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and I’ve had projects out there. We’ve done some CDs, but I really, really wanted to get something

out there that was going to be heard and appreciated and get the message out. I put a whole lot into
that first project and that first project dropped just as COVID [laughs] emerged, and so there I was,
you know, poised, and I’d had years to play around with this and the place to break this out and
sure enough, the thing got airplay and it’s just
doing great. It’s all over the charts and it’s a

wonderful success with that first project, and
there was no place to play [laughing]. So
yeah, it was tough. It was tough. We were
able to do the Can’t Stop The Blues. For those
folks we did the web show. We did an hour
special with them that we recorded live.
That’s the closest we got to any kind of really

significant performance. It was tough.

BiTS: I gather that you wrote ‘Raise the
Rafters’ during the lockdown, so that would
be kind of an anticipatory song of what’s
going to happen when we come out of COVID.

SWH: Yes, yes, yes. Have a blues party
[chuckling]. The opening song on “On A Hot
Tin Roof” was one of the earlier pieces that I
actually wrote on that album, and if you
listen to the album, I work very hard with these albums to put better songs that not only internally
make a statement, but make a broader statement across the arc of the entire CD. Each song should
follow logically in some way from the previous one and of course, the first song I’d written was in

the depths of the pandemic and that was ‘Have A Blues Party’ and I put it on there first because, by
golly, we’re on our way out of this mess, god willing and that’s what that song was all about was
that whole idea.

BiTS: Yes, absolutely wonderful. Tell me what your plans are for the future. Are you gigging the
album at the moment?

SWH: Yes. We had a really good summer with “Hot Tin Roof”. Got that out there and to be perfectly
honest, at my age, this whole idea of spending three or four weeks in the back of a van playing a
series of small bars [chuckles], I have the greatest respect for those doing it and my heart goes out
to them and I wish them success, but I’m just not in a position where I’m going to be really doing a
lot of that. I’m looking at trying to get the music out and appreciated by as many as possible and
then trying to work probably more of a national and regional scene. Although I’ve been talking to
my producer about getting over to England quite seriously in the next year. We’ll see how that goes.

So yes, we had a good summer.

BiTS: That was going to be one of my questions — when are you planning to come to the UK
because I’m pretty sure you’d be hugely popular?

SWH: Yes, I’ll address that in just a second. Back to your previous one. I am blessed and cursed. I
am cursed in that I live in a very small town and the nearest recording studios are two hours away

and it is what it is, so trying to get yourselves “known” is a challenge. The blessing is I live in the
heart of the Finger Lakes of upstate New York, which has a wealth of wineries and breweries and