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me interested and to keep me busy, is the main thing. Not just during the pandemic lockdowns but

just in general. I like to keep very, very busy [chuckles].

BiTS: The track that the pair of albums ends with ‘Where Are All The Heroes?’, I just think is
absolutely sensational. It is one of my favourite Clatch tracks of all time, I think.

HDC: Thank you. That’s one of the types of songs where I sit and listen for a long time thinking,
shall I even bother putting that on? And more often than not, it

works out where it’s a popular track. I do it so often. The album
that I released at the start of the pandemic in 2020, that was
my big proper album- “Every Path Leads Here”, released in May
2020 - there’s a song on that, ‘Soul Searching’, it’s loosely based
on and inspired by Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Soul of a Man’. Not
musically, sort of thematically and I wrote it and I really liked it
and I recorded it and I really liked it and then right up until the

album was released, I kept listening to it thinking, I’m not sure
it should be on the album. I’m not sure it should be on the
album and I went with it and hands down, that’s the most
popular song of the album, just about and the amount of people
that have gotten in touch and said, well, some people have been

a bit graphic in how it’s touched them or whatever, but used some colourful language, shall I say.
But it sort of resonated. It’s very simple and I think it’s maybe because people have this sort of
thing in the back of their minds of how powerful ‘Soul of a Man’ by Willie Johnson actually is. I
normally do that. I normally think, oh, I’m not going to put that on the album, and it turns out to be
the most popular song on it [chuckling].

BiTS: I guess that when COVID came along, the gigs that you had fizzled out, or maybe just

collapsed immediately. Which was it?

HDC: A bit of both. The ones that were close to the start of the pandemic were a bit will they be
happening; won’t they be happening? And then they were fizzling out one by one. I had a gig in
Sheffield for the Honey Bee Blues Club on the Friday night when lockdown was announced. At 12
midnight that night, we were going into full lockdown, and I had a gig in Sheffield, and it was only
at 6 o’clock that Martin, the promoter, got in touch and said, look, we’ve been talking and we’re not

going ahead with this. [Chuckles] I wasn’t going to risk it myself. It’s too close. And then gigs after
that throughout the last year, really.

BiTS: Are they starting to creep back now?

HDC: They were and this week alone, I’ve had three gigs cancelled between September and
October, mainly because they were with artists that were coming from the states who have
cancelled. They’ve cancelled the tours because of the uncertainty still with here. I did a gig in
Brecon, two weeks ago for the Mid-Wales Rhythm and Blues Club, and that was my first gig back

post lockdown and it went really, really well, all things considered. Bit rusty with the old playing,
but it was very surreal being back on stage after 17 months. Felt like starting all over again and it
went well and everybody enjoyed it. Everybody was very happy to be back with live music coming
back. But I’m taking it slow. I’m not going out of my way to start coming back with a bang and just
booking tonnes of stuff because, at the moment, it’s still a little bit uncertain. Say I had a gig in a

month’s time, and a week before, three days before they could say one of our members of staff has
been pinged - you know Track and Trace - the gig’s cancelled and the way I work, the way I travel