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BiTS: Tell me something about working with The Mannish Boys. Always one of my favourite
bands.

KF: Oh yes. That was a little bit later. That was towards the end and after my time with The
Fabulous Thunderbirds, I played with The Mannish Boys and that was just sort of a collective,
sort of like a thing where all of these guys from different bands kind of got together and Randy
Chortkoff was sort of the guy that put all that together. So it was really just a lot of fun and

being able to play with all of these different artists and do these cool songs and the concept is
something that I want to do again in the future because that’s a really good idea and really
great to have these artists paying homage to these great songs and artists and it was a lot of
fun [chuckling].

BiTS: [Chuckling] Yes, absolutely. You’ve done some work, I think, as a rhythm guitarist with
Joe Bonamassa. What’s it like
working as a rhythm guitar for
somebody who plays like that?

KF: It was like a vacation. It was
like holidays [laughing]. That’s
what it was like, really. Joe
Bonamassa is one of my good
friends and he treated me like a
king, and I went out and played
rhythm guitar. Rhythm guitar is
one of my favourite things to do, so
I mean, I have no problem
accompanying the soloist on that
magnitude. It was fun, and in the day, we would just go to different music stores and hang out.
I really love everybody in the band, so it was great.

BiTS: I guess that you must have been pretty badly hit by COVID. Did you have a lot of gigs

cancelled, that sort of thing?
KF: I had quite a few, maybe not as much as some because I really play more in Europe,
actually, and at that time, I was living there in Switzerland when COVID hit. So I didn’t have it

quite as bad as some of my other friends living in LA and different places because in LA you
sort of have to go on the road to make ends meet. There isn’t really a local scene, so it’s just a
different kind of thing, and for me, Switzerland was very civilised. If everybody needed to stay
in the house, they stayed in the house [laughs]. If everybody needs to wear masks, they wore
masks. So we were able to kind of bounce back and then Italy was hit probably first, so they
were sort of some of the first to open back up. So I was able to play in Italy. I was able to do
some gigs in Germany, and I was able to do a few gigs in Switzerland too. So for me, it was a
little bit of a different situation, plus I was able to write and really get into YouTube lessons
and really do live streams and things like that. I was super wondering what was going to
happen, but at the same time, the music is what really started me out – the love of the music
and everything, so I just sort of reconnected with what got me interested in the first place with
the music.

BiTS: Is that what started you writing music for the new album, “Heartache By The Pound”?

KF: Absolutely. Actually, my blues path with the record I had done before was coming out right
during all of that and everything, so this started in the end of 2020 going into 2021, “Heartache
By The Pound”. With all of the things being so uncertain, it made me kind of go, well, you know