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MJ: I do. I want it to sound as natural as possible and when I did the album “Alone”, the one
before this where it was just me and an instrument, I really wanted to capture that live feeling
because you’ve got all these benefits of the studio, but there’s something magical about just a
live show and sometimes people will come up to you and say, oh wow, hearing it live and
hearing what the sound is and everything. Of course, you don’t always get the best sound at
live shows, but just capturing that, as natural as possible without effects. I run everything
pretty clean.

BiTS: I love the humour that you bring to your music, especially in stuff like ‘Big Tour Bus’,
which is one of my favourite songs at the moment.

MJ: Oh, thank you.

BiTS: Especially with the
driver named Gus. What a
wonderful rhyme that is.

MJ: Oh, thank you. Yes. I’ve
always liked that song. It was
written on the road, and it was
pretty much how I was feeling
at the moment. Not in a
depressed way but [laughing]
in the way the song portrays
it, I was sitting in a hotel room
in Ohio within a Super 8 hotel,
which is one of our fancier
hotels and the door wouldn’t
quite close all the way, and there’s stains on the carpet and there was this fly buzzing around
my head and I’d been on the road just driving straight like 800 miles a show and it was one of
those hard trips, so the song came very naturally to me at that point.

BiTS: Were you seriously affected by COVID? I mean in the sense that you got lots of gigs
cancelled and that kind of thing.
MJ: I did really. No complaints. There were so many people that were hurt financially and in

other ways, obviously and I was so fortunate because I had a very wonderful year. My fans just
super supported me on the new album that came out that year and I did some online concerts,
and it was actually a great year for me. So no complaints there, but I book myself as a general
rule and I’m really bad about it because I’m a musician [chuckling] and I’m not very good at
getting on the business aspect of things at times. So I’m always really late at booking shows
and I’ll have a really good event and then I’ll forget to book shows around it, so I’ll be last
minute trying to contact people, like, hey, can I play here, can I play there because I’ve got to
fill in the dates? I don’t want to drive 3000 miles from this gig to that gig without a show in
between, so I’m really bad about that and I wasn’t that year. I was so good leading up to that
year. I had booked my schedule. Every date was booked, and I was so proud of myself and then
right before I was about to get on the road, everything. So I had to cancel that whole year of
gigs. I was so disappointed about that. I’ll never book that good again. It was a lesson to me.

BiTS: Talking of driving 2000 miles, have you got any plans to come to the UK again?

MJ: [Laughing] I do. I do. I miss the fact that I haven't been there, gosh it’s been four years now.
So what I’m thinking is this year is looking a little more normal. I’ve had a lot of catch-up to do