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BiTS: Okay.

AA: And when I was there, this prodigy guitarist Marcus Praestgard-Stevens, he was

only 12 at the time, but he was a phenomenal guitar player. He came up to me and
asked if I would like to join his new band he was putting together, and I was in my
very early 20s at this point. I said, oh, sure kid, I thought it would be a bit fun, and I

was like, okay, cool, let's go, thinking it would be a bit fun, but before I knew it a year
later, we were touring in the UK. He was introducing me to everyone on the blues
scene. I was thrown headfirst into the blues community and got to meet so many
amazing people, and one of those people was Matt Long. Matt Long had been one of

Marcus’ mentors and inspirations. He had been very generous with Marcus and got
Marcus up on stage at gigs and things in the past, and that's how I got to know the
Long family through my relationship with Marcus. It was all sort of a bit starnge, really,

but after getting to know them, the Long family, including Matt and Fiona and Paul
were incredibly generous to me with their time and their resources.

They would invite me up for jams and eventually I ended up being backing vocals on
the Catfish album “Burning Bridges”, especially on their song ‘Archangel’, and it kind
of went from there, really. Eventually I ended up writing a lot of material with Matt.
When I started my own project as Alice Armstrong with Crossfire ended – very

amicably, Matt did me the great honour of being my guitarist at the beginning with
the idea that eventually I would find my own because he was very busy with Catfish.

I was incredibly grateful to him, and I owe him a lot because I was an absolute

unknown. I owe Matt a lot because his name – I was a complete unknown at the
beginning when I came out as Alice Armstrong, started up as Alice Armstrong, and
having Matt Long in the band on guitar, gave my project a legitimacy that made