You released the album That’s What I Heard in February 2020. So the pandemic postponed the concerts. How do you get back to him now?
Thanks to the delayed release, it’s convenient that we have a record from which the world has not yet heard the songs in concert. Only one is not so relevant now. The song This Man is about a man who was the President of the United States at the time it was released. Luckily on the way out, so we don’t play that song anymore because we don’t have to.
Anyway, it took a while to get up to concert pace. Some eighteen months without concerts is a long time. But people have been very supportive, which has given us more energy. After the first few concerts we got better.
You mentioned a song about Trump. Do you have songs about other American presidents?
I only have two about him, the first one came out earlier. Two of our albums criticized the American invasion of Iraq, which also affected the presidency. So yes, when we don’t like something, we deal with it in songs. When our leaders do something we don’t agree with, we speak up.
We play the blues for people who are victims of politicians and things that happen. I don’t have anything major against Biden yet. It doesn’t seem to me that he’s trying to decimate foreign countries, or America.
You started your band almost fifty years ago. What did you dream about then?
We were simply big fans of the music, blues, soul and other genres we grew up listening to. We aspired to become blues musicians, our role model and hero was Albert Collins, later our greatest teacher, who played at our graduation parties. I saw Jimi Hendrix, Albert King and other great bluesmen a few times. When we started the band, we naturally gravitated towards the blues that we enjoyed. We didn’t care at all what was on the radio, we did it for our own pleasure.
Fortunately, there was also an audience for our music, which made us feel good about ourselves. Then fairly early on, two years after the band started, we had the opportunity to play with Collins whenever he was on the West Coast and meet other heroes we knew from the records, it solidified what we wanted to do. Collins always asked us if we called our parents home to let them know where we were.
You also played with BB King right?
Yes, on the Blues Summit record. It was a gathering of great musicians. Our bassist Richard Cousins and our friend Robert Murray also worked on the record. Together we dreamed of being blues musicians. And now we were sitting in the studio, recording a BB King record, looking at each other and not believing that we had made it this far. That was a nice moment.
