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that and, I mean, he's totally taken with it. There's a few others out there. There's this kid Quon
Willis. He's not a kid anymore, but he's about 23/24. Jontavious Willis, do you know who that is?

BiTS: I do indeed. Yes, absolutely. In fact, I interviewed him a year or so ago.

MH: He reminds me a lot of what Harrell's like now because he was way into it as a kid, and he's
kind of starting to make a name for himself. And so when I see these guys, and those are guys that,
for example, I mean, I remember at one point Jontavious was calling me up just because he wanted
someone to talk to about the real shit. It's like to me that says that there's really not very many

people you can talk to about this stuff.

BiTS: I read your book with absolute fascination because it's a kind of list of all the names, great
names that I've been reading about for a long time now. I'm slightly older than you, believe it or
not, but the fact is that it's an absolutely fabulous read, which I really enjoyed, but I was horrified
by the section about where you got Bell’s palsy. Has that never returned? I hope it hasn't.

MH: Oh God, yes, that was terrible. Those are the kind of things that are just a real test of your
character. To have something like that happen in the first week of a four-week tour, and somehow
I made it through, but it was very sketchy.

BiTS: Now tell me, apart from the blowout, which
is coming up shortly, have you recovered from the
Mark Hummel, Muddy Waters, effects of COVID? I don't mean you getting it.
Johnny Waters-1978
MH: Yeah, I recovered from that. I think I had it a
total of maybe three to five weeks in 2022, and it
was right when the blowouts were going to start.

BiTS: What about the effects on the gigs and that
sort of thing?

MH: Well, you mean me getting COVID, or do you
mean the whole COVID thing?

BiTS: Both really. I had it myself, but not until
September this year, and it was one of the most

awful experiences I've ever had. But I'm wondering
whether the gigs are coming back now.

MH: Well, the gigs have been coming back at least
a year and a half now, yeah. Yeah, because I want to
say in 2022, I got COVID literally like three days before the Harp Blowout started, and I had to
cancel the entire blowout because me and Bob Welch, the piano player, both got it. I had been
kind of like really trying to decide whether I even wanted to do it regardless because I was starting
to see a trend towards people just not showing up for the gigs. In other words, I was getting calls
from a lot of the venues going, everybody’s scared shitless of COVID, and you know, we're thinking
maybe we'd be better off putting this off until next year. So between that and then the fact that I
actually got it, I had already started kind of contacting the guys in the tour in 22 and saying, maybe
we should not do this thing. I mean, at that point I had Kim Wilson and Duke Robillard and Curtis
Salgado and, oh God, who else? Sugar Ray Norcia. I had all these guys basically lined up to do the
tour and every one of those guys said, hey, man, we'll leave it up to you. We won't be upset if you
decide to cancel. So it was nice to know that I have their trust on that. Then three days before the
tour, I ended up getting it and Bob ended up getting it, and we ended up just going, we’ve got to
cancel.