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Will Wild joins me on episode 61.
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A 16-year-old Will stole his first harmonica while at a party and proceeded to put the rock into the instrument.
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He first started performing with his sister Danny 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.
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Will has a very active YouTube channel with lots of tuition videos and great performances, such as playing the Freebird guitar solo on harmonica, as well as collaborations with other harmonica players.
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Will has come up with his own wild-tuned harmonicas, placing the second-position root notes in the top two octaves as draw notes, which really opens up the top end.
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Seidel manufacture these harmonicas.
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Watch out for Will's new album with a new band coming out later this year, which will see Will move more towards the genre of rock.
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This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas.
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Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zeidel Harmonicus.
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Hello, Will Wild and welcome to the podcast.
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Thanks, Neil.
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Good to be here.
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Thanks Will.
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So you're based in the UK and I believe you were born in Macclesfield and now are living in Brighton.
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That's right, yeah.
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Born in the same town as John Mayall.
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I was only there for like the first year of my life.
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Pretty much grew up in Wiltshire and then I've spent most of my adult life in Brighton.
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And you moved to Brighton I think to start a music course on drumming, is that right?
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Yeah, I was a drummer before I was a harmonica player.
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I used to play drums in a punk band.
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I applied for a music college in Brighton.
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After applying there was when I started really playing harp.
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So by the time I actually got down to Brighton and went to that college, I wasn't really interested in playing drums anymore.
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I just spent all my time in my room just playing harmonica instead.
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I've heard the story that you picked up, I think, one of those kind of novelty Guinness diatonics at a party.
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That's right, yeah.
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I kind of always found the harmonica intriguing.
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Yeah, I just saw one laying there, a little Guinness promotional thing.
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Yeah, I just picked it up, thought I might maybe learn like a Bob Dylan tune or something.
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There's party trick kind of thing.
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If I'm honest, I just found it like, I was really comfortable with it straight away.
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I couldn't say the same about every other instrument I've picked up, but I've never found harp difficult at all.
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It's never been a chore to practice.
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It comes very easily to me.
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I've got guitarists like pro guitarist friends who they always found guitar really really easy and they found harmonica really difficult and different things for different people I think
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yeah no it's interesting point though isn't it whether the you know people who take it up and you know become reasonably accomplished on it or you know because it comes naturally because something like you know playing guitar for example or piano or violin you know you know you've got more physical movements involved haven't you whereas obviously harmonica is you know is more less breathing obviously there's more to it than that
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sure I think a lot of it's in in the listening though and just sort of understanding the language of it and and i was brought up hearing sunny boy williamson and muddy waters records and stuff pretty much daily so i'd always heard that sound so when it when it came to bending and scooping you know i could kind of just do it instinctively when i started
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and this was your father was it who played the blues records around the house
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yeah he never played any music himself he used to play a lot of uh a lot of blues and rock and soul and stuff
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sure yeah and this this drew you to the harmonica.
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So it was the blues harmonica then that first appealed to you, was it?
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Yeah, I mean, I'd never really heard any other kind of harmonica other than, you know, Bob Dylan kind of stuff.
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Yeah, like I said, I was really into rock and metal and punk and stuff as a teenager.
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Always had this kind of ear to the blues as well because I was brought up around it.
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But it wasn't until I picked up that harp.
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I always really liked the song Help Me by Sonny Boy Williamson.
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And so I thought I'd try and learn that I kind of figured there aren't all that many notes in it.
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So if I could just find the notes on the instrument and get them to sound something like how he makes them sound with the vibrato and everything, I thought I should be able to work it out.
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So it was really just that song initially that made me want to play blues harmonica.
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Oh
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As I started getting more into it, I started digging out all these Muddy Waters records and just any blues record that I could find, basically.
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So you had your Guinness Diatonica, I assume it's a C harmonica.
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So help me, is it a B flat?
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So you quickly worked out you needed a new key, did you, I take it?
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Yeah, and actually that was a difficult one because even the record of that song, it's not quite an F.
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It's been a little bit slowed down or sped up at some time.
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Yeah, I think I got like a D harp and then...
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And A-Harp pretty soon realized I was going to need all 12, you know, just so I could play along with whatever I wanted to.
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Right.
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So as you said, though, you were sort of 16 this time when you started playing the harmonica.
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So this was a case then of you started getting lots of blues records.
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I think you listened to a lot of Muddy Waters and played along with him.
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Especially, yeah.
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First year or so of my playing was just in my bedroom playing along with the King B album, which is Jerry Portnoy, and the Hard Again album, which is James Cotton.
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I
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think if I go out and play like a straight sort of Chicago blues set as a sideman, which isn't something I do very often, but if I do something like that, I always kind of default to playing like, like Jerry Portnoy or like James Cotton, you know, and I think it's because I immersed myself in that stuff so much in the beginning.
