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‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ so that was required!  And we put in three originals

    worked up just for this album.

                                                               What is significant is that each of the people
                                                               who worked on this album is a resident of
                                                               Memphis and it was recorded, mixed, mastered,
                                                               and manufactured in Memphis, which was
                                                               important to me in putting the album together
                                                               because I wanted to be able to say that the
                                                               album is, as we say, Memphis as F&#k!


                                                               LL: Since you’ve mentioned your 2017
                                                               acoustic blues release of Beatles covers titled
                                                               “You Can’t Do That!”, tell us about it please.
                                                               Did the title tune become a play on words?
                                                               Did you feel that a blues approach to the
                                                               Beatles catalogue was a no-no?!!

                                                               MK: I did the album after meeting Julia Baird,

                                                               John Lennon’s sister, at the Rum Boogie café
                                                               when I was playing there.  Before I found out
                                                               who she was I learned that she was from
    Liverpool so when I got back on stage, I had the band play a slow blues and I sang the lyrics to ‘You
    Can’t Do That’, then did the same with another Beatles song.  She loved them and told me who she
    was—and we became friends.  I toyed with the idea of doing more until while at the BMA my friend
    Mark Telesca borrowed my guitar and played a wonderful bluesy version of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’—
    and we started swapping ideas.  After working through phone and internet to get things together
    Mark came to Memphis, and we cut the album.


    As a fan it was obvious to me that blues influenced the Beatles—in fact Ringo once said that his
    dream had been to play for Lightning Hopkins, and their catalogue includes many songs that are
    heavily blues influenced. For the most part, in our song selection we stayed away from those, such
    as ‘Come Together’, ‘For You Blue’ and the like, and opted for those that were less obvious (the
    exception being ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’, which was too much fun to pass up).

    We were careful to be respectful to the music and I believe we did a good job.  My favourite is our
    version of ‘Lady Madonna’, which we slowed down considerably—it is a classic blues story of a

    single mother with no money—that’s blues through and through!  That album was fully acoustic, but
    I’m about to re-record ‘Lady Madonna’ with a band using electric instruments, because it is so
    powerful when done that way.

    I never doubted the value of the approach, but we actually had a couple DJs refuse to play the
    album.

    LL: In addition to your career as a musician, you are a Founding Partner at Medical Marketing
    Economics, a consultancy that focuses on value-based marketing of pharmaceuticals. You are a
    leading expert on pharmaceutical pricing and value-based strategies, and the author of a book
    called “The Strategic Pricing of Pharmaceuticals”. I’m guessing that you must be privy to all

    the most current COVID-19 vaccination information. What if anything would you like to convey
    to folks about these vaccines?
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