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mind because he could sing as well, yeah, and that was great because I'm quite a
reluctant front man.

BiTS: Just before I started to speak to you, I was watching your video online,

recorded if I’m right, at some place called – at least now called The Old Duke, which

I imagine was not after the Duke Ellington when it first was founded.

HS: It might be. It was named after him, and there's a photo of him there that

they put up. But yeah, I'm not sure if it was always The Old Duke, but it's been

there a long time.

BiTS: That's a pub in Bristol, is it?

HS: Yeah, that's right, in the centre, just off the Welsh Back, they call it.

BiTS: You seem to have plenty of gigs coming up over the next couple of months.

No problem getting them in?

HS: Yes, it’s alright. People know me and know the band by now. It's been about
ten years. So yeah, we've made a little name for ourselves locally. We are trying

to break out on a more national scene. And with that in mind, we've kind of put

together like an album of
The Slimline Shufflers Busking on Frenchman Street, New Orleans
original songs, which is our next

kind of goal. We started writing
some stuff for that. We actually

went to New Orleans recently

for inspiration.

BiTS: Well, I wanted to ask you
about that. We'll come back to

that in just a minute, if you don't

mind. Tell me something about

making the album that you've

got.

HS: Yes, “Suspicious Blues”. It was a surprise to us, really. It's like a last-minute

decision to just get in the studio because it was around January when everything

was pretty quiet. And yeah, we just wanted to record a little demo really like four

or five tunes, and it turned out that we put down 14 songs in this one session.