcelain and ceramic. They’re a hit!

We talked on the phone for quite awhile about slide guitar and she gave me a good deal! She’s had quite a rough go in her life of late and we look forward to meeting at the Chicago festival. Slide players like Keb Mo, Sonny Landreth and Louisiana Red are in touch with her and use her products. I believe she even made a custom one for Joe Perry!

You may wonder why I like to mention people and their influence. Well, I must tell a story from when I worked in an accountant’s office for Bison concrete in Lichfield for two years after leaving art college (the job was far from being my cup of tea, but it paid enough to be able to buy a decent guitar on the hire purchase and still have some spending money!).

I was enduring my office job during the day and gigging with my local three-piece band at night, often getting home at three or four in the morning — then up at seven for the office job! The remarkable thing was, I found I was making more money playing two or three nighttime gigs a week than all week at the office job. Our little band was getting a small local following playing our brand of Elmore James blues in the folk clubs and pubs around the Midlands.

Anyway, to my story. Working just under the chief accountant in the office, was a man named Brian Downing who sometimes trained me with the accounting ledgers. He was a quiet man in his late twenties or early thirties, who worked without fuss and fanfare, and in the winter, would pause from his work, take off his glasses and gaze serenely at the sunset. One evening, right after one of those reflective times, he was working with me and told me, “You know, Jeremy, once you have climbed the ladder of success and are famous, you must never forget those who helped you get there. Always give them credit whenever you can.”

I was mystified, as at the time, I was a nobody, just gigging around with my two friends, but I never forgot that prophetic message. I did not follow his advice during my stroppy Fleetwood Mac years, however, but I have tried to do so ever since, when the opportunity arises.

If you use different kinds of slides do you get different tones?

More credit where it’s due. By a remarkable ‘coincidence’, Mark Gregaro from Detroit, a fan of my music and slide guitar, who is more familiar with my recorded licks than I am, met my wife and me in Chicago last year. His wife, Nancy accompanied him and we all instantly clicked while talking over a meal. He plays good slide and is a walking archive of blues slide guitar and guitarists, and he sent me an array of slides of different sizes and materials. PVC lined with copper, copper and brass lined with PVC, glass (including a Coricidin bottle, as used by Duane Allman, and a sawn off bottleneck slide), steel, and even one made out of fibre optic material, which has become one of my favourites! They all give a range of tones as wide as any amp can give. It depends on what I want: biting and thin, edgy, plucky, resonant, smooth and bright, smooth and dull. And then, some of them work fantastic with the resonator but not so hot with the electric and vice versa. It’s amazing. I feel like I’m only just starting to discover slide!

What guitars do you use when you play slide?

I play slide on an acoustic/electric resonator made by Amistar of the Czech Republic. An excellent guitar, which I used a lot on ‘Precious Little’. Did you know that the Dopyera brothers who hailed from there, made the original Dobro resonators? A few years ago, Amistar actually received the Dopyera award.

Another guitar I used for a couple of years until recently, with two P90s, was one custom built by an excellent Norwegian luthier called Jan Ingar Kvisler. Because a strange pattern of cracks appeared in the varnish due to a fault in the drying process, I called it ‘Mona’, as the cracks resembled those on the Mona Lisa. Unfortunately, she is with her maker right now, who is checking her for a hum problem.

I now play mainly on a beautiful limited edition, dark cherry sunburst Paul Reed Smith (only a hundred made in 2007) with three P90 pickups and a five-way switch. Mark Gregaro recommended it, purchased it and traded it for my other Paul Reed Smith I had use for twelve years (which I signed for him!). I get all the tones I need (I can’t stand stomp boxes), and for some inexplicable reason, I have found P90s are excellent for slide. It must be something about them being single coil and, unlike humbuckers, able to pick up the subtle nuances, especially when playing with your fingers, even when you turn down the gain.

Who introduced you to Elmore James?

One evening in 1964, while attending Stafford Art College, a group of the boys played a student prank on me by stripping me of my clothes, binding my hands and feet and tying me up in a sack! They then dumped me in a lavatory stall in the annex next to the football field and left. A friend of mine nicknamed ‘Acker’ or ‘Acky’, who must have been hanging around late, heard about it, found my clothes and rescued me.

