My love of Blues has always been there, before I even knew what it was. Records by John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker and Chuck Berry really spoke to me. For two months in 2015, I immersed myself in the Blues, scouring record stores whilst on tour to inspire and educate myself… The mission was, after the pressure of Hard Believer, and the studio time of Horizontalism, to do something raw, rough, and live, a record that just was, for its own sake. I had a great apartment in Berlin for recording, so I hired a '68 Fender Silverface amp, rigged up my mics and just did it... Well half of it - the second half I completed in the same months of 2016. Strange maybe that a Blues album should be born across two springs. You'd think that writing blues was easy - but it isn't ... It's easy to copy, sure, and to cover, definitely, but to write original blues that is more than just a photocopy of the past actually turned out to be equally challenging and natural... Above all you have to own it. I gave myself a tight deadline to both get it done, and to force me not to care whether it was well recorded, or to a click, or scruffy... Early Blues albums were done in a day, using one mic, in mono - so that's what we did... Most of this record is one take, from all of the guys who helped me get there... New Orleans legend David Shirley on drums and the weird and wonderful Colin Stetson also really brought the heat to the table.

I guess the ultimate mission statement on this first volume is "if you don't like Blues you're not going to like it" - which kept me from constantly trying to manipulate this almost holy art form into all the kinds of modern hybrids which have ultimately led to both the death of modern blues and modern jazz y'know.

Passion over skill... One amp one mic... Own it...

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