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BiTS: I've got a version of that tune done by Taj Mahal many years ago, and I have to say yours
beats it hands down.
CK: I remember that one, and I remember Geoff Muldaur doing a version that was cool that he
sort of reinvented it in his own way with how he played guitar with it, you know. So a few people
have attempted the song, but it's one that I just couldn't get it out of my head. So eventually, I
had to give it a try, and when I did it in the studio, it revealed itself as something. I felt like I'd
captured it the way I wanted to.
BiTS: It must be quite a difficult song to sing because there's all those bits where you have
falsetto and whatever.
CK: Well, it's like there's nothing to hide behind, definitely [laughing].
BiTS: Yes. Do you have a favourite track on the record?
CK: Oh, I like a lot of the songs, you know. I've enjoyed the song that I opened up with, which
is an original piece called ‘Don't Know Right From Wrong’. That was kind of my favourite and
it's because it was really influenced by Frank Stokes. He was a Memphis musician that really
had a power and soulfulness to the way he played and sang that is always kind of with me, so
that song is really a tribute to him, although it's not a cover per se. Really my songs, even when
I do it from other people like ‘Wild Ox Moan’, they’re really kind of recreated or reinvented, in
a way, so they may not be even considered a cover, or maybe just the songs were inspiration
for me to make a new song from it or reinvent the song. That song, ‘I Don't Know Right From
Wrong’, that was definitely
one that I wrote after I'll go
on these marathons
listening to people like
Frank Stokes and the
Carter Family, and I'll just
wake up in the morning
and I can't get the songs
out of my head and then I'll
write my own pieces and
that's how my originals
kind of come about.
BiTS: Tell me something
about the track called ‘The Lil’ Son Jackson
Milford Drowning’.
CK: Oh, that's a great old
song. That's from Lil’ Son Jackson, and he was a Texas musician that had a real beautiful sort
of lonesome sound. I love the way he just sort of had a bonking, rhythmic thumb in his playing.
I've done a few of his other songs too like ‘Johnnie Mae’, Johnnie Mae, tell me what you're gonna
do. I did that on my very first record way back in 1984 and another one I did called ‘She Got
Washed Away’, which was Cairo Blues. So I've always loved those handful of songs that Lil’ Son
Jackson did that just had a beautiful, quality, kind of bony and spare, but just a real beauty to
his music.
BiTS: And of course, the Blind Blake tune, ‘Come On, Boys, Let's Do That Messin' Around’. That's
something to tackle, isn't it?