As it was dark and late, he invited me for dinner at his house in Cannock Chase. He asked me if I wanted to listen to some music. I asked for some blues, so while we ate he put on a blues album. It was a British Pye records compilation from Chess called The Blues Vol. 3, which had Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Witherspoon etc. Good stuff, but it wasn’t grabbing my ear while we chatted, as I was preoccupied and down about the student prank incident earlier.

Suddenly ’The Sun is Shining’ by Elmore James came on. I jumped up from my seat and stood mesmerised at the record player. I’d never heard of him, and I couldn’t believe my ears. From that point on, I was determined to play guitar and, if possible, sing like that. The problem was, to my knowledge at the time, that was the only generally available song of his in England until Sue records issued an album called ‘The Best of Elmore James’, which I put on order. It took awhile, and it finally came into the shop right at the time of my fractured knee accident about six months or so later. So while I sat with my leg up for six weeks, I learned every lick and nuance from that album!

I have told this story many times over the years, and often wondered whatever happened to Acky. I didn’t even know his real name! I had no idea how to get in touch with him, so I prayed that somehow our paths would cross. Well, about a week ago, this email came in on my website from John Hackney!

“I don’t know why it’s taken me 47 years to try and make contact with Jeremy, but just watched a Peter Green documentary on TV and felt moved to say ‘Hello!’ I was at Stafford Art College with Jeremy for a period of about 2 years. He may remember me as ‘Acker’. We used to jam in the college canteen – him on piano and me on harmonica, wonderful times …”

He went on to give me his phone number and I called him. He remembers the incident well, although he didn’t realise what an effect that evening had on me and my musical destiny. He had just been a good Samaritan in my life. God bless him. It was wonderful to get back in touch (he’s the head of art at the ‘Express and Star’ newspaper. Maybe you know him, Fran!).

Tell me about your album Precious Little and the album and the DVD In Session you made with Dave Briggs.

Although it was only released last year, ‘In Session’ was recorded and filmed at the same time one afternoon at John Henry’s in London, 2004, about three months before I recorded my ‘Precious Little’ CD in Norway, with a Norwegian blues band.

Frank Lea, then of Secret Records and whose idea the project was, had originally asked me to do it solo, (which strangely enough, a few people have asked me to do the same thing). I didn’t feel quite confident for that, and still don’t, so I asked for the help of Dave Briggs on acoustic rhythm guitar, whom I had met at the Notodden blues festival that year. He was playing with Scotty Moore. I liked him and his unassuming, steady style.

What else are you doing now?

Now, as of 2009, I am still a member of Family International (it’ll be my 40th year with them, come February 2011) and I work for the in-house publications department. (I fully understand your d-day deadline fever!) I spend most of my time drawing black and white comics in the style of Will Eisner, using brush and ink with some crow quill pen thrown in, along with the occasional pastel or watercolour contributions. For the last seven years, I have also been writing stories, some short and some even novel length, which is my evening work. I look forward to that time very much!

On the musical side, besides any upcoming gigs, plans are in the works to record a CD for Family International distribution worldwide. It will be blues-based, and will contain personal insights and feelings.

Thank you ever so much Fran for your interest! It has been wonderful to be able to share some of my story with you.

So this is your first show in London?

This is my very first show on my own. I travelled over here with Eric Bibb. So this is a real privilege to get a chance to bring my own band and do my own show.

This is a really special day in American history, did you kind of think “I don’t wanna play tonight, I just wanna party”?

Yeah! Yeah! I went through that but I also felt that it was important to play tonight and kind of extend the party across the Pond, to celebrate with people. I’m not at home but knowing that the world is celebrating right now, that made a difference.

You actually got a London audience moving. That’s really unprecedented!

We achieved something then!

Singing and dancing, that’s pretty good for a London audience. They’re too cool in London normally.

OK … it looked quite natural.

So when are you coming back to the UK?

We’re gonna try to come back in the summer, or later in the year. Perhaps with Eric we’re gonna try and do another tour. I like riding his coattails!

So are you still based in Austin?

I am in Austin. I’m on the road so much. I go to Austin to visit my stuff then I come back out again! We’re on the road quite a bit. We’re going to Japan and Australia and all points everywhere.

One of the many highlights tonight was “When It Don’t Come Easy”.

