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BiTS: Did you major in music at college?

JP: Yes, instrumental music education.

BiTS: Wow, that’s absolutely terrific. You’re an unusual character in that sense because there
aren’t many musicians who go through college to do it.

JP: Right, yeah.

BiTS: When did you start performing publicly? I guess that would be in church, would it?

JP: Yeah, I think the first time my mother
said I was two, the first time I ever sang in

front of people [chuckles]. I grew up in a
very small town, so I kind of became the
town pianist and wedding singer. Everybody
asked me to sing at weddings and funerals
and things, so I’ve always done that kind of

stuff, but I was not in a band until about
eight years ago, so I performed a lot but not
like I do now.

BiTS: Wow, I didn’t realise that. I thought
you’d been a band person for a long time.
The music that you produce now sounds as

though you’ve been doing it forever.

JP: Well, that’s good, but no, I haven’t.
[Chuckling] It’s certainly new for me. The
guitar is also new. I picked up guitar about five years ago, so I haven’t done that forever.

BiTS: When did you get blues music into your life?

JP: Not until about eight years ago, really. I knew Aretha Franklin, that kind of stuff that everybody
knows but about eight years ago I was actually singing an Aretha song at a contest and I won the
contest, and after the contest, a guy came up to me and said, “You’re really good. I have a friend
who’s starting a band and they’re gonna do that kinda music, like bluesy kind of stuff and you’d be

great. Would you be interested in maybe singing with them?” I said, “Well have them call me”, and
so I ended up joining this band and that’s when I really decided that I wanted to find out about
blues and soul and really dig into it. About a year later, when I decided I wanted to pick the guitar, I
started going to a blues jam every week. I went every week for a year, I committed to going to this
because there were a lot of great players there and a lot of people who had grown up in Chicago in

the blues scene. I just really wanted to learn from them and really dig into the music. That’s the
first time I really found out about Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. I went right back to the
beginning and just started from there and learned as much as I could.