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album, and that was the idea of it and make it all instrumental. So that was nice to be recognised
for that.

BiTS: According to my research, you've done 17 albums, is that right?

MS: Yeah, I think we're 17 or 18. One or two of those may be compilations. “Ground Zero” is a
compilation, for example, of all the acoustic work that I've done, but that's pretty close and
“Denouement”, the latest one that came out, I think, was the 18th.

BiTS: Well, tell me about the latest one, “Denouement”, which has only just been released.

MS: Yeah, that really started out, I was thinking about what type of content I wanted to really
work with, and I don't know, I was
listening to some Black Keys one
day, and I latched onto one of their
songs, ‘I Got Mine’, and I don't do a
lot of covers, but I put an
interpretation of that down first.
And from there, I thought that's
sort of the theme of the album
because I usually will write down
the concept. I think I made notes
about, you know, being grungy,
dirty, bluesy rock (laughing). That
was the idea and I love the groove.
The Black Keys have so many great
grooves and I just tried to focus
and keep the spirit of the album
kind of aligned with that and

started writing. I don't really
remember what the next song was,
but I think about the third song was
called ‘In A Van Down By The
River’, which was inspired by the
Saturday Night Live skit by Chris
Farley. I don't know if you have ever seen that?

BiTS: I haven't. American humour is too fast for me, believe it or not. What are you working on
at the moment? Are you planning another album, or are you just selling this one?

MS: Well, that one just released in the last, I think, two weeks ago, so it's pretty fresh. So I'm
taking a mental break. You know, like I have to take a little break because that album I mixed
and mastered here at home, and so I've been pretty involved for the last three months working
on that. So I'm taking a little break and refreshing before I figure out where I go next.

BiTS: Now tell me about the album “Ground Zero”, which is a couple back now, but that's pretty
much acoustic blues stuff.

MS: Yeah, I went through, I believe it was “Blind Man's Blues”, “Grapetown Rail”, which are
predominantly all acoustic. And then I went through a few other albums or miscellaneous tracks,
like there were some acoustic blues on ‘The Power Of Love”, and a few other miscellaneous tracks
and I just took what I thought were my favourite cuts off of all of them and put them together
and arranged them into an album and did a little bit of mastering. Most of those are, to be honest,