Page 19 - BiTS_05_MAY_2021

still been able to rehearse and write new material, which is great. There’s been a lot of creativity

going on and general improvement all the time, but what I’ve tried is to get all of my bands as ready
to go as possible so that as soon as that barrier comes down, we’re ready. Rather than suddenly, oh
my God, we can gig, but we haven’t played together for a year or something. I’ve tried to keep
rehearsals and so on as regular as possible when it’s been allowed. But yeah, I’m in a blues trio. I’m
in a Bob Dylan, Tom Waits-y band, I don’t know what it is. That’s with Ian Jennings and Adam

Sweet and this guy Rob Brown. So two new bands have come out of lockdown for me. I play with a
folky local girl called Jess McAllister and a girl in London called Ruby Cross and that one with my
brother. And then there’s other people also
around the edge of all that. But they’re my
four bands.

BiTS: That sounds as though you’re pretty

busy. Do you do a tremendous amount of
practice? They say 10,000 hours to become
proficient or something or other. You must
have done more than 10,000 hours already.

LP: I would love to know how many hours I’ve
spent and I couldn’t tell you, but I’ve played 18

years and if I tallied all the gigs and all of the
rehearsals and all of my solo practice, I mean,
I’d hope it might be nearing that kind of
target. I try and play five times a week even if
I don’t have any rehearsals or anything like
that, I come up to the garage and just do 30
minutes to an hour a day on my own up here.

Try to do new stuff or constantly improve. It’s
very easy to just put a play list on and jam out and think that you’re practising, but you’re not.
You’re not actually getting better. I’ve only realised it in the last couple of years, so better late than
never, but I wish I had realised it sooner.

BiTS: Find something particularly difficult that you hear or see somebody do and keep on until you
get it right.

LP: Definitely, yeah. I mean, it goes for any instrument and anything that you do.

BiTS: Any idea what the future holds? Have you got any plans for making any more records or
anything like that?

LP: Yeah, well obviously I’m keen to get all of these bands out there as soon as we’re allowed.
Festivals, gigs, maybe a couple of little tours as well as growing my teaching business. I want to go
in the studio with the blues trio and get something down with them. The Ian Jennings band we’re

going to be launching and getting video material and stuff like that together. I’ve just been in the
studio with the girl from London, two weeks ago. We were in the middle of nowhere at somewhere
called Propagation House, that’s a really good studio. We spent the whole weekend there. Stayed
there for three nights and that’s great, so that’s an exciting new recording that’s going to be coming
out.