Mat Walklate interview

Mat Walklate joins me on episode 39. 

Mat is based in Manchester and has worked as a professional musician throughout his life, playing mainly blues and traditional music using a variety of harmonicas. He started out with a love for Sonny Boy Williamson II, and was soon touring Europe in a blues band. His interest in traditional music came from learning the tin whistle, and he also picked up other instruments for this genre, including the flute and pipes.

Mat supplements his playing income through teaching, with one-on-one, group and online teaching. 

Devoted to laying down some tracks, he has plenty of albums and online material available, including various efforts at recording songs with a multitude of harmonicas to accompany his deep vocals. Something that he’s really developed over the last year during lockdown.

Links:
Mat's website: http://matwalklate.co.uk

For lessons, contact Mat here:
http://www.matwalklate.co.uk/contact.html

BandCamp:
https://matwalklate.bandcamp.com/

Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/search?q=mat%20walklate

Traditional harmonica album:
https://matwalklate.bandcamp.com/album/traditional-harmonica

Mat's Music Guru courses:
https://www.musicgurus.com/gurus/matwalklate/?fbclid=IwAR3ThLVldrYuz69xKXc6DlczKi1A3PjKwL7sRUZmphzj5wZF9OydxVH4NQk

Irish Ceilidh Band:
https://www.lastminutemusicians.com/members/mat-walklates-irish-ceili-band.html

Videos:

With Tom Attah:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F81W3uV82IA

With Alex Haynes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6VfOWdSOE0

With Paolo Fuschi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxwNXn7FZgk

Promo video for Seydel Lightning harmonica:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxgbnojKAQs


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Chapters

• 1:15 Mat is from Stoke-on-Trent, but now based out of Manchester
• 2:16 Sonny Boy II was Mat’s first harmonica influence
• 2:57 Also plays flute, pipes, tin whistle and some guitar
• 4:11 What got Mat into playing traditional music, and different types of harmonicas he uses on that
• 5:28 Vibrant Irish and Blues scenes in Manchester
• 6:43 Mat won a blues harmonica competition at Burnley Blues festival
• 7:39 How Mat learned to play harmonica
• 9:08 Resources available on internet to learn nowadays
• 10:07 Mat teaches harmonica and advantages of one-on-one tuition
• 13:45 First recordings of Mat in the 1990s and touring Europe
• 17:41 Irish music albums made with The House Devils
• 18:54 Album combining flute and harmonica and another album of traditional music
• 20:12 Album with Dick Farrelly
• 21:24 Plays in a Ceili band for dances
• 23:26 How Mat approaches playing jazz songs on diatonic
• 25:52 Plays some jaw harp
• 27:24 Blues album with Paolo Fuschi
• 28:19 Now plays in a duo either with Alex Haynes or Tom Attah
• 30:12 Sea of Blues album in 2018
• 30:45 Dub song on Sea of Blues album played on chromatic
• 33:37 Playing trad music on the chromatic
• 34:44 Rivers of Jordan song
• 36:19 Mat has recorded some songs with multiple harmonicas
• 38:34 Chromatica harmonica: with continuous chromatic scale
• 39:20 Mat has been releasing various songs recorded at home over the last year, and the basic set-up he uses
• 41:34 Mics used in Mat’s home recordings and putting his amp on the toilet
• 43:00 Has always made sure he lays down some tracks to release, including over last year
• 43:22 The value of recording to really nail a song
• 44:16 Mat has had a lot of his songs played on radio, and tips on how to do that
• 46:16 Played on a Sky TV sci-fi TV show
• 47:22 Appeared playing on UK TV show 8 of 10 Cats Does Countdown
• 48:31 10 minute question
• 49:12 Mat is a Seydel endorser and prefers 1847 classic with wooden comb
• 49:59 Seydel Symphony chromatic and it’s heated case
• 50:35 Harmonicas used with traditional music
• 52:22 Playing Bluegrass on diatonic
• 53:18 Tunings and overblows
• 54:41 Embouchre
• 55:34 Amps
• 57:57 Mics
• 58:10 Effects pedals
• 58:23 Future plans

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Matt Walklake joins me on episode 39. Matt is based in Manchester and has worked as a professional musician throughout his life, playing mainly blues and traditional music using a variety of harmonicas. He started out with a love for Sonny Boy Williamson II and was soon touring Europe in a blues band. His interest in traditional music came from learning the tin whistle and he also picked up other instruments for this genre including the flute and pipes. Matt supplements his playing income through teaching with one-on-one group teachings and online devoted to laying down some tracks he has plenty of albums and online material available including various efforts recording songs with a multitude of harmonicas to accompany his deep vocals something that he's really developed over the last year during the lockdown Hello, Matt Walkley, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14

Thank you, Neil.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15

You're from the northwest of England, like myself. So you're originally from Stoke-on-Trent, and then you moved up to Manchester, yeah?

SPEAKER_00: 1:21

That's true, yeah. I moved in 1988. And

SPEAKER_01: 1:26

was that to, you know, take on the harmonica Manchester scene?

SPEAKER_00: 1:29

No, it was to go to university, but I never left.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34

You never left university?

SPEAKER_00: 1:36

No, I never left Manchester.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38

Still at the University of Harmonica. So what did you do at university?

