Page 31 - BiTS_04_APRIL_2025

BiTS: You’ve got a fabulous tone to your voice, apart from anything else.

LP: Well, thank you. Yes, I honestly don’t know where it comes from. It's just there.
That's another thing, all the other stuff, the music I've played before, I’ve sung, and

it's been okay, but nothing like this. Nothing where the voice is the music.

BiTS: Do you write your own music Leighton?

LP: I have done. On that CD you have, I think there's a couple of my own ones, but I

don't feel the need. If it suddenly happens, it does, but I don't try and force it because
at the moment I enjoy playing those old songs because I like to keep them out there,
keep them alive kind of thing. People don't get a chance to hear them, these really

great songs that are old and you don't hear. You can go to a festival, and you can see
lots of people and they might do an odd cover or something, and even when they do
a cover, it might be completely

changed or something about it.
So I try and keep it as close to
the original, but not. It still has

to come from me. I don't know,
there’s something spiritual in
doing those songs.

BiTS: I think that's always true
of the blues. People don't
realise that it’s actually very

spiritual music, I think.

LP: Yes, yes, I agree. A lot of the

times when I'm playing, I
suddenly have disappeared. I'm
off somewhere because I
usually end up closing my eyes

when I'm playing and singing,
and I'm lost. It's not really me

playing the songs, it's the songs
just playing and something coming through and being released. I think Bukka White
said something about that, like his “Sky Songs”. It just comes. It comes from wherever,
from inside, from outside. From the past, from the spirits. I'm sort of like a conduit.

It just flows through me. I mean, it's hard to explain.

BiTS: What do you feel you're working towards, Leighton?

LP: [Chuckles] Oh, I don't know. I'm happy if I can go play wherever and if I can give,
even if it's just one person, an idea of what it might have been like to see some of
these people live, then I can’t ask for much more. If they go to me, oh my God, I've

never heard that before, and I say so this was like Charlie Patton, say, this song. They