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BP: Eddie Kirkland, who we also played with in the States, was his sideman for years.

MS: So again, there was all these crazy kind of connections that sort of made such

sense.

BP: Can I jump in, Ian, quickly and add that in this flat that I had back in the 70s and
early 80s, it was a big old tenement house kind of, but the musicians that passed

through it were legendary. Every night there was a party, whether we wanted it or
not and if there was a moment we would listen to the blues on the record player
together. I remember listening to Hubert Sumlin with Howlin' Wolf and

just being mind blown. And then years later, touring with Hubert
all through Ireland when Mary was singing 'Smokestack
Lightening' and his greatest songs with him. I couldn't believe we'd

been there with Otis Rush, with B.B. King, with Bo Diddley, one of
our favourites, sitting, laughing and messing. In each

case, they treated Mary as an equal, a fellow
traveller on this road. There was no black, white,
male, female.

BiTS: How wonderful that is. I want to
ask you about the new record,
“Hometown Blues”. What's the source
of it? I mean, why did you actually

decide to put together an acoustic
album like this?

MS: Well, I think that it's

evident on the album that
there's a period of time over

which different tracks were rec
orded. The acoustic album in particular
was inspired, I must say, by words from Taj Mahal, and again, I don't say that lightly.

We met Taj several times, and on one occasion in particular, he was talking to us, we
had played an acoustic set to open his set, and we were chatting with Taj as he
expressed the idea of why not consider an influence that is acoustic, but is taking in

an Irish element. All through the years Brian has been really enthusiastic, and it
comes back and is true to our root, to where we come from.

BP: I just want to jump in, if I may. I have agitated Ian, for years, for Mary to mix

some of the Irish sensibility with blues because there is no pastiche when she sings.
She doesn't try to, yo, mama, I'm a big mama. She doesn't do that. And to try to mix
something that is that deep from within of the Celtic experience, Taj Mahal over a

meal, was saying the same thing and Mary just looked at me like, you bastard
[laughs]. He's been looking at that for years. So it was almost in defiance of that, that