Page 19 - BiTS_11_NOVEMBER_2025

BTJ: Oh. pretty shortly after, you know, when I started playing electric guitar, I was

listening to B. B. King and a lot of the electric blues stuff that we know nowadays, some
Eric Clapton stuff. But, yeah, and I think I was... about 18 or 17 when I played my first
show, my first concert, I think, at an open mic.

BiTS: That's very good. You were playing solo at that age, were you?

BTJ: Yeah, yeah. Totally solo. And I started writing my own songs pretty shortly after,
I think.

BiTS: Who were the artists that you base yourself on, if that's not a rude question?
Who do you find your biggest

Kelly Joe Phelps influence in what you play and
write?

BTJ: First and foremost it's Bob
Dylan! Then Johnny Cash, and a

whole lot of the blues greats —
Mississippi Fred McDowell, R. L.
Burnside, John Lee Hooker,
Mississippi John Hurt, B. B. King,
and Freddie King. And of course,

some contemporary artists as well.
Kelly Joe Phelps, for instance, has
had a big influence on my guitar
style.

BiTS: You started performing in

public at the age of about 18, what sort of guitar were you playing then?

BTJ: I started out playing a regular, inexpensive acoustic guitar in the conventional
way. It took me some time before I settled into lap-style playing.

BiTS: When did you start playing dobros or at least resonator guitars and how did
you find the Weissenborn guitar?

BTJ: Pretty early on, I bought a simple resonator because I loved hearing all the blues
legends play slide. I was terrible at it at first, though, and quickly gave up on bottleneck
slide. But slide guitar always fascinated me, and when I discovered Kelly Joe Phelps,
I tried his approach — raising the strings on a regular guitar and laying it flat in my
lap. That’s how I started lap-style playing, about twelve years ago.

Then I got into bluegrass, watched Jerry Douglas and Rob Ickes play dobro, and tried
a cheap square-neck resonator. Later, Ben Harper and David Lindley got me hooked
on Weissenborn guitars. I tried a basic one first, and it felt right. In 2017, I finally got

a high-end Weissenborn, which was a game-changer.

That year I also met Peter Wahl, a luthier in southeast Germany who makes amazing
resonators. We became friends, and I’ve been playing his instruments ever since. But
for lap style, it’s always a Weissenborn for me.

BiTS: How did you get yours?