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BiTS: Like I said before, I'm no harmonica player, but I do know that it involves a lot of physical
effort to get those kinds of sounds, especially because a lot of it is down to breathing in rather than

breathing out.

AR: Sure.

BiTS: Did you have any difficulty with that sort of thing?

AR: Oh, sure. Yes, I really struggled a lot in the first few years of playing to get my wind together

because until you understand what muscles to relax, you're tensing up everything all the time, and
that makes it so much more difficult.

BiTS: Have you ever had harmonica
lessons?

AR: Oh, yeah. I took a few formal lessons
from people after I'd had the book for
about a year and Jerry Portnoy was one of
the first people I took a lesson from. That
was a really vital lesson and from another
handful of harp players around the Boston

area. Barbecue Bob, Chris Axworthy, Chris
Stovall Brown, he might be seen playing
drums behind Watermelon Slim. Then I Jerry Portnoy
went to this blues jam even though I was
underage, I would sneak into this bar every Sunday for a seven-hour blues jam that went on and

watched the players.

BiTS: At what stage did you start playing regularly with any bands? Did you have your own band?

AR: No, I didn't have my own band. I started playing at blues jams regularly in my senior year of
high school and then I went off to college and came back and I dropped out of college to join a band
[laughs]. The band leader hadn't intended for this to happen. He said when you get out of school,

come play in my band. He meant like in the summer come and sit in with my band, so I came to him
and I said I've dropped out of school so I can play with you. I didn't drop out. I took time off and he
was a little intimidated by that, but he brought me into the band as a regular player. His name was
Butch McClendon, and the name of the band was Some Blues by Butch, which was a kind of terrible
name but the way he explained it was we play some blues and then we play some songs and by

songs he meant something else, for instance, ‘Stormy’, or something like that. But he was actually
an African American musician from New York who was learning how to play the blues from
scratch and how to reclaim some part of his own musical heritage. He started out as a folk and pop
performer in the city. He put together this band and at one point I was the only white musician in
the band which was great for me. I don't know how great it was for the other guys, but it benefited
me terrifically.

BiTS: So you dropped out when you were a freshman, is that right?