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it’s on the cover and I left her a note saying please be in my book. And I left it like right at her feet
[chuckling]. I put it on stage. I’m right there in the pits so I was able to put it on stage, but never heard

anything. I was so broken-hearted; I couldn’t even work on the book for three months. She’s my hero.
She provokes so much emotion from me when I see her live. She’s a Chicago girl. I mean I’ve grown
up with her, the Staples Singers and so she was the single most important person that I wanted in my
book and so we got a little tiny bit
from her publicist but not what I

wanted. So we put that little tiny
bit. And the same with Susan
Tedeschi. I have followed Susan
Tedeschi’s entire career.
Photographed her a million times,
more so before she hooked up with
Derek, but we didn’t get the

interview. They reprinted one from
Blues Matters Magazine. Because
Susan still touches on the blues and
everything and I was always a huge
fan of her voice but she’s not really

that bluesy anymore since she’s
hooked up with Derek and their last
couple of releases. She’s blues
roots, you know. Her earlier stuff
was pretty bluesy. Now she’s gone,
what do you call it? Americana.
BiTS:
I thought the early stuff that she
did with an acoustic guitar was
absolutely fabulous.
JN:
Yeah, hugely popular. I first

photographed her in 1997 at the Mississippi Valley Blues Fest, when she was playing with Sean Costello,
I think. I mean really early on and I was a superfan. You know Tom Hambridge wrote a lot of her
earlier hits in the day before she hooked up with Derek (Trucks) in 2002. Now I’m not like a superfan
of the later sound but still, she’s hugely popular. I have great respect for how much she’s accomplished
in music. Don’t you think she’s done a lot?
BiTS:
Can I ask you how long the book took in total from when you first found a publisher to actually the
publication of it? How long did it take in total?
JN:
Oh, God. Oh, there’s a bad question for me because I’ve kind of slacked at different points. I was on
my own and my publisher did not handhold me. She’s like do this book and then she was busy running

the publishing company, so I was kinda left on my own. In May of 2019, she was like, the books
supposed to go to press this month. You don’t have enough here. And I was like, oh, bummer. I’d better
get going. I had some stuff but not enough for the book, so from May to like September, mid-September
when she totally cut me off and said no more. I hustled. I hustled and got a lot of last-minute ones. I
got down at times when people didn’t get back to me. I didn’t take it personally or anything, but I got