Page 9 - BiTS_12_DECEMBER_2020

BiTS: Percussion

EH: Percussion. Yes, that's it.

BiTS: Okay, let's talk about the new record, which I think is fabulous and I should tell you that I've
got an acoustic blues programme that goes out on Wednesday night and I'm going to make it my
album of the week next week. I'm going to feature four or five tracks from it on next Wednesday's
show. I'll send you details of that anyway.

EH: Great, I'll be glad to listen in and to share.

BiTS: I usually leave this until the end of the Memphis Minnie
call, but I'll ask you now if you would mind (Lizzie Douglas)
making some station IDs for me? I'll send you a
script.

EH: Sure. I'm going to be doing some of those
in the next couple of days anyway, so I'll put
Eddie Mac Scoundrels at the Blues Club
you in there.

BiTS: There's no need for anything
sophisticated for me. You can do them on a cell
phone on the memo recording thing if you want
to. There's no problem about that.

EH: What a good idea, that's a great idea.

BiTS: Okay, well, let's return to the record
then. Tell me something about the songs that
are on it and where you found them and that
sort of thing.

EH: Well, there's a number of songs that I've
written that are all influenced by the style of

blues that I love. Let's start with ‘What's the
Matter with the Mill’. I wanted to include a
Memphis Minnie song, once I got into learning how to play, I got really into Memphis Minnie, so
Memphis Minnie is one of my all-time favourites. That's ‘What's the Matter with the Mill’. Then a
song that I wrote new lyrics for, that's also Memphis Minnie influenced is ‘Hard Luck Woman’,

which is a lot like ‘Bad Luck Woman’ by Memphis Minnie but I decided that I didn't want to say
‘Bad Luck Woman’, I felt like it needed an update. It's more these days rather than thinking about
having bad luck, I think a lot of people, especially with the pandemic, are falling on hard luck.

BiTS: When you went into the studio to make this record, were you all fully prepared with a line-
up and a list of songs you were going to play?

EH: Yes, well last fall I made a demo and I hadn't chosen all ten. I think I had around seven or
eight of the songs that I was going to do and so I had made a demo at Thanksgiving time, almost a

year ago, and then I just hadn't had time to record it because we'd been on tour with our electric
Erin Harpe and the Delta Swingers, so we were touring, touring, touring and then middle of March
our first gig cancelled and then every single gig we had cancelled. We had to do a lot of stuff to just