Diatonic Harmonica Episodes

Mike Stevens joins me on episode 89. Mike is a Canadian who made his name playing Bluegrass harmonica, performing with some of the biggest names in Bluegrass and playing at The Grand Old Opry over 300 times. Mike toured with Bluegrass legends, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, and recently played two songs on harmonica at Jesse’s funeral. Mike won the Canadian Bluegrass artist of the year for five consecutive years, and released a Bluegrass book with Hal Leonard. But Bluegrass isn’t his only genre,...

Paul Harrington joins me on episode 87. Paul has a long and illustrious recording career, having had great success on the vibrant session scene in Dallas where he recorded on many commercials. He also played on the hit song Timber by rapper Pit Bull, possibly the most listened to song with harmonica in the last decade, with over one billion streams on Spotify. Paul met and performed with many great musicians on the Dallas music scene, becoming the go to harmonica player for famed record...

Marcos Coll joins me on episode 86. Marcos is a Spaniard who has been living in Berlin for the last twenty years. Marcos rose to fame at a young age on the Spanish blues scene playing with the Tonky Blues Band before forming the the Los Reyes del KO band, touring the world and sharing the stage with many famous names. Moving to Berlin in 2004, Marcos became a regular on the vibrant blues scene in Germany and recorded with many great artists. In addition to playing blues, Marcos likes to mix m...

Ed Hopwood joins me on episode 85. Ed is from the UK where he started out playing drums and he shares some tips on how to bring some rhythm into our harmonica playing. Ed loves early styles of harmonica and performs a range genres, including jug band, early blues, cajun, bluegrass and old-timey music. Ed has a one man band show where he plays harmonica, guitar, sings and a whole host of percussion instruments. He’s brought many of these skills to his main band, The Rigmarollers, a trio ...

Annie Raines joins me on episode 83. Annie is an early pioneer as a female blues harmonica player. Hailing from the Boston area of the US, she drew on the rich source of harmonica inspiration from nearby Cambridge, regularly attending a jam there in her youth, and meeting many great players and joining the Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra. Annie then teamed-up with her long time musical partner, Paul Rishell, after also meeting him around the Boston area. They have now been performing and ...

Steve Guyger joins me on episode 82. Steve is from the Philadelphia area of the US and he absorbed the blues harmonica players when he first got into playing, with John Lee Williamson a big early inspiration. Steve was also great friends with the late Paul Oscher, making three albums with him. Steve also teamed up with the legendary Jimmy Rogers, over the course of fourteen years. Steve has released five albums under his own name, with a great mix of diatonic and chromatic blues. ...

Ben Bouman joins me on episode 81. Ben is a Dutch blues player who always strives for originality in his playing, partly inspired by his admiration for the playing of Paul deLay. Ben’s current band is The Marble Tones, who took their name from the amplifier company, with Ben helping develop their range of harmonica amps. Ben also helped Seydel prototype their steel reeds before they released them some fifteen years ago, and he tells us all about polishing and profiling steel reeds, his own bu...

Todd Parrot joins me on episode 80. Todd is a gospel harmonica player who was inspired to play harmonica after first hearing it in church. He went on to join the church band and has gone on to develop a heavenly tone on the instrument. Todd listened to a lot of country harmonica and was influenced from several players from that genre, including Terry McMillan. Todd released a self-produced solo album, Songs From The Harp, where he learned to play several instruments to accompany his har...

Marko Jovanovic joins me on episode 78. Marko is a German player with Serbian roots, from where he developed an interest in playing Balkan music on the harmonica, returning to the region to team up with several acts to release some great music in that genre. He’s also an expert blues player, has played chamber music, Arabic music and much more on both diatonic and chromatic harmonicas. Marko also runs the successful Berlin Harmonica School, where as well as one-to-one group classes he has som...

Rob Paparozzi joins me on episode 77. Rob is based around the New York area where he started out playing in blues bands before quickly adding the chromatic to his harp arsenal. He took lessons with Robert Bonfiglio and then had Toots Thielemans giving him tips over the telephone. The versatility afforded to Rob by playing both diatonic and chromatic allowed him to enjoy a tremendous career on the session scene in New York, playing with many famous names including Dolly Parton, Randy Newman an...

Will Pound joins me on episode 76. Will first started playing harmonica age 10 to help with his breathing after he underwent two major heart operations as a child. Since then he has rose to fame on the English folk scene, being nominated for folk musician of the year three times. He now plays harmonica and melodeon, diversifying his musical output to cover many different acoustic genres. Will has released a number of albums with a range of quality musicians, with his last album spanning the t...

Richard Hunter joins me on episode 74. Richard has immersed himself in harmonica ever since he first picked it up at age 15 and has been pushing the boundaries of the instrument ever since. His first release was a solo acoustic harmonica album, composing most of the songs himself and making extensive use of alternate tunings and counterpoint, followed up by a second album along the same lines. Richard is a true innovator of using effects with harmonica and has created some great sounds using ...

