So far I’ve been very, very fortunate because it appears that people like to hear the music I like to play. What more fortunate position can a musician be in?
You can’t overthink the music. Mood and intensity can’t be manufactured. The blues isn’t about structure; it’s what you bring to it. The spontaneity of capturing a specific moment is what drives it.
Sometimes, I must admit, I’d like to have a second guitarist onstage with me, but it wouldn’t look right. I’d like to play for another 20 years, but I don’t know. I just can’t see it happening. I don’t know why. It’s a certain foreboding. A funny feeling. Vultures.
Once I get onstage the tension explodes and I’m fine. I’m in another world – in a trance almost, doing what I love best, expressing myself through guitar.
The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you’re talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures.
My vocation is more in composition really than anything else – building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.
The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.
My guitar style was developed during that 10-year period. That’s me. That’s the way I play, and I don’t wish to play any other way. Our own individual identities are firmly stamped on this album.
