Page 6 - BiTS_05_MAY_2020

That's a great way of getting into the music.

IS:

Yeah, because apart from anything it was really exotic, the whole American bit. Being American, it
was just a very exotic world and a lot of the
lyrics I didn't understand, a young west coun-
try lad. What's a mojo hand and of course
some of them were a little bit saucy and I
would think I don't really understand that.
But it's just the whole thing. It's just such an

unknown world, it's like entering into this
amazing adventure really.

BiTS:
What age were you when you started playing

electric guitar with a band?
IS:

I think I was about 14 or 15, but to be
honest, there was nobody around that was
playing blues, really. The bands and

whatever that were at school were all like
punk rock bands and rock bands, so I ended
up playing punk stuff really to start with.
Those were the first few bands that I was
playing in just because that was the only

chance I got to play. It was quite a while I
Wild Child Butler
think before I found anybody really that was
interested at school.

BiTS:

How did you move into being a professional musician then?
IS:

A lot of it was luck really and a lot of hard work because I had several bands. Maybe some of them
were more rock bands and I was even in a reggae band at one time I remember. Anything where I
could play. But my first proper band was a band called the Innes Sibun Blues Explosion and we got

an agent, so we got lots of work in the UK up and down the whole of the UK. Then we started
getting some shows in Europe and we were backing up quite a few American acts that were coming
over. People like Wild Child Butler, Jesse Guitar Taylor, Johnny Adams from New Orleans. We ended
up becoming the house band for them and touring with them which sort of got us quite well known
on the circuit in the UK and then we did the first record with Mike Vernon, the producer. He
produced the first record which was called That's What The Blues Can Do, and we recorded that in a
week. I mean that was recorded and mixed in a week. People don't do that these days. Yeah, it's

mad. I remember RTE in London voted it the best blues album of 1990. It got us a lot of work. We
were working a lot. We were doing a lot of festivals and then not long after that I got asked to join
Robert Plant’s band from Led Zeppelin. He was doing the Fate of Nations tour and they'd just lost
the other guitar player and I was lucky enough to again, just be in the right place at the right time, I
think, so I headed off to America with Robert for about six months and toured throughout America