Page 29 - BiTS_04_APRIL_2025

BiTS: You were playing in, I guess, some sort of a rock band. Was it in Finland?

LP: Yeah, kind of heavy metal.

BiTS: How did that move to the kind of a cappella music, largely a cappella music,

that I've heard you do on CDs?

LP: I ended up playing by myself because what happened, the drummer that I was in
the group with, as soon as I heard Fred McDowell, I used to have to go to learn this

style of playing. I used to go into work at 4 o’clock in the morning and sit there in the
morning and play for a
couple of hours before

I started work because
my wife at the time, she
hated that music, and

she wouldn't let me
play it in the house. So
I had to learn how to

play this music by going
into work early,
listening to Fred

McDowell on the CD, as
it was then, CD/
Walkman, and play

along with him and
then get into it that way and learn how to play. The only other time I could play and

learn was if she was out of the house because if I was playing it and she came back to
the house, then I'd be in trouble. She’d shout at me. But it worked out well because, I
don't know, it just happened that way. Maybe if she'd been more supportive, I wouldn't
have done it so much, but because she didn't like it, it urged me more, drove me more

to do this kind of music and learn it more.

BiTS: When you made this recording that I've heard at the gig, how frequently do
you do those kinds of things?

LP: Not as much as I would like. I've been on and off playing blues festivals since
2007, and then I asked the drummer, hey, do you want to play? So just me and him
used to do stuff and we released a few albums just with him, just me and the drummer.

We played some festivals around Europe and lots in Finland. But then he had family
troubles, and he couldn't carry on. So I decided well, I might as well just do this myself.

I've been playing more or less by myself since then, so maybe since 2011, I've been
just doing this. I don't get to go to England too much because of family, and I've got
my own greenhouse business which runs from like middle of March till middle of July,

maybe. So during that time I'm stuck here working and doing things. I don't get out
to play much. When that new CD was recorded, that was in 2016 in Upton Blues
Festival, which I’ve played twice so far, and that CD only came about because they