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my albums, and they came in at the last minute - we were literally in the studio when the original

drummer had to bow out and they came in to get us over the finish line and hold things together.

We were joined by some other Memphis regulars—or superstars: Eric Hughes played harp on a few
of the songs, he has been on every blues album I’ve cut (10 of them) and I regularly sit in with him
and his band. Marc Franklin plays trumpet and Kirk
Smothers on Sax, they are longtime members of the
Tullie Brae Bo-Keys, a legendary Memphis band. The slide guitar
on Wasted Youth was played by Brad Webb, another
Memphis treasure—he has his own Brass Note on

Beale Street.

The backing vocalist is my amazingly talented friend
Tullie Brae, we’ve also worked together on several
albums and shows—whenever I work with Tullie it
reminds me of how well I DON’T sing! Alice Hassen,
a fantastic violinist (check out her work with the
Blackwater Trio), joined us for Darkness to Light and
made it just what I wanted it to be.

I also had 5 special guests join me on the album:
Victor Wainwright added his magic to ‘Feeling Sorry
For Myself’, and Albert Castiglia played a slide
resonator on ‘Edge of a Razor’ that really made the
song feel right. Anthony Paule, one of my favourites,
added a very playful guitar to ‘I Can’t Get Enough’ and
David Julia, a remarkable young guitarist, took the
song ‘Easy Doesn’t Live Here’ to a very special place.

Brandon Santini brought his harp magic to the song
‘My Mind Doesn’t Wander’, he knew just what that tune needed! It’s good to have friends like that!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include three amazing engineers: Mic Wilson was the recording engineer,
and as far as I’m concerned, he is a member of the band. The album was mixed by Pete Matthews
whose career in engineering and mixing is legendary. Finally, multiple Grammy winner Brad
Blackwood mastered the album.

LL: As if one new release in a year wasn’t enough, you’ve followed up with a Christmas

release titled “Uncle Mick’s Christmas Album”! How did this album come about, and how did
you pick the selections?

MK: The idea for the album came about because for the past few years I’ve been putting together
bluesy arrangements of Christmas songs, recording them on my phone, and sending them to
friends and family members. I love to do “uncovers”, finding the blues song hidden inside popular
songs (I once did an album of Beatles songs done as acoustic blues, called “You Can’t Do That”).
After putting together blues versions of a few songs I thought it would be fun to do it as an album.
I bounced the idea off my co-conspirator, Jeff Jensen, who jumped at the chance.

I searched for songs that could either be easily worked into a bluesy feeling, of course ‘Merry

Christmas Baby’ is a blues standard so that was easy. Some, such as ‘All I Want For Christmas is
You’, ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Frosty the Snow Man’, fell easily into the structure (variations on the
classic 1-4-5). One was simple for me—my favourite version of any Christmas song is Lou Rawls’