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SWH: How did the blues find me? That’s a great question. That’s a great question. Well, you know,
it really found me emotionally obviously at a very young age. The music itself, I really didn’t even
know what I was listening to when I first fell in love with it. Oddly enough, one of the earlier

influences was a group called The Ventures, which really wasn’t a blues band, but at the time, they
were doing obviously instrumental guitar work and they leaned on a lot of honky-tonk and a few of
those kinds of fields.

BiTS: I saw on Facebook the other day that you did a post saying that you were listening to
Ventures' music. Are you planning on doing something from their catalogue?

SWH: No, that was in direct reference to the vinyl project
that I have coming out in January. It was reflecting on
63 Jazzmaster that phenomenon of spending so much time — I was

obviously brought up on vinyl. I was that guitar picker
that was sitting there next to the turntable with my guitar
and moving the stylus ever so carefully trying to — I got
pretty good at being able to catch just a few phrases. Of

course, now you just push replay and you can do it much
easier. And reflecting on that whole notion of having been
brought up with vinyl and so moved by that feel and
sound that now to be actually having a release of my own
on that particular medium is just very, it’s thrilling. It’s
just absolutely thrilling.

BiTS: I guess The Ventures was what led you into being a
strat player, though?

SWH: Yes, most certainly. Another little interesting
sidebar. The first guitar I had was Supro, and I still have
my original Chicago, a Valco, made in Chicago in 1963,
but the first really high-end guitar I got, I was torn between a Stratocaster and Jazzmaster, and I

ended up getting a 63 Jazzmaster because I thought it was a better guitar. [Laughing] Little did I
know.

BiTS: And what sort of music were you playing when you first started?

SWH: That’s referencing your first question about when the blues first got me. When I first started,
it was in the days of the early Beatles. Of course, the blues had been around forever, but that wasn’t
what was being played on the typical radio charts, so I pretty much was doing what we would refer
to now as classic rock. Of course, then it wasn’t classic rock. It was what was happening. We were

doing The Stones. Interestingly enough, once again, I was the guy in the band who leaned toward
The Stones. And if you want to look at it in terms of those early rock stars, if you will, that really
brought pop around, The Beatles were brilliant, but they were much more musical. The Stones were
much more blues-based, and I didn’t even realise. It wasn’t until I stumbled into, Johnny Winter, I
think, was one of the first artists or bands that I heard and actually, even before Johnny Winter,

was Al Kooper’s Super Session, Steve Stills, Mike Bloomfield. It was those guys, and that was
probably late 60s.

BiTS: Tell me something about the bands that you’ve been in. Your current band is called The
Strays, we’ll come back to them a little later, but I gather you had a number of bands over the years.