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Yeah, they're great albums, yeah.
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You're sort of what, you're early 30s now, aren't you?
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Yeah, I'm 33 now.
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You've done very well for yourself and made a name for yourself in the harmonica world.
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So congratulations there.
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So you started playing with your sister, Danny, first.
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She's a performer and she's a singer, guitar player, isn't she?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, she's like a bluesy soul country singer.
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But she signed to Roof Records, which is a German blues label in 2008, something like that.
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Yeah, it was pretty handy having her as a sister, actually, because I used to play drums with her as well as in the sort of punk band i was in at school yeah so once i picked up the harp i had someone that i could play blues with straight away i think i'd i'd only really been playing the instrument for like two months when i started going out gigging and i'd probably been playing for about two years when she signed with roof and we started going out on tour around europe i got a lot of a lot of live experience that way we made a few few albums on roof records one of which was produced by mike vernon who was probably one of my favorite bands Blue's producers.
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He produced all the early Fleetwood Mac stuff and all the Blue Horizon stuff.
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I learned a lot playing in the studio with him producing and all the session musicians that he pulled in for that as
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well.
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...
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...
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i don't even know when i started my band it wasn't long after because danny wasn't playing the kind of blues that i wanted to play for the most part um at the time i i was into more like just straight ahead like chicago blues and that's what i wanted to do and that's what i thought i was doing when i go back and listen to it now it doesn't sound like chicago blues you know it's really like aggressive and like really sort of sloppy a bit punky and garagey sounding but but that's what i was trying to to do.
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Yeah, I started my band when I was, I don't know, 21 or something.
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Started writing songs and singing just so I could do the kind of material that I
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wanted to play.
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And with Danny, I think now you do still perform with her sometimes, don't you, as a duo?
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Yeah, we played at a festival last weekend, actually.
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That's really the only time we tend to play together now is like acoustic duo stuff.
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...
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in the world To spend one moment with you, girl
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We just booked a blues festival in Sweden later this year, going out as a duo.
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And that format works well for us.
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You know, we can both do our own separate things.
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And then now and again, we get to come together and do that thing, which is completely different to what I'm doing, you know, with my current band right now.
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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So I think most people have probably heard of you.
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They've heard you by now.
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So Will Wild, you do this rock blues, you'd say?
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Everything that is out there right now.
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Yeah.
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But I am looking forward to it.
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Launching a new band at some point this year.
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I seem to have been talking about this band forever now.
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But because I broke my neck in 2019 and then I broke my collarbone the year after and then there was a pandemic for two years.
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So it hasn't happened yet.
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Yeah, I did start a new band.
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It actually started out as a Will Wild record that we were making.
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Then it just turned out to be a hard rock record, not really a blues rock record.
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I decided to call it something else So I've started this new band.
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It's called Bad Luck Friday.
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We have a whole album and a couple of singles with music videos all in the can waiting to be released.
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But I can't let anyone hear any of it yet until we've got a release plan in place and schedule the tour and all of that stuff.
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But it will be at some point this year.
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I've been working with a guitarist called Steve Brook.
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Me and Steve are like the songwriting core of the band.
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Yeah, we spend a writing and recording and workshopping songs.
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And this new band is still going to be this kind of rock blues?
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It's just rock, just hard rock.
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There's maybe two songs on it which you could probably call blues rock, but not in the sort of 70s kind of classic rock, blues rock sense.
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We wanted to stay away from that and do something that's just kind of contemporary rock.
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It's mostly up-tempo.
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They're all songs with choruses and middle eights and not just a bunch of sort of throw away 12 bars with long solos on you know there's still some pretty like epic harp solos on there but it's kind of song first and and then the harp is like the icing on the cake you know
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so we'll look at your uh your rock credentials then so first of all your name so wild is a great rock name that's your real surname i take it isn't it
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it is it's my real name yeah
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great name you were born to be a rock star with that name
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yeah right i found what i said i found my my parents found this uh this thing in their loft when they moved house a little while ago.
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And I wrote it when I was, I think, five years old or something.
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I think at school, they asked all the kids to write on a bit of paper what they wanted to be when they grew up.
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And I wrote down, I'm going to sing rock and roll songs.
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And finding that actually kind of reminded me like what I set out to do.
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I kind of ended up in the blues circuit.
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Yeah, the last few years felt like I'd stagnated a little bit doing the same old thing.
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It was when I broke my neck, actually.
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I kind of realized that the stuff I'd been doing isn't really what I wanted to be doing.
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I always had this vision of just a contemporary hard rock band, but with epic harmonica in it.
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So, yeah, I thought I'd better get on and do it.
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Well, great.
