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LP: Yes, notably, I spent three months out there in 2018 on my own. I’ve been back about seven
times since 2016 and one of them was a three-monther and I even spent Christmas there, which was
very weird. Christmas and New Year in Mississippi is not your average. There was hardly any sign
of what time of year it was. There’s no trees out there, well not where I was.

BiTS: No, that’s right—all completely flat.

LP: It was just like groundhog day, not much change in the weather. It can be the same every day
for what feels like forever, but it was life-changing trips going over there and I’ve made lifelong
friends.

BiTS: I’m sure you have. I believe at some stage you contacted or were contacted by Thomas Ruf,
which later led to you taking part in one of the Blues

Caravans.

LP: Yeah, so that was off the back of the trips to
Mississippi. I met a couple of artists over there who
worked for Ruf, or were signed to Ruf. One was Heather
Crosse and the other Ghalia Volt. I met and played with
both of them. I dropped their names in an email saying,

hey, Tom, just so you know, if you ever need a blues
drummer over here in Europe for any of your acts that
come over, then I’ve been hanging out in Mississippi,
made friends and played with a couple of your artists,
amongst other people that I kind of named dropped.

I sent him a couple of pictures so that he knew I wasn’t

lying, and I just left it really casual, and I didn’t think I’d
hear anything. But in fact, he got back to me pretty
quickly, which was a nice surprise, and he didn’t offer
something straight away, but he said something along the
lines of oh, this is very interesting. Good to hear from

you. Yeah, maybe we’ll work together at some point and
then it took about two-ish years and several failed Ghalia Volt
attempts. A couple of times, he offered me things and
they fell through. That was him, not me. But third time lucky, yeah, everything aligned, and it was
April 2019, I had an email from him just saying are you free for a video shoot in Berlin in the July
for the Blues Caravan, which was, as you know, Whitney Shay, Ryan Perry, Jeremiah Johnson and
went from there? From that, I really connected with Ryan and ended up doing his album some

months later.

BiTS: That’s “High Risk, Low Reward” yes?

LP: Yeah, that was the one. It was nominated for a BMA (Blues Foundation: Blues Music Award) a
so that’s quite cool and we’ll find out in a couple of weeks.

BiTS: Tell me, what are you doing at the moment? You’re obviously doing some teaching from what
you said earlier, but what are you doing with gigs? Have you been badly affected by COVID?

LP: Yes, I have. The last gig I played to an audience was March 14th 2020, at the Hour Glass in
Exeter. I am involved in four projects though, at the moment, which are all very different and we’ve