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retired, and I was very conscious and I think talking with my dear late friend Alan
Pearce at Blues Matters, I think lots of people had chats with Alan, but we used to
chat and talk about what we could do to try and bring blues a bit more to the fore

and try and get it a bit more cohesive and together in the UK because it seemed to
be at the time, very disparate. You know, different people doing different things and
no real centralisation or coordination for the UK. I think talking to Alan, he was at
the stage where, of course, his health was not good, and he couldn't do a lot of the

things that he wanted to do. One of the things he wanted to do was to do more to
bring the blues together. And so I thought why
don't I try and do it?

So I got the idea of forming a UK Blues
Federation. I was already a member of the
European Blues Union. I had been involved with

them, not in any official capacity, but I was very
much a supporter of the EBU, and I helped them,
as I still do, on a very much ad-hoc and off the
record type basis. Just helping them with things

as simple as correcting their English, and so on
and so forth [chuckles]. So as I said, I had this
mad idea of starting the UK Blues Federation and

as I recall it, I basically threw it out there and
said, I'm looking to organise this. Anybody want
to join in?

A group of people did join in and formed the first board of it. I'm very proud of what
the UK Blues Federation became during my tenure. We achieved a lot. We started
sending people to Memphis for the International Blues Challenge, which was the

first time that the UK had been represented. We took over the role of choosing the
people who would represent the UK at the European Blues Challenge each year, and
I'm very proud that we produced the first two winners, UK winners of the European

Blues Challenge, Kaz Hawkins and then Kyla Brox. I think it was a good thing to do.

We had great plans, but it became all-consuming and really, I was becoming

conscious that I was retired and yet I was effectively doing almost a full-time job for
which I wasn't being paid. It was actually costing me money. It got to the stage where,
dare I say it, I felt that it was too much of a one-man band. There were other people
involved, and people did help, people like Alan White, for example, another sad loss

to the blues world, but others as well. I won't go through all the names, but it became
something that I suppose, because I did it, people let me do it. It became all-
consuming and so I eventually gave the best part of 18 months’ notice that I was

going to step down as Chair, and in fact walk away from being an active board
member. So it moved on to where it is now.

BiTS: May I ask Ashwyn, how old you are now?