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I looked him up, I think, in an encyclopaedia because we didn’t have Google. It was in the early
90s. I don't remember how I found out, but I looked it up and it really was him. We went to his
house, and I couldn’t believe it was him. He had gold records, platinum records all over his
house and he loved my voice, and we started writing songs. I’ve written over 60 songs with
him since then, the late 90s until now.

BiTS: The fact that you learned to sing opera, does that affect you and form you now? Does it
help or hinder you?

EN: Well, it hindered me at first because when you learn opera, you have to be very clear-
voiced, very pure and I liked learning it. It was a challenge and I thought it could help me, but
when I stopped singing it, I had to actually unlearn it to be able to have my voice back to the
way it could be freer with the way I like to sing my blues-rock tunes. I had to unlearn it. The
things I kept were the breathing and the stamina and stuff like that. It’s a catch-22, Ian, I’ll tell
you that.

BiTS: One of the ways I can tell that you’re a trained singer is a fabulous vibrato, and also,
you’ve got great breathing. You’re a controlled breather.

EN: Thank you. That’s from that training as well, the working out, but thank you. I’ve tried to
figure out ways to sustain my voice because I sing five nights a week in every club in Detroit.

I’ve sat in with everybody, all the way down from Earl Klugh to Alberta Adams, so many
different people and they say you’ve got something there. You’ve got a really cool sound and I
just kept doing it. I’d sing in these smoky cigar clubs, and like I said, I sang in all the blues and

Eliza with Walter Trout

jazz clubs in Detroit. I was again, the only person in there who was of the Caucasian

persuasion, I guess you might say. But they all were great to me and that’s how the blues
found me.

BiTS: Your last album, 2020 was “Black Crow Moan”. But tell me how it was made. Did you
go into a studio, or was it done online as things are often done these days?

EN: I actually went into a studio. I wrote the song ‘Black Crow Moan’ on the piano, I’d say two
years before the pandemic. Joe Louis Walker, the icon, I met Joe Louis Walker, the icon,