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And I think that's, you know, that shows that you, you know, you definitely push yourself, yeah, to create new sounds.
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And I think, as you know, we'll talk through your albums in a sec, you can really see that, you know, you've kind of evolved through that as well.
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So you've had some great output so far, but yeah, good to hear that you're pushing it still.
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Cheers, yeah.
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think that probably the only person who's done something like this would be blues traveler and john popper yeah not that my stuff sounds anything like that It's a lot more down the hard rock thing.
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They're quite much lighter kind of sound, you know, and I'd say my lead playing is more, it's a lot more blues based than his.
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He kind of has his own thing going on as far as songs and choruses, but with sort of virtuoso, crazy harp solos on them.
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He's the only person I can think of that's done anything quite like that.
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Yeah.
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Do you know John Popper?
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I don't know him personally.
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He did post one of my videos once.
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He posted my video for Lazy and he wrote, I've been told not to swear, but a word that begins with F and ends with ing and then badass.
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So that's one of the quotes that I have on my website at the moment from John Popper.
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So a bit more, you know, onto your sort of rock, your approach, you know, an interest in playing rock music and rock blues.
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And that's, you know, something that you brought to Harmonica, which is very unique to you.
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as you say, blues travel may be the closest thing that you had to that.
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You mentioned that you listened to rock for your teenage years.
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Image-wise, you've got the great image.
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You've got the skull biting on the harmonica as your logo, which is great.
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Who came up with that one?
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That was me.
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I basically drew a really...
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bad version of it because I can't really draw took it to a tattoo artist and asked them to make a better version for me so
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yeah no it's great and you know you've got the image you've got the long hair you wear sleeveless t-shirts you've got large biceps as far as I can tell as well so you've definitely got that rock image
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yeah I don't know I suppose like most of the bands and artists that I've been into have always had a very strong image and strong sort of stage presence you know as a kid like Michael Jackson was my favorite artist you know like massive showman and then through my teens I was into like say a lot of like rock and metal bands and stuff so yeah I remember actually like starting on the blues circuit when I was about 20 or whatever my whole identity my whole life had always like my image had always been tied to whatever music I was into you know so like growing up I was like a goth and a punk or whatever whatever I was into at the time got into the blues circuit and I was like I didn't really know what what to dress like for this you know what i mean because you can't take cues from the people that come to the shows most of the people on the circuit don't really have an image you know like the the sort of what i would think of the blues image is is like john lee hooker or something with his suit and his hat and stuff but that doesn't really work unless you're one of the original like black american authentic guys so i sort of went for the 60s 70s image for a while because i thought you know all the british blues guys are I was into like Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and free Paul Rogers and stuff or dressed like that that's because it was the 60s and 70s
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well it's interesting though that you know you've obviously thought about images being important right and you know you've done really well with your band so you're clearly maybe people should pay more attention to the image
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side well yeah I mean getting back into rock is quite good because I enjoy the whole thing you know the writing and the production and the image and everything that goes together to make the final product I think a lot of the time that stuff people just think oh it doesn't matter it's all about the music you know and it is all about the music but we're still professionals.
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On to the playing then for your approach to playing rock kind of music on the harmonica which is again is very unique to you and you know you definitely have come up with a you know unique sound there is something you're trying to do to try and emulate electric guitars when you're playing?
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Kind of I wouldn't say necessarily I'm trying to emulate the sound of the guitar because certain things work on the guitar that just don't work on the harp even if you can play all the right notes and sometimes they just sound weak on the harp.
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But a lot of my influence has come from guitar players.
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So blues guys like Albert King, a lot of my phrasing is based around that.
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those kind of Albert King ideas.
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And Peter Green, Paul Kossoff, Buddy Guy and all that.
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I mean, the reason I say that to some extent is I know that some of the songs on your latest album, you play guitar solos as some of your solo, at least partly, haven't you?
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Yeah, so there was like Lazy...
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All the lines on that are like Ritchie Blackmore lines.
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But when I'm soloing on that, just the sort of improv solo sections, I'm just doing my own thing.
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I don't sort of learn all the solos note for note.
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Sure, yeah.
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But there's one YouTube video you did, which is the Freebird solo, which I think you are playing the guitar solo, aren't you, on the Freebird solo?
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Yeah,
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yeah.
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Yeah.
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YouTube's different.
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It's all about just getting clicks and it's a bit more about sensationalism rather than art a lot of the time.
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But I find it fun sometimes to just take a famous guitar solo and put it onto harp.
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I've actually learned quite a lot by doing that.
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With any instrument, I think a lot of people end up playing the same kind of licks just because of how the notes lay out on the instrument.
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Certain licks are very comfortable to play and you end up with the harp kind of playing you after a while, after this note, you always go to that note.
