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thinking about Albert King when I wrote ‘I Believe I Got Off Cheap’.

LL: Kid Andersen produces, records, engineers, and masters “Raising Cain”. Can you please
talk about that collaboration?

CC: I would say that at least 50% of the reason it came out like that was the way that his proce-
dure for making the record for recording the thing, is very relaxed and he has a great bedside man-

ner when he's doing it. It's a very pleasurable experience. It's as if the guys from “Make A Wish”
got together with the guys from the
Robert Lockwood Jr. Smithsonian and Stax Records and

photo by Steve Grills. made a building to record in. He's a
genius and he just makes that
whole process very fun. He really
knows what he's doing, and he

doesn't use a template. He goes
with what you want.

LL: Please tell us about the other
musicians involved in the album.

CC: Steve Evans on bass guitar,
Greg Rahn on keyboards, Sky Gar-
cia and D'Mar Martin on drums and
also Michael Peloquin on saxo-

phone, Mike Rinta on trombone,
Jeff Lewis on trumpet, Doug Rowan
on baritone sax, Lisa Leuschner
backup vocals. Kid played some
guitar parts and played melodica
on ‘Space Force’. That was awesome.

At the time I got this band together I wasn't having a lot of fun playing. For whatever reason, when
I got with these fellas, Mick Mestick was in the band on drums, and it was just a lot of fun from the

first notes that we played. We had to play the Santa Cruz Blues Festival that weekend and when we
played it, we had a blast. I started counting the nights that I had fun at my gig until I got to about
60 in a row and I stopped counting. They just seemed to show me how to have fun playing music,
again, because they play with a lot of love.

LL: You must have some wonderful road stories. Care to share a couple?

CC: When we played at the Handy Awards in Memphis. I had the opportunity to meet Robert Junior
Lockwood. He was really, really nice to me and he spent about two hours talking to me, gave me
his CD and it was just great. When we played in Cleveland at a club called Wilbert's Mr. Lockwood
called me. What I didn't know was that he lived in Cleveland at that time. He was calling to tell me

not to park the RV and trailer where we had it parked but park it on this other part of the block:
that was much safer. He was just calling to tell us not to park in that one area because it wasn't
safe. I thought that was just really nice.

We played at Antone's in Austin, Texas, opening for Omar and the Howlers. At one point, I took a
picture of the audience while we were playing. When I developed the pictures, I realized that prac-
tically the whole crowd was giving me the finger. Interesting.