Yeah … it’s a Patty Griffin song. I ran into Patty at a Willie Nelson birthday party in Austin one night. And she said, “Ah Ruthie, yeah, you’ve got this big voice! Sing my song!” So I thought, All right. I sing your songs at home anyway so, OK, I’ll record one!

And then Son House sung a cappella is a very unusual thing to do …

Yeah … yeah … well, you know, what do you say!? I grew up singing a lot of gospel in the church and sometimes we didn’t have a musician so you just sing. That’s the way we sang. I’m very comfortable with that. I’ll do it when I feel comfortable with the audience and the audience tonight was a really good audience.

The band was wonderful, too.

You like my ladies?

Oh yes.

Well, thank you!

Check out more from Ruthie on her official website.

Singer, guitarist, songwriter and musicologist Big Joe Louis is a veteran of the UK blues scene. He plays in the UK and Europe both solo and with His Blues Kings. He also tours with many American artists, who value his style of playing. In 2007, he left his job as a blues consultant with the Performing Rights Society.

What have you been doing since you stopped working for PRS? Did you have a sabbatical?

I took one trip to the States with a friend of mine, to buy records, look round record fairs and track down a guy in Boston who had owned a record shop since 1962. Apart from that, it was all playing. I went to Australia and New Zealand and went to the States twice, all the usual Scandinavian places. I go to Scandinavia a lot.

The Scandinavians are very keen on the blues.

They are but I have been doing it a lot there and I work with so many good musicians there.

Do you book through the Norsk Blues Union?

They don’t book as a union. I think there are about 80 clubs in Norway. They have really good co-operation, which means that they will try and swing it that if somebody is available, they’ll say, ‘Look, if we take him for Thursday, why don’t you take him for Friday?’ So when we were at the studio Michael, the bass player, told me that we had three nights in a row, just around Oslo, in February, doing a tour with Sven Zetterberg. He’s a singer, guitar player and harmonica player. He’s fantastic!
He came over here and played at the Mean Fiddler (in Harlesden, now closed). It was a jazz festival, A Taste of Swedish Jazz.

Who tours with you? Do you take your band or play solo?

It varies. The Australia I was with Lynwood Slim, the harmonica player from California. The trip to America, I took my drummer Peter with me but we played with Billy Flynn, (piano player) Carl Sunny Leyland and Jimmy Sutton, who is a fantastic bass player from Chicago. It was a really good band.
We played a show in Chicago, at Delilah’s. Lots of people came out. Dick Shurman and Wes Race came out; Wes was the guy who turned Bruce Iglauer (of Alligator Records) on to Hound Dog Taylor He was the legendary guy who phoned Bruce up from a bar and said listen to this and Bruce came over. You know Dick Shurman, the record producer and writer.
Then we went up and did the Green Bay Festival. It was like Colne, Burnley, Cognac, Hemsby, and Rhythm Riot! all rolled into one. It is on Lake Michigan, north of Milwaukee in Wisconsin.
I think we will be going back in the Spring, to do some shows in Chicago, possible with Mud Morganfield. He sent me a message today, saying, ‘Come over here and work with me!’
A musician in Chicago told me, it is not that they pay well but there are so many clubs.
They don’t pay well but, you know, we don’t just do this for money. I think it is fine for the versatile sidemen who can do all kinds of things. But if you are a person who does one thing as well as you can….
In the States, they have lost your kind of blues player. There are a lot of rock-blues players but people don’t play like you any more. They find it really entertaining to hear blues as it used to be done.
Ever since I have been playing, I have had people come up to me and say, ‘I come from Chicago/Detroit/New Orleans/San Francisco, you know we never hear this kind of music there.’ I never used to believe them, until I went there, and I’ve listened to the records these people make. There really aren’t! There are a few people, but you go into the clubs and most of the bands don’t (play it like I do).

The blues has mutated.

It has. Music has to change but it doesn’t mean you have to enjoy every step of that change.
Americans do tell me that British blues is closer to the blues of the fifties and the sixties that it is in America.
People always go, ‘You’ve got that retro sound’, or ‘You’ve got that old sound’ or whatever. Then the people they think of as modern people, are people that have that seventies Freddie King sound. That’s supposed to be modern? If they were modern, they would be doing it with samples and hip-hop. People like Michael Messer maybe.
What people now call modern blues seems to be based on British rock-blues, to me. Because of my background, I never grew up listening to that music. It really doesn’t man anything to me. I got asked by a Finnish magazine, why did I think British blues was so popular around the world. I said, ‘Do you know what, I have absolutely no idea!’ That’s not to say that there aren’t some really good musicians her but it’s that type of music that people call British Blues with a capital B, rather than people who just happen to be born here.

