Page 35 - BiTS_03_MARCH_2025_Neat
P. 35
close. So it's not a national thing, is it? I'm not sure I'm explaining myself very well.
Yes, if you know about the blues, you know all the websites and you know all the
groups and things like that to hook into and to play to and things like that. But if you
don't know about blues, you haven't got a clue. What I'm saying is it's quite isolated
in some respects, although there are a huge amount of people that follow it. Does
that make any sense to you?
BiTS: It does indeed. You've told me a little bit with the new version of Robert
Johnson. What are your plans for the immediate future, say the next four years or
so?
NS: Golly, I am not past the end of next month [laughs]. I think we've got 30 gigs
coming up this year. We're down in North Devon at the moment and we're trying to
get out to play to the rest of the country and we've got gigs up north, coming up north
in Leeds and Huddersfield. All points up north there, but we're also down in Swanage.
We hope Cornwall. We're hopefully going to get over to East Anglia.
KJ: Southampton.
NS: Yeah, we're at the 1865 (Southampton) this coming
July. So there are a lot of gigs, from north, south, east and Karen Jenkinson
west that we're planning to take the album to.
KJ: It’s so fantastic, once seen, wherever Neil plays,
the venue wants to book Neil again.
BiTS: Yeah.
KJ: Some of the music on the album, it's quite
atmospheric, so some people say it's a bit like Pink Floyd.
So there's a bit of everything for everybody, and it's all
included in the live show. The current set at the moment
includes Robert Johnson, some of the artists, like Memphis Minnie, and Willie Dixon.
Of course, Led Zeppelin, but also Jimi Hendrix. It's fantastic.
NS: Yeah. All those people that have had influence over me, I guess, is what Karen’s
saying. So the set is a massive mixture of everything we play.
KJ: The album particularly.
NS: Yeah, we play every track, except one, off the album.
BiTS: Sounds absolutely fantastic. I'm really looking forward to that.
KJ: And also one of the things that I'm quite proud of Neil, which you will have seen
on the website, is in his formative years when he was learning his craft as a recording
artist, but also as somebody helping so many artists. I mean, Neil has closed our
studio, No Machine, in the last 12 months. When it all closed down at the studio,
people were really sad because Neil had helped so many people over the years. But
in his early formative years, two significant events, one was he was invited to play in