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he was a bit drunk, and he was having a bit of a complain about white boys can’t play the blues
and all that kind of thing and I don’t know whether to blow my own trumpet. I’m told that
Freddie gestured over to me and said, you can’t say he can’t play the blues. That’s what I’ve
been reliably told. That’s my claim to fame. When people say, oh, you’re not a real blues player,
I say, well, Freddie King told Howlin’ Wolf that I was, so I’ve got to be good for something. So
he got a bit drunk actually and even Freddie was telling him to shut up [chuckling], he started
getting a bit personal about matrimonial matters and stuff.

BiTS: Let’s move on and talk a little bit about the new album. What is it that’s provoked this?
Have you had a lot of downtime as a consequence of COVID?

MC: I have. I have had a lot of downtime as a consequence of COVID. It’s a long story, but I’d
started getting into the home recording thing. I always wanted a studio, but I thought what I
would be doing would be recording the band in a real studio and then bringing the tapes home
and doing overdubs and mixing and stuff, which I actually did do on a couple of albums. Two of
the Killing Floor albums, the last two and
one of my albums, but what happened
then was a drummer came over and he
had a little practice kit, and we had a jam,
and it was an electric kit and I thought,
well, I could record this. So I did. So we
just made an album, the two of us just
jamming and then I dubbed a bit of bass
on afterwards and I ended up putting it
out and some people didn’t like it, but a lot
of people quite liked it. And then I thought,
well actually, I could actually do the drums
myself. Nothing wrong with what he did
but I could sort of do a combination of

samples and real drumming because if I
can keep the beat, a rhythm with my right
hand strumming a guitar, it could be
holding a stick, banging a drum.

BiTS: True.

MC: I must be able to do that. So I bought an old Ludwig Snare for £30, much to the
bemusement of my wife when it arrived. [Chuckling] She thought I was completely mad, and I
started seeing what I could do with brushes at first and I did an album called “Ramdango” and
I was really nervous. I really thought, oh, god, it’s not a proper record. It’s just something I’ve
done myself, but it was accepted by people. A lot of people just didn’t even realise that it
wasn’t a full band, and it did alright. It got all the same airplay. It got the same sales; it got the
same everything. So I then got enthused and started doing more and I did a load more and
then, as you say, COVID came along. A lot of my friends, I feel almost guilty, but a lot of my
friends were in a really bad way because they were relying on gigging and stuff, and I thought
well that’s fine. I’ll just get on with the studio and I just kind of went into overdrive and started
doing even more recording than I had done before.

BiTS: Do I take it that all of the instruments that are on this album are played by you?

MC: On this one, all of them. Yes. Everything.