I suppose that a lot of people think anything British is hip. In Europe, they revere British blues artists more than we do.

That’s true. I work far more over there, at better shows, than I ever do here. That’s because the British taste is not the kind of taste that I have. The British audience doesn’t seem to go out as much.
When I started playing this music, the idea of any kind of career or any kind of paid gig was just a joke, I just did it because I had to do it; I wanted to do it and I enjoyed playing with King David. That was it. The years go by. People asked you to make records and you start doing shows and you get paid and that is really good. But if all that went away tomorrow, I would still keep doing it. As far as fashions are concerned, who cares? Ten, twenty years ago, whenever it was, the fashion was to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan; a few years ago, the fashion was to sound like a West Coast harp band. I think, if you have a style, your are comfortable in that style, do that style!
I don’t think many musicians get into it deeply. I don’t know how many musicians enjoy listening to records. They appreciate technique but how many times do I go out to a show and I see a musician there? I went to see Tommy Brown at The Ace Café, a couple of weeks ago. He’s a great Atlanta rhythm & blues singer, fantastic singer! (Bandleader of the backing band) Harry Lang came up and he said, ‘I am really glad you came, but then you always come to the shows that I do, whether it’s Charles Walker or whoever!’ I said, ‘Yes, because I love music.’ I don’t go to ever single show, but when there is somebody that I like, I’ll look around and there are lots of the people who come to all my shows and lots of other people’s shows, who are not musicians but you don’t often see musicians and they are not all working.
I can remember, when I started, talking to older musicians whom I reckoned would know an awful lot more about the music and trying to get them talking about records. If you don’t know about where the music you play comes from, how are you going to absorb anything?

The only person I see regularly at gigs is Ian Siegal. I see him at loads of things.

Yeah! Well, Ian’s deep into it.
I think some people are musicians because they really like playing their instrument. It’s like an exercise thing for them. Everyone’s different; there is no right way or wrong way.
When I started getting into the music, I just had to know everything about it all. I had to learn and find records and discover new sounds, all the time. That’s the way I am now. I’ve done this and that, listened very little to new blues records because I am listening to Gospel records, to soul records, funk records and reggae records. It’s very rare I hear a blues record that I’ve heard that makes me rock back in my seat and go ‘Wow!’

I am amazed at the many American musicians who don’t know anything about their music. I find that some of the black guys, like Syl Johnson, are more knowledgeable about everything than the average white American. The ones who travel outside America are much more worldly than the average stay at home American.

Travel is a great thing. It is just so good for people to do that. I spend so much time travelling. You were joking about (Robben Ford) commuting eight hours to Denmark. I would do that all the time, practical things aside, you’ve got to be at home, relationship and that sort of thing, but I just love to travel. I have been doing it since I was in arms. I haven’t stopped and I am always thinking where’ somewhere else I can go. I’ll be going to Canada in the Spring, and the North-West (of the States) Seattle, Washington State, Oregon, Idaho!

Where did you go in Australia?

We went all over, in Australia that just means the coasts. We landed in Perth, played in Perth, then went up the coast. Then we flew over to Brisbane for a show. Then a couple of shows around Sydney, then Melbourne, a big festival, The Great Southern Blues & Rockabilly Festival, at a place called Narooma, which is about six hours south of Sydney. We were there for about three weeks altogether. At the festival, there were The Holmes Brothers, Watermelon Slim was there. They are good crowd the Australians; they come out. I like them. The New Zealanders, again, I just went over and did a couple of shows there. I did two solo show on the North Island. I just didn’t have time to get to the south. My brother lives out there, he’s a musician too. In Rotorua, where the hot lava mud stinks like bad eggs, you get to those places where you never imagined you would ever get to.

Have you played at The Mustique Blues Festival?

Not since 2005; I have done it three times. That was great for me because it was the first time I’ve really got back to the Caribbean. I don’t have family there any more. I don’t mind the journey; it’s worth it once you get there. I was really grateful for that.

