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BiTS: When you’re talking of this particular project, you’re talking about the final version of “On A
Hot Tin Roof”?

SWH: Yes, “On a Hot Tin Roof” is actually the second CD project by this particular band and you

will note on the liner notes of both that and the previous one “On The Prowl”, I’d been working
with the same keyboard player, Neal Massa, he’s been with me for a few years, and I’ve got two
rhythm sections and one is John Wisor and Dave Fiorini and John is the bass player that I’ve been
playing with since the early 60s and Dave Fiorini who’s from Blues Plate Special, he’s been with me
for about 30 years, and then the other rhythm section I work with is Dave Salce, who’s been with
me for ten years and the other bass player is a fella named Vinnie Burvee, who tragically left us
here about three weeks ago.

BiTS: I love that song!

SWH: [Laughing] That song, I’ve got to tell, that song has gotten more interest. The CD is again a
sort of blowback on that “On A Hot Tin Roof” because it’s such an eclectic mix of styles and some of
them are hard to pigeonhole. ‘Guilty’, in particular, I was interviewing another fella and we were
joking about the fact that how can you have, as a guitar player, a blues song on a CD with no guitar

solo [laughing]? You can do that because
when I wrote that song, and that’s one of my
most personal tunes, there was a solo in it,
but the solo just seemed to be a distraction
from the message, and so I just didn’t bother. I
just said no, it doesn’t need it.

BiTS: Also, on that album, you have an
absolutely fabulous horn section. Tell me
about the horn section.

SWH: Oh my. Thank you for recognising and
acknowledging that. Yes, with this particular
project, I’ve always, always wanted to play

with a horn section. With the big band stuff
and the swing stuff is where my heart is. My
son went to school at the Berklee College of
Music in Boston. You may of heard of it. It’s
one of the leading music schools in the world.
My son went to school there as a drummer. Where I’m going with this is I really wanted to do some
horns and I, quite honestly, couldn’t find any players around where I live that I really was

comfortable with using and my son, he plays with some Ska bands and he’s got a horn section that
I’d worked with up in Boston, just sitting in gigs of theirs and so on. And so I tapped into these two
fellows in Boston, and we did the classic, which you can do now; everybody hasn’t got to be in the
same place. You can track things and send them. So we laid everything down except the horn parts
and then I laughingly and jokingly sang the horn parts to them [chuckling] and they did a very good

job of interpreting my scat.

BiTS: Tell me, Wille, were you badly affected by COVID? Were you not able to gig for a long time?

SWH: Oh my goodness. My goodness, my goodness. So I’m going to be 75 years old here in a few
weeks, and so when I finally got around to really, really pushing this — I’ve been doing it forever