Diatonic Harmonica Episodes

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 wit…

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 mus…

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 joi…

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. Stev…

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 r…

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 …

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 pl…

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 af…

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 harmo…

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 extensi…

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 film…

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 de…

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 ba…

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, w…

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, u…

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 …

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 …

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 t...

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...

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 h…

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 ban…

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 Work...

RJ Mischo joins me on episode 56. RJ hails from the twin cities of Minneapolis-St Paul, where he developed his craft with a little help from local player Slim Lynwood. He then teamed up with Mojo Buford to perform around the cities, including recording an album with Mojo. With numerous albums out u…

Jim Conway joins me on episode 55. Jim is an Australian harmonica player who rose to fame at the age of 19 in the jug band: The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, with the first two albums from the band receiving gold record status. Jim also played kazoo with Captain Matchbox to great effect. The band …