The climate is perfect.

For me it is; I grew up there. I was there with Errol Linton the first time I did Mustique. You get off that plane and you smell – you can’t describe it because you’ve had that memory stuck inside you – and you take a deep breath and you are home. You get off the plane in Barbados and then you get a little plane. The best place is St Vincent. Mustique is a beautiful place but it’s not like any part of the Caribbean I’d ever been to before. It’s a beautiful place and I’d love to go there again, but St Vincent and Bequia are the Caribbean I knew, markets, fish in the streets, children playing football in the street, motorbikes driving up and down.

Basil (..Charles, promoter of the Mustique Blues festival) raises money for children on St Vincent.

Yes, that’s exactly what we go for, the educational foundation; he had put about thirty children through schools in the ten years since the festival started (in 1995), when I was there.
You go there and you are away for eighteen nights and you have one night off. You play on a couple of other islands, Bequia and St Vincent, but it changes from year to year. Bless her, Dana (Gillespie) does so much work for it; she organises it. I know it’s a lot of organisation, not just when you are there: finding the people, talking them into doing it, booking them and, when she gets back, she goes down to Brixton and spends three weeks in a recording studio mixing all the tracks for the album. She does everything with her heart.

Do you write much?

Yes I do. Unlike most people that I know who do this, I can’t sit and write a song, because they all just come to me. There have been times in my life, like when I made the Big Sixteen record, when I was going through all sorts of changes, like getting divorced, all that sort of stuff, women here and there and stuff, and the songs just came to me. I could walk down the street and I would have a song at the end of the walk; it would just come. I’ve tried sometimes to sit down and think, ‘OK, let’s write a song. Where do you start?’ and I just don’t know where to start. I just have no idea. When they come, they come. Because of the way I write songs, all based on my life and experiences, I won’t sing a song about things that don’t mean anything to me. I can’t do it.
I was talking to this really good Danish musician at the weekend. He was saying to me that he was trying to put himself in other people’s shoes. Someone told him, to be a really good songwriter you have to imagine that you are somebody else. I said, ‘Great, if that works for you, that’s good but I just can’t do that!’
Last year I met a couple of people who maybe influenced me or had funny situations with (such as) this girl I met in a bar in Brisbane, so before I know it there was a song called “She Said Yes And I Said No”. It came out of that. It is really difficult, because you can go a long time without a song. It’s like you’re waiting for rain. I always keep a piece of paper on me.

You hear stories about songs written on napkins and back of envelopes. Mrs Spooner Oldham told me her (songwriter) husband got up, went to work and came home at 5.30 p.m. He just wrote songs all day, but of course not all of them were great songs.

That’s a professional songwriter; they are people who are creating songs, unlike what I do, which is turning what I am feeling into music and singing. So, somebody can say something and I’m thinking, ‘Oh yeah!’ and it will sit in my mind and sit there and sit there and it will come out, or I’ll feel something about someone or I’ll miss somebody, be thinking about somebody and that’ll come out in a song. My music doesn’t come from the head, it comes from the neck down, apart from the thinking about people; it’s not a conscious thing. I’ve dreamt songs and I wake up and I think, ‘Wow was that a song?’ and then you think, ‘Did somebody else write that? May be I heard that some where else.’ Then you think no that’s a song about that person or that event in your life. I don’t know where it comes from or how it works. I have always been drawn to that kind of music.
Some people listen to music in a different way from me. They will appreciate the structure of it; they will be impressed by the technique that has gone into it or the way the song has been constructed or the way it is played or the production. I have always put a record on or hear something and I go (with an intake of breath) ‘What is this?’ It can be my kind of music. So I will be tuning into pirate radio stations and I will hear some new reggae record and I’ll pull over and wait for the DJ to say what it is and write it down and go out to my local record shop and try and track it down.

I hear lots of stories about songs written on a table napkin or the back of an envelope. Then some people tell me they come off the road and sit down and write the new album in three weeks and they talk about it as if it is a penance. The songs aren’t necessarily any better that way.

Some people out there who make a record because they think they have to make a record. I haven’t made a record for years, a full album in my own name although I have done the singles and I’ve done collaborations. It’s because, if I haven’t got anything to say, I’ll keep my mouth shut.

