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listen to him, and you wouldn't go, oh, he's nicked that from Little Walter. Or, oh, that's
a Sonny Boy lick or anything like that. You'd go, where the hell has he got that from?

And for me, there were very few artists and very few harmonica players specifically,
who have a unique sound, and Paul deLay was always to me, unique. He was also a
great singer and songwriter, which helps because you've got the full package.

BiTS: When you started
going with Mat
The Jake Leg Jug Band
Walklate for lessons,

how long after that did
you join a band or start
performing in public?

LW: Well, I have a big
family and it includes
my step-family, so I

have a lot of step-
siblings, and they're all
musical in one way or

another. My two full
sisters are singers.

They've sung on both
my blues albums and all
the rest of the siblings
were all playing instruments at that time as well. I'm towards the older end – there’s

eight of us, and I'm kind of number three of eight. So I had all these younger siblings
that were learning instruments, and then, at that point, my stepdad was running a

samba group, Brazilian samba music and a kind of Latin jazz group, and that's where
I'd been playing snare drum. But then when I took up the harmonica, my stepdad
basically said, oh, let's start a blues band, you know.

BiTS: Oh really?

LW: Yeah, to be honest, I was out gigging before I should have been, in a sense,
because I didn't know what I was doing. But I can remember the first time Mat took

me out to a jam and he took me to this open mic or a blues jam or something in a
pub, in a bit of a rough area of Manchester, and there was a guy walking around
opening his coat pockets, trying to sell us stuff, you know, dodgy stuff and all this. I

was scared and I didn't know what I was doing, and it was a bit of a baptism of fire,
really, but Mat was such a relaxed guy, as you know, and he’s such a lovely guy that
he put me at ease. So I was kind of out playing almost from day one, and I was also

teaching almost from day one because I went off to uni and there was a guy in my
corridor in halls who was learning harmonica too, but I was slightly ahead of him.
Not much, but slightly ahead of him, so I was teaching him. So I was kind of gigging

and teaching before I even knew what I was doing [chuckling].