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But with my tuning that I developed, I don't have anyone to listen to for, you know, to learn licks for this tuning because no one else has done anything with it.
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I realised that all the guitar stuff that I've always listened to and loved, a lot of it is possible now on this tuning.
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So I can go back and learn some of that or, you know, take inspiration from it at least.
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You know, it's interesting that approach that, you know, like you say, learning off guitars, certainly from the fact that playing rock music, you know, probably works quite well, yeah, because there isn't a lot of, well, there isn't any rock or harmonica players as we've established at least not very many
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even when I'm playing like hard rock stuff all of my lead playing is still blues based most of the time anyway it's still mostly centered around that minor pentatonic thing Although actually, most of the rock guitarists that I listen to are blues-based players as well.
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If you think of guys like Slash, Angus Young, Gary Moore, I know he's had a blues career as well, but they're all kind of blues players at heart that have just sort of adapted to rock by adding intensity and speed.
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And it's more just about the delivery and the attitude.
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And a lot of that has to do with the vibrato, in my opinion.
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I get a lot of harmonica players asking me, how do you play rock?
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And it's same as you play blues just you
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know
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just a bit more
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rock attitude you know the bands that you've had you've played quite a lot of rock festivals yeah so how are you received at rock festivals a harmonica player maybe by guitar players but generally by the audience i take it yeah well received yeah
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yeah i mean the majority of festivals i've played to date have been more blues festivals and rock but we played at the rambling man fair in in kent a few years ago and that that's just a hard rock festival it went down really well people really like It was really that day that made me realize that actually, yeah, this could work because this is a proper rock crowd.
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These people probably don't know much about blues, but they still get what we're doing here.
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I've also read that you've been called the Hendrix of the harmonica.
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What do you think of that label?
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Yeah, I don't know.
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I kind of liked it at first.
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And then I realized there's about five people that have been called to Hendrix's harmonica, like Sugar Blue, Johnny Mars, Jason Ritchie.
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Yeah, I'm not too keen on that anymore, if I'm honest.
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It's a bit of a novelty thing.
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But I quite liked it being on the posters and things when we toured in Germany a few years ago because the crowd on the European blues circuit, the blues scene...
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is primarily a blues rock scene and it's heavily dominated by guitar and kind of Hendrix, Rory Gallagher, Gary Moore kind of stuff as opposed to more traditional blues.
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Yeah, having the Hendrix of the harmonica on the poster just kind of made it clear that I was in another like Little Walter copycat kind of thing and it was going to be more of a blues rock show.
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So I didn't mind it, but Hendrix isn't really an influence on me.
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So you say, you mentioned that I think you've toured in Europe a lot, haven't you?
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Has that been the main place you've played and you've done very well over there?
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So how's that been?
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yeah so i suppose because it all started with my sister signing to to roof and so we toured a lot in germany then and then i signed to terrible record label called rock the earth records based in uh hamburg so most of my touring was over there as well but i'm out of that deal now fortunately so
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so your first album probably with this record label is and was in 2010 called unleashed and i think um
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yeah
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you use the same band that your your sister was using you there were session musicians you asked them to record this album with you
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yeah that's right basically that session that we did with Mike Vernon producing I just pulled in all the same session players that he chose for her record you know Jamie Little on drums who used to play for Sherman Robertson Roger Innes on bass who's played for just about everyone on the blues circuit Stuart Dixon on guitar who I know he used to play with Marcus Malone he's played with a lot of different people too Pete Wingfield on keys it was Pete Wingfield who recorded 18 with a bullet
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many years ago did you have much time to prepare for this album or was it you know you guys agreed and you know how did you choose the songs for it and that sort of thing
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I wrote all of that album myself demoed it up actually there was one song on there that my sister wrote for me Angel Came Down the rest of it I wrote myself I made demos for everything Really rough demos.
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I'm not the best guitarist or bass player.
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And then sent them to Jamie, who produced it and all arrived at the studio.
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And he had ideas of what he wanted to do with them in terms of arrangement.
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And it took about a week to make the whole of that album.
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It's pretty quick.
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It's pretty quick.
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Thank you.
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And then three years later, you released your album Raw Blues, which I think is definitely a development in your sound.
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The idea with that one was just, as the name suggests, to do more of a raw blues kind of straight ahead Chicago-y blues kind of sound.
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I wanted to make it not rock, but aggressive.
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Like if you think of the way that Buddy Guy plays blues, Paranoia is quite obviously, I think, inspired by Buddy Guy, a stylist So it's kind of just straight up blues, but just played very aggressively and in your face.
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And you wrote quite a lot of the album again, did you?
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Yeah, I think I wrote pretty much all of that, except for Get Me Some, which was a cover of an old Thomas song.