Page 9 - BiTS_08_AUGUST_2025

Then Dave Arcari brought me back to Scotland in 2019, Blues in Britain put me on
the cover, everything was looking good – and boom, the pandemic hit. So post-COVID
and post-Brexit, I’ve had to start from scratch and I would have probably put it off

for a few more years if the
team behind Tartu 2024
hadn’t talked me into it.

Tartu is the town I’ve been

living in for nearly 30 years, it
was the European Capital of
Culture in 2024, and in
December 2023, they sent me

to Leeds as one of their official
Ambassadors. That got the
ball rolling and from then on,
With Dave Arcari, Harbour Arts Centre, Irvine, 2024.- I’ve done 20 shows in

Photo by Alistair Mulhearn. England, Scotland, and Wales
– it’s been a blast!

BiTS: Are you musically trained? Can you read and write music notation?

​AR: ​I’ve worked as a teacher at a music school, but I’ve never attended one myself.
I can figure out music notation if I have to, but I can’t sight-read. My dad used to play

a bit in his university days and he showed me the rudiments on the guitar, then a
few years later I took three lessons from Tartu’s resident Hendrix-expert Halvo
Liivamägi and one lesson from a visiting German professor of theology, who’d
himself been taught by the great Piedmont-style player Big Boy Henry in North

Carolina. Everything else I’ve figured out by listening to old records, spying on my
colleagues and giving it all some serious thought.

​BiTS: After a musician who goes by the name of Half Deaf Clatch (real name
Andrew McClatchie) you are one of the most prolific musicians in the

contemporary blues field. What drives you?

​​​AR: Thank you! I’m just doing my job: writers write, painters paint, musicians make
music.

BiTS: Like me I suspect you love the music and its roots (no pun intended)
what do you find in it?

​ ​AR: Joy, pure and simple. Sad songs and minor-key ballads are not for me, I like

music that makes me feel better and listening to old blues records certainly lifts my
spirit: proper blues is a celebration of life, a defiant music with an irreverent grin!

​BiTS: What roots musicians do you admire? (I am a huge fan of Big Bill Broonzy).

​ ​AR: When it comes to the blues, I love Tampa Red, Bukka White, Charley Patton,

Kokomo Arnold, Johnny Shines, Muddy Waters, Robert Lockwood... Too many to
mention! If you take a broader view of roots music, then I’m really into Sol Hoopii