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NS: Do I have a favourite? It’s a difficult thing to say. Let me tell you the story of the
album. It was Karen, my partner, that decided that this was the way to go. I've been
in other bands for a number of years, and I've spent the last 30 years in a recording
studio, lending my guitar skills, if you like, to other people in other bands and things
like that, and producing other people. Then Karen just said, why are you doing this?
Why don't you do this for yourself? And so I did. I've got some of these songs, I wrote
this song. I wrote that song. I wrote that song, and Karen said, well, that's a basis for
starting your own band. Why don’t you do that and then write some more. So there's
some old stuff on there. What I call old stuff, I was in a band called the UK Blues
Project; I was in a band called Blue Touch.
BiTS: I used to love BlueTouch. I thought BlueTouch was a sensational band.
NS: Oh, okay. Oh, that's very kind of you. Thank you very much. Well, I did a lot of
work with them. I produced most of the albums. Not all of them. I think a couple of
the early ones, I wasn't even in the band. When they asked me to join, I was delighted
because I wasn't doing anything at the time and I thought, okay, there you go. This is
where I could start exploring my blues because the UK Blues Project was one and
then BlueTouch was another where I was playing proper blues guitar, if you like,
rather than whatever seemed to be flavour of the month at the time.
BiTS: I do have to say that what
attracted me to BlueTouch was the
Robert Johnson album.
NS: Yeah, well, that's an interesting thing
because that was basically me from
lockdown. When lockdown happened, I
got stuck in the studio and I thought,
what am I going to do? So I tried to do a
bit of research about the blues. I'd had a
fair idea what it was about. I’d known
some of the names, but my knowledge
was more like Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy
and Muddy Waters, those kind of guys.
I'd go right, okay, let's find out where this
all comes from, because I'm going to go back here and find out. I've heard of this guy
called Robert Johnson. I know people play his songs. I'm going to go back and find
out what it's all about. So I made myself a copy of the complete recordings and I just
listened to them. Then I went okay, I'm going to have a go at this because I've got
nothing else to do [laughs]. I can't work. I can't see anybody. I'm not allowed to visit
anybody. I will pick up this guitar here and I will play these songs. I will listen to them.
Now, I didn't attempt to actually emulate anything that he did, but what I would try
to do was grab the bits of the songs that I thought would be identified. That song had
that particular riff, if you see what I mean. I'd be looking for little riffs and things like