Would Ace Records put something out, if you wanted to do it?

Every record I have made, Ace has ended up putting out. I have no idea.
I have worked in the music business for twenty-something years, when I am not singing. That’s how I have been able to do all my music. You need to look at the business to know how it is changing.
You know, I am really a traditionalist in some ways but music is music. I love travelling around with my little Walkman, 6,000 songs on it. So wherever I am I can listen to it. If it’s a new recording, a CD is just a piece of computer software and they take up space. Yeah, I’ll take a download of it. Every 45 I buy, I record.

Tell me about your singing voice. I’ve heard you roar in the Howlin’ Wolf register mostly but sometimes I’ve heard you sing in a soft and dulcet register as well.

I don’t know because I am not really technical. I just open (my mouth) and it comes out. It’s loud I know that. I don’t consciously think this is a purry number or this is a roary number. If it’s a song that really means a lot more to me than some of the other ones, particularly of they are my songs, I just start to do it with my eyes shut a lot of the time and then at the end of the song, it is almost like a wake up; I open my eyes and look round and think, ‘Who are these people in my room?’

Do other people record your songs?

Yes if they want to. I did a version of one of my songs with Corinna (Greyson), years ago. It was really nice. She asked if I minded if they recorded it and would I like to play and sing on it. I think I just played on it.
Because a lot of them are personal, I think it is hard or other people to put themselves in that place. They are not just ‘Baby, let’s have a good time, boogie, boogie, boogie!’

So you don’t actively sell your songs.

No, people hear them and like them. May be on the new record there will be songs that other people will do. I know there are some people in Europe who have picked up songs of mine from records and do them. I’m not a songwriter with a capital S, I just write down what I feel. I’d love people to record my songs. It would be really interesting to hear different takes on them.

January looks like a trip to the States and Canada, Portland Seattle, Washington State, up to Vancouver (BC) then maybe down to California but I’m not sure. In February and March, pretty much every weekend I’ll be going over for a show in Sweden, Denmark or Norway. I’m doing some touring with Sven Zetterberg, who is one of the greatest! I am really looking forward to that because I have known him for years and we have jammed together occasionally but we have a lot of musical taste in common. When you meet somebody and you connect with him or her on that level, that’s pretty good. He asked me if I would come over and do some shows with him and I am really pleased.
I think we are doing some show with Mud (Morganfield) in March. I did The Ain’t Nothing But Festival with Mud, at Mijas in June. We’ll bring him to London and some other parts. He normally does shows for Shakedown Blues, at Caistor near Peterborough. Mud is such a good performer that he needs to be seen in other places. I’ll see if we can set up a central London show and get around the country maybe.
So, all the way through to April looks very busy. Then I will come back and go to Spain, which will be nice after the Winter and the Spring spent in frozen Scandinavia.

http://www.bigjoelouis.com

With two albums out and following a barnstorming gig at the Borderline in September, 70s R&B giants The Inmates are back on the loose again. Keith Shackleton talked to lead singer Bill Hurley over a couple of pints, and learnt all about the soulful and bluesy world of both Bill and the band…

