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BiTS: Absolutely fabulous. Tell me something about your own personal contribution. You
write a lot of the songs, I think. Is that right?
JL: I do, so with The Boneshakers, Randy and I collaborated on the track ‘Big Legged Man’,
and he had sent me the music and it was just instrumental, but I really loved the funky blues
groove on it and I had had this idea in my head that I’d been wanting to write a song about
plus size men [laughs]. There are plenty
of songs that celebrate women of size in
blues music, and they’re celebrated, but
there are no songs that do the same for
men. I thought, well I think it's really
time that a woman writes this song, so
that’s how that tune came to be and I’m
so happy that Randy wasn’t thrown off
when I sent him the lyrics. He’s like,
really? This is what you want to sing
about? Okay, that’s fine, so to me, I just
love that song so much. It’s one of the
most fun ones on the album. With
Moonshine Society, all the originals I’m a
part of.
BiTS: You’re about to come over to the
UK to do, I think, only a couple of gigs
before you go somewhere else. Is that
right?
JL: We’re doing a total of four performances in the UK, and then we are going to jump over to
Denmark to play one night in Copenhagen that same week as well.
BiTS: Tell me how you got together with Randy Jacobs, who is a fabulous instrumentalist
and performer in his own right.
JL: Oh, my god, he really is. I have John Wooler, our producer, to thank for this. John and I,
during the pandemic, had exchanged a few Instagram messages because he had played some
of my tracks from “Sweet Thing” on his radio shows, and I was very familiar with who he was
as an avid music business nerd. I love knowing who producers are. Who worked with some
of my favourite artists because I think it’s really important to learn about the entire team
that’s behind a project, and so I reached out to him, thanking him, and we started talking. He
was asking me about what was next in store. Next thing I know, he’s offering to produce the
next Moonshine Society album, which was an incredible moment for me because he had
worked with Mavis Staples and Robben Ford and Albert Collins, so many of my musical
heroes he had been in the studio with. So I said yes, John Wooler, please produce me. So I
flew to Los Angeles to do a few tracks out there that were supposed to wind up on the next
Moonshine album and he told me he was getting a house band together for me and we had
decided on some songs. They had the music and I walk in and there’s Randy Jacobs on guitar
and I’m looking around the room and I recognised, this is not just a house band, these are
The Boneshakers. I had just seen them in Louisville, Kentucky at the Bourbon and Beyond
festival, maybe three years prior to that, playing with Mindi Abair. So I knew exactly who
these folks were, and I was floored and I’m trying not to fangirl. I’m trying to tell myself,
alright, we’re all here to do the same thing. Don’t be a dork about it and at the end of two