Adam Gussow joins me on episode 73. Adam is a native New Yorker now living in Mississippi, working as a professor at the university there. Adam rose to stardom as part of the blues duo Satan and Adam in the late 1980s. They found their audience on the streets of Harlem, where they were briefly filmed and appeared in a U2 documentary and album. Satan & Adam enjoyed great success, playing together for 15 years, releasing three albums before disbanding in 1998, re-forming some years later a...

Paul Reddick joins me on episode 72. Paul is a singer, songwriter and harmonica player based in Toronto, Canada. He rose to prominence with his band: Paul Reddick and the Sidemen in the 1990s. Paul describes himself as not a typical blues harmonica player, often using his sparse notes with heavy delay, while also making the use of complex patterns to build interesting rhythms. Paul developed his songwriting approach using the structure of poetry, and his insightful and thoughtful blues ...

Juzzie Smith joins me on episode 71. Juzzie is an Australian who has a one-man band act with the harmonica pivotal to the sound. He has had over 200 million views of his online videos, starting out when a passer-by recorded him busking at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. Juzzie started his one-man band after playing as the harp player in a blues band, and then teaching guitar and harmonica. This gave him a great foundation to lay down the rhythms for his self-penned laid-back bluesy folk....

Ricky Cool joins me on episode 70. Ricky hails from the Birmingham area of the UK, and drew great inspiration asa teenager from the American folk festivals which brought some harmonica greats to the city. Under his alter ego Ricky Cool, he went on to lead several successful rhythm and blues band, with Jamaican music also brought into the set. He also played harmonica in a band with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant! Ricky played harmonica and saxophone in most of these bands and this combinat...

Herbert Quelle joins me on episode 69. Herbert is a German who worked as a diplomat for 40 years. This included 10 years as the German Consul in the US, where he met several distinguished harmonica names. With a deep interest in the harmonica, Herbert has researched the instrument to great depth, using this information to litter facts into his two fictional works centred on our beloved instrument. He tells us of the huge export of harmonicas from Germany to the US, and how the early marketing...

Cheryl Arena joins me on episode 68. Cheryl is a blues player and singer from the Boston area. She integrated herself into the local music scene there by setting up a jam session near Berklee college, drawing in the great musicians from there. And then set-up another residency with guest musicians joining the house band. Her deep love for the music has taken Cheryl far and wide, and gave her the opportunity to meet and play with some of her harmonica idols, including Junior Wells. This led to...

Joel Andersson joins me on episode 66. Joel is an Irish harmonica player from Sweden, while also building one of the best reputations in the business for his harmonica customisation skills. Joel first fell in love with Irish music on the harmonica when he heard Rick Epping’s playing. He spent time in Ireland with Rick, learning both the music and the art of fine tuning harmonicas. Joel went on to release a solo harmonica album: The Irish Harmonica, where he simulates the sound of a fidd...

Paul Barry joins me on episode 64. Paul is our resident expert on William Clarke, and is currently writing a biography about him. Bill (as he was known to his friends) was born in a suburb of Los Angeles, and starting going to the blues clubs in the south of the city, age 17. Bill met his great inspiration, George ‘Harmonica’ Smith, in 1977, with George showing Bill how to play that big old chromatic harmonica . Bill released his first album in 1978, with other albums following where he always...

Tom Ellis joins me on episode 62 for something a little bit different as we do a retrospective of the legendary Paul Butterfield, with Tom our resident expert. Born in 1942 in Chicago, Butterfield frequented many of the South Side blues clubs located there and even had the audacity to hire Howling Wolf’s rhythm section before going on to record his seminal album ‘The Paul Butterfield Blues Band’. His high energy form of blues launched him on the scene and he quickly followed this with the genre...

Will Wilde joins me on episode 61. A sixteen year old Will stole his first harmonica while at a party and proceeded to put the rock into the instrument. He first started performing with his sister, Dani, as the harmonica player in her band. But Will has always had ideas of his own and soon formed his own band, with elements of rock and a heavy, driving blues style. Will has a very active YouTube channel, with lots of tuition videos and great performances, such as playing the Free Bird guitar ...

Wade Schuman joins me on episode 60. Wade is the singer / songwriter and leader, and of course harmonica player, of the New York based 8-piece band, Hazmat Modine, with the harmonica playing a pivotal role in the sound of such a big band. In fact, there is often a second harmonica player in the band. Wade absorbed many musical genres from a young age, which helped shape the eclectic styles of music played by Hazmat Modine, from African, Asian, Klezmer, Caribbean, all with an American roots co...

Bertram Becher joins me on episode 58. Bertram is the Product Manager at Seydel harmonicas. He first landed this dream job when he made a name for himself by creating a software tutorial called The Interactive Blues Harp Workshop. Bertram tells us about the history of Seydel and how their use of stainless steel reeds led to the creation of the ‘new’ Seydel around 2007. As Product Manager for harmonicas he has a very varied role, including creating web pages, selecting pitches for tunings and h...