KS: Tell me about the re-released records! How did you come to make ‘Meet The Beatles’?
BH: One of our first big breaks as a band, even though we were semi-pro …a Czech guy who was into blues came to watch us quite regularly, spoke to a friend of his who had a good rock club in Paris. They asked us to do a gig there. Little did we know that this particular guy had set it up with Radio France to be broadcast, so almost overnight we were big stars! The French newspaper ‘Liberation’ was a big fan of the band and in 87 they had an idea of celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Sgt. Pepper album, with a rough and ready band just like the early Beatles and Stones.. so they asked us!
We did the concert in the suburbs of Paris, 6000 people present, and Vic Maile did the production on the mobile. It was a tall order since the Beatles had three main singers; of course in The Inmates I’m the only lead singer.. but we did it! The album did well in France and was #1 in Scandinavia and it re-established the
original band; I had left The Inmates in the mid 80s because of illness. From 87 up to today we kept the original line-up. Gil from Riverside Records had been a fan of the band from his days in France, and I got to know him when he came to London. He called and asked who had the rights to the Beatles record; we weren’t sure, Mute/Sonet who released it originally had closed down, and we didn’t even have a tape or album of the gig. In the end I think Gil found an original copy and put it out.
KS: And with great timing, the release ties up with the Warners ‘Best Of’ which is out now…
BH: Another guy at Warners who is a fan! He has license to do special projects and someone in France also had the same idea a couple of years ago. The two of them together with Pete and Tony from The Inmates made the selection of songs.
KS: All the original line up on the records?
BH: Myself singing, Peter Gunn and Tony Oliver on the guitars, Ben Donnelly on bass and Eddie Edwards on drums.
KS: How did it all begin? Have you always known the guys in the band?
BH: My dad was a singer, did all the big bands in the 50s, recorded for HMV, and so I was originally influenced by a lot of the people he liked: Dinah Washington, Jimmy Rushing, Joe Williams. That’s why I wouldn’t run away from doing a ballad. But I took my own influence from rock and roll and rockabilly – Presley, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent – then all the sixties group when they came through – Yardbirds, Pretty Things, Small Faces.
I was working for IPC Magazines and was offered a job with The Count Bishops, but couldn’t leave my job to do that. I kept looking through the Melody Maker and finally saw an advert for a band into Wilson Pickett, Stones, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf… looking for a singer. So that’s when I met Pete and Ben. The three of us
sounded good! Then along came Tony Oliver from The Cannibals and also John Bull, the drummer who played on the ‘Dirty Water’ single. John left a little bit before we got our deal.
We thought we’d just be semi-pro, but we managed to get a gig from John Eichler at the Hope and Anchor on a Monday night. He liked us and gave us four more Mondays: by the fourth Monday, there was a queue round the block! Then we got the Nashville and it started to build. Max Bell reviewed one of our gigs in Melody
Maker, Andrew Lauder from Radar saw it and signed us up.
We’d already recorded the Standells song ‘Dirty Water’, did the rest of the tracks and that became the ‘First Offence’ album and I quit my day job when it was going up the charts! ….

