Over the last twenty years I’ve been lucky, privileged and fortunate to play with many of the greatest blues musicians in the world.  This CD contains just some of those people. To put a project like this together starting from scratch, recording everyone involved at the present date, would be a logistical nightmare and, more importantly, impossible to recreate the essence of what each band had at the time of their performance.

If, at first glance, you thought compiling a bunch of tracks from cassette tapes would be a cinch, know that you would be painfully, horribly wrong!  Imagine twenty years of practice tapes, live board and walkman tapes, rehearsal & demo tapes, tapes sent to me in the mail, given to me at gigs, late at night in parking lots, in hotel lobbies and on planes... get the idea?  But here’s the kicker.... none of them was marked other than the name of the band (and maybe a date or venue).  That’s right, no song titles or play lists...nothing!  Not even on the ones I recorded (what a bone head!).  This compilation represents over 150 tapes and months on end of listening, editing and logging.  Which brings me to...

A WORD ABOUT SOUND QUALITY, HISS AND NOISE REDUCTION

It was not only very difficult to decide who and which tracks to use as far as performance and mix was concerned but also what to do about the sound.  Truly I wanted the sound to be the best it possibly could be, especially because it would be Roseleaf Records debut CD.  That being said, I was faced with a real dilemma: how much noise reduction (NR) should I implement?  NR has some advantages and disadvantages.  It can take away the 60, 120, 180, cycle hum as well as some very high hiss, but as it does this it inevitably cancels out a certain amount (sometimes a lot) of tone and nuance.  I decided to let the performances speak for themselves and altered them as little as possible.

WILL THERE BE A VOLUME II?
YES!

I can’t say exactly what will be on Vol. II because I haven’t put the final tracks together yet.  However, there are several contenders including :

“Long Distance Call”- Mark Hummel with Luther Tucker and Mississippi Johnny Waters live at the Chi Chi in San Francisco 1985

“Buzzin”- Miss Honey and myself live at the Notodden Blues Festival, Norway. circa 199? or in Byron Bay, Australia

“Big Noise”- Bill Stuve and myself live in So Cal 199?

The Fabulous Thunderbirds live at the Rhythm Room 2002-3? featuring Kid Ramos and Troy Gonyea

Also, I have plans to try and bring Volume II up-to-date by including some of Portland’s finest musicians on several tracks.  I’m not at liberty to talk about it at this point but I’m very excited about it!

More info later...... Jimi