Page 28 - BiTS_04_APRIL_2025

LP: Ah, well now that's the thing. When I was in England, I never listened to anything

like that. Nothing like that kind of music. It’s only when I came to Finland and I joined
this band and we were doing sort of heavy metal kind of stuff, and somehow, I ended
up in an open D minor tuning. I was playing lead guitar, but because I can't play lead

guitar I ended up in this weird open D minor tuning playing slide and I started to
think, oh, I wonder if I should look back and try to find these people that are playing
slide music because I’ve got interested in

Fred McDowell it.

From that I ended up going back and back
and back, who influenced them, and who

influenced them? Then I came across
Fred McDowell, and then as soon as I
heard his music it’s like something

clicked in my head. I was like ah, and it
was like I'd just been waiting to find that
music. So I started learning about that

kind of music, and it just felt right. I think
it might have had something to do with
being in Finland and being a foreigner

and not being able to speak the language,
and the social aspect’s completely
different, and the feeling of being

alienated. So maybe that's why that
music resonated or does resonate with me more than it would have done if I'd stayed

in England.

BiTS: Well, fancy that. That's quite a story. I've never heard anybody say anything
like that at all. What exactly was it about the music that you were playing that attracted

you to the old blues, I guess we call it that?

LP: I think it’s the rawness and how it's real? I don't just listen to the blues and it's
only certain people that I listen to. There's something about it that just touched me.

I don't know. I understood it and in a strange way. It's like these people that have been
dead for a long time and it's music that I've never really paid any attention to, but
suddenly something that just clicked.

BiTS: You made me smile just then because I used to work with a guy when we were
doing a duo act who used to introduce practically everything he sang by saying, here's
another song from a dead man [laughs].

LP: Well yes. Yeah, that’s it, if they're not dead, I don’t listen to them. There's going
to be some people nowadays, that as soon as they're dead, I'll probably start listening
to them. Ah, these are great. I don't know what is? The songs that people that I listen

to, they've been dead for a long time and a lot of their stuff was played 100 years ago,
over 100 years ago.