BiB: When did the ‘new’ Elevators start to play?
JW: 1999. Prior to that, for 10 years we were ‘Otis Lift & The Elevators’, with Alan ‘Otis’ Dodds as harp player and frontman, playing jump blues and swing at that time. When Otis left in Jan 1999, we basically took stock of where we were, and we found that everyone except Otis was frustrated by the feeling that we’d drifted too far away from the roots of the blues. I’d sung occasional backing vocals up to that point, but suddenly found myself in the role of singer and frontman. It coincided with some events in my personal life which made me think ‘we can either just pack it in, or we can grab the opportunity and make this a great band’. We honoured our dates, singing material I wasn’t comfortable with, and spent most of 1999 building a new set and fan base.
BiB: The band always had great guitar players, and still does…
JW: Phil (Greaves) auditioned for the band in 1988, having played for The Blues Corporation and I went to the same audition. I’d pretty much given up playing for 10 years, and put my guitar under the bed. I was standing waiting for a train at London Bridge and decided to buy a music mag. I spotted the ad asking for
‘competent guitarist to join gigging R&B band’. I thought, I’ll go along and see if they’re any good. As it happens, Phil was just leaving the audition as I turned up. We both played I Can’t Quit You, both had Black Les Pauls, and were both much better than the others who had showed up. The band at the time were only
looking for one guitarist, but they couldn’t decide which of us fitted best, so we both got the gig, on the condition one of us got a Telecaster! Phil is a couple of years older than me, and was very much a Bluesbreakers Clapton period stylist. I was more influenced by BB King, whom I discovered quite quickly through Peter Green’s period with Mayall.
Here’s my Peter Green anecdote: I met him backstage at my school when I was 15 (I think May 1970). He’d been my guitar hero since ‘A Hard Road’ came out. He’d just left Fleetwood Mac, and was in a scratch band with Alex Dmchowski from Ainsley Dunbar’s band. Somehow or other he’d been booked to play at our school (!) dance. We also had Quiver (later became Sutherland Brothers) on the same bill. I think we must have had someone in-the-know on the social committee! Anyway, I was totally in awe of him, and had smuggled myself backstage, and managed to get next to him. He propped his famous Les Paul up against me whilst he took off his jacket! I met him again a couple of months later at a John Mayall concert at Brighton Dome. I was pretty determined to get backstage, and it was a bit easier in those days. He, Mayall and Duster Bennett autographed the poster I’d nicked! I’ve still got it somewhere.
I guess like hundreds of other wannabe guitarists in the sixties, Phil and I sat in our bedrooms and worked out Clapton’s or Green’s solos note for note, and through them in turn, discovered influences like Freddy and Albert King, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush. We were both dedicated to really getting inside the technique and structure of blues guitar, and it is a marvellous twist of fate that we got to meet, let alone play together for so long. I have never met or seen another guitarist who can get the perfect Gibson plus Marshall tasteful blues tone that Greavsey produces. Phil is a resolute straight-down-the-line unpretentious guy, who stands pretty still when he is playing, which is where he got the nickname ‘Ironman’, but he plays like a furnace about to boil over!
Our great strength is, between us we can nail the definitive styles of our formative period, and compliment each other perfectly, because the heritage on which we draw is shared. The other crucial ingredient to this is that Martin (Robinson) has exactly the same pedigree on bass, and is a real blues bass player, rather than a ‘bassist playing blues’. A key element that separates us from the rest.
The rhythm section pays a lot of attention to how the bass and drums work together. Mick (Hill) isn’t a showy drummer, in fact his rock-solid approach works really well for us, as it more accurately reflects the style of drumming that was common on early blues recordings, and it adds to our overall sound. He has some very nice vintage kits too!
We’ve virtually never had a duff gig. We always give it 100%, and have always paid proper attention to the quality of our sound. More than anything, we are true fans still. We love playing, and though we may look a bit too straight, we play our hearts out, and audiences pick up on it.
BiB: You recently added a brass section, which we can hear on the ‘Relatively Blue’ CD.
JW: This was initially for just a couple of gigs in 2001, but has now gestated into a more recognisable Biggish-Band, with regular players doing a few selected dates per year. In the Biggish-Band format we have two sax players, trumpet and trombone. This means we can do great arrangements of classic BB King numbers.
BiB: There’s a healthy number of great covers in the set..
JW: I have written songs over the years, but unless you’re an outstanding writer, why inflict mediocre originals on an audience, when you can cherry pick great songs from the best people? There will always be purists who say ‘well they’re just a good covers band’ and yes we are, but we’ve been doing it so well for so
long now, that I genuinely think we have broken through that ceiling, and can claim to be interpreting songs rather than simply ‘covering’ them.
BiB: Tell me a little about the CD.
JW: Relatively Blue was basically intended as a snapshot of the band as it was in 2003. We went for a very straight production style, and consciously avoided overprocessing the resultant recording. We still play most of the numbers live, but the next album will inevitably have a different feel, as all our techniques have subtly
altered over the past couple of years, along with bringing more diverse songs into our set. My singing has improved too!

RL: In the sixties I worked for a guy named Percy Stovall. A booking agent. He had a band called The Royals. It was a back-up band for all the r&b artists, like Joe Simon, William Bell, Robert Parker, Joe Tex, Irma Thomas, Wilson Pickett… His territory was like Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Texas, the so-called chitlin circuit.

Stovall was blind as a bat but that old man could count money. He would not give you all your money out on the road. He gave us about two dollars a day and the rest came when the tour finished. I really learned how to save money in that band!

He really knew how to hold on to a dollar! And when December came, Stovall showed his real strength. He’d book every day in the month of December. I played in Eddie Bo’s band back in the sixties as well. I played with Fats Domino in the seventies. He called me Chrome Dome. We tried to get Fats to record with the
Dirty Dozen later, but that’s another story. Fats took a year off. I moved to Las Vegas, played in a little band up there, then I moved to California. Irma Thomas was living in San Francisco at the time. She was
playing in a club there. I walked in to where she was playing and she was glad to see me. ‘Hey Roger! Where your horn?’ I said, ‘It’s in the trunk of my car.’ So I wound up doing the gig. She paid me, said ‘What you doing?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m just hanging out.’ I had a little one man band act at the time with electric drums. She
said, ‘You want to come back home with me and be my saxophonist?’ I said, ‘Why not? I ain’t doing nothing.’ So I came back to New Orleans with Irma and played in her band for a while.

I went back with Fats. Then he took another vacation and that was when the Dirty Dozen started.

The story continues in issue 41…