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BiTS: Or are there a couple of covers?

DSR: No. That's 100% all mine.

BiTS: The very strange thing about it is that some of them, to me, anyway, sound as
though they're things that have been not quite adapted. That's not what I mean. As
though there are some roots elsewhere, particularly the title track, ‘These Hard Times

Will Come To Pass’. It sounds as though I
ought to know the phrase. Where does it

come from?

DSR: I tell you, the whole concept of this
album came just when you're on the road

a lot, especially when you're a solo act, a
lot of the times you're sitting in a hotel by
yourself and you listen to a lot of music,
and you get time to think. You get a lot of

time to play, and at the time, I was putting
on WWOZ from New Orleans, I'll stream

that, but if they’re playing something I
don't like or something, I'll go on Spotify
and I'll just find an artist like Blind Willie

McTell or Blind Willie Johnson, and I sit
there and just listen to that while playing
along or whatever. And I found myself

listening to a guy called the Reverend Edward W. Clayborn.

He would sing his little gospel songs while he's playing his slide guitar. He was from
the 20s. And I was like, hey, that's good, and all of a sudden, I found myself writing

‘In These Hard Times’. That was the first song I wrote.

BiTS: Reverend Clayborn is actually one of my current favourite singers, but
unfortunately, he's a guy that recorded the same tune about 50 times.

DSR: Yeah, [chuckling] you're right. They do sound very similar is another way to
put that. It's good, though.

BiTS: My point being that yours are not the same tune, 50 times. Yours are all original

stuff, and it's delightful.

DSR: Well, thank you. But yeah, see, I was listening to that and then I found myself
writing more songs. Then I had like about four of them and I was like, well, you know,

I was working on another album that I haven't released yet, and I started to think,
well, maybe I'll release this as an EP. And then I found myself writing more and more
and then one night I was in Tallahassee, Florida. I remember this specifically. And I

couldn't find the link to listen to what I was trying to find, and I remembered this