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at the moment – I guess some of it is old-timey pop, some of it is jazz, and some of
it is positively Hawaiian, but it’s all great! If you include the 1960’s folk revival, then
Davy Graham’s been rather important for me in recent years.

BiTS: If you could play with any musician alive or dead, who would it be and

why?

​​AR: I’d love the chance to watch all and any of the above, really – just to sit there
gaping and trying to learn! But who I’d want to play with... Lately, teaming up with

an upright bass player has been on my mind, so let’s say Big Crawford or Danny
Thompson?

​BiTS: What contemporary musicians do you admire?

​​ ​AR: I tend to prefer musicians who have their own sound and do their own thing –
like Dave Arcari in the UK or Black River Bluesman in Finland. For more traditional
but still highly individual performers you only need to look around in Mississippi a
bit: Charlie Musselwhite is still making great music, and then there’s Lightnin’

Malcolm and Deak Harp, Robert Kimbrough Sr. and Cedric Burnside, Libby Rae
Watson and Bill Abel, Lucious Spiller and Watermelon Slim... For something less
conventional, try RL Superbad or Jesse Cotton Stone.

BiTS: What music are you listening to at home?

​AR: The ones we listed
under roots music are never
far from my CD player, but

the two albums I‘ve just
bought are “The Jimi Hendrix
Concerts” and Count Basie’s

“The Atomic Mr. Basie”. The
Hendrix has been out of
print so long that I’ve never
owned a copy, so when I saw

it, I just had to grab it. The
Basie I got thanks to the Andres with Jim Simpson and John Workman Henry's
original Black Sabbath Blueshouse Birmingham 2025 photo by Binzhi Chen.

manager and Henry’s
Blueshouse/Birmingham Jazz Festival founder Jim Simpson – it was on his list of
all-time favourites when I interviewed him for the summer issue of Finland’s Blues

News magazine.

What else? A bit of Leo Kottke, The Yardbirds with Jeff Beck, pre-comeback Miles
Davis, Jimmy Smith with Kenny Burrell... The other night I was listening to Deep
Purple “Made in Japan” and it’s still fantastic! But on the whole, I find that I’m more

drawn to instrumental music these days. I don’t know if it’s because of all that’s
happening in the world right now or if I’ve just heard every possible variation of