SPEAKER_00: 1:42

Believe it or not, zoology.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44

That's amazing you should say that because my daughter's currently thinking about doing a zoology course. So will she turn into a harmonica player if she studies zoology?

SPEAKER_00: 1:54

No, I would assume she'd be a much better student than I ever was and take it seriously and not be swayed by music.

SPEAKER_01: 2:03

So is it when you moved to Manchester that you got into music or were you into playing music when you were younger?

SPEAKER_00: 2:10

I started with the harmonica when I was around the age of 16. I heard a recording which turned out to be Sonny Boy Williamson II, or Rice Miller, as he's known. The sound just grabbed me, and I thought, I want to get into that. I want to try and do that. So I asked for a harmonica for my birthday, and I got one. And it's been downhill ever since.

SPEAKER_02: 2:40

You better watch out. Do you play

SPEAKER_01: 2:43

other instruments now, such as the flute and the Aeolian pipes, however you say it? So they came after us, did they?

SPEAKER_00: 3:04

Well, I started on the tin whistle around the same time as the harmonica, and I played those... Just those instruments, just diatonic and tin whistle for maybe two or three years. And then eventually I got a flute and much later a set of Ilan pipes. It's pronounced Ilan, which apparently is Gaelic for elbow, because we have bellows on them. You use your elbow to inflate them. You don't blow into them. And I own a guitar as well. I wouldn't call myself a guitarist, but I know three chords.

SPEAKER_01: 3:38

And of course you sing too.

SPEAKER_00: 3:39

I do.

SPEAKER_01: 3:40

As you say, you started playing diatonic. tonic and tin whistle together at more or less the same time so were at that time you you were into playing traditional music or obviously you'd listen to sunny boy as well so was it a mixture of both right from the beginning

SPEAKER_00: 3:51

on the harmonica predominantly at the beginning it was mainly blues later on started the uh herculean task of trying to play traditional music on the harmonica and it's not as you know yourself it's not the easiest thing in the world

SPEAKER_01: 4:05

it's very popular now isn't a lot of people do that and it sounds great on the harmonica doesn't it that traditional music i mean what made you pick up to to play traditional songs?

SPEAKER_00: 4:13

It kind of fed in from playing the whistle and the flute. I thought I'd try to learn to do it on the harmonica. So I listened to people like the Murphy family from County Waxford. It was a father and two sons produced a wonderful album many years ago on the Claddagh label. I loved their playing and so that was a good starting point. Over the years, I learned to retune the diatonic slightly for Irish music, so the so-called Paddy Richter tuning, bringing the three blow notes up a tone, usually on a G harmonica, so it gives you a note of E, which makes playing the tunes a lot easier. You're not having to bend to achieve that note. I broke a lot of diatonics, but I eventually learned how to retune them and also started playing a lot more on the chromatic because that gives us, obviously, a full scale and also the opportunity to play in different keys more easily and also the tremolo harmonica. Sad to say I don't play much tremolo these days but I did go through a phase of... playing quite a lot. I actually quite like playing the tremolo.

SPEAKER_01: 5:21

So what was it like then around Manchester at this time playing the harmonica with a decent blues scene and an Irish scene I think there as well for you?

SPEAKER_00: 5:28

Yeah, there was a long-standing and vibrant Irish music scene there because obviously a huge expatriate population and then their children and their children. There were lots of sessions. You could go to a session every night of the week and kind of learn your craft. It's an oral tradition. Most of the tunes are learned by ear and it was quite welcoming and friendly. environment to go and sit in and pick up the tunes and surprisingly how quick you achieve a repertoire of tunes you know it was good for that and also there was a blue sea in Manchester it wasn't enormous but you know there was a fair bit going on which was good again because it gave people like me the opportunity to play and to go to jam sessions and to meet other musicians and hone that craft as well

SPEAKER_01: 6:42

Yeah, and again, the northwest of England's got quite a good scene because you had the Burnley Blues Festival and the Cone Blues Festival stood in there. So I think that partly drew me into around there as well. Did you attend those festivals?

SPEAKER_00: 6:55

I did. In fact, I won the Blues Harmonica Contest at Burnley. They used to have a championship every year. I believe it was 19... 90 or 91 when I won the Blues Harmonica competition which made me feel very happy and I played at the festival with a band that I was later joined a year or two later and we saw some great acts at the festival like Rick Estrin and little Charlie Beatty We supported Joe Louis Walker once and that was very good to see as well. Fantastic band. So yeah, it's a shame that Burnley is now defunct. It used to be quite a nice festival.

SPEAKER_01: 7:39

As to your development and learning, how did you get on to learning the harmonica? Did you listen to records and playing by ear?

SPEAKER_00: 7:47

Yes, pretty much. Because back in the Stone Age when I first started, there was no internet. The resources for learning harmonica were few and far between. I think it was mainly the sort of Mel Bay harmonica books, if you remember those. learn blues harmonica learn country harmonica etc so for me it was a case of and it was records as well when mainly when i first started it was vinyl i used to have to do things like put weights on the on the record to slow it down because occasionally in the recording and producing process records would be sped up or slowed down so if say say little walter for instance played a a song on an a harmonica when you listen to the record it sounds like it's in A flat or B flat depending on what they've done with it sometimes to slow down the record ever so slightly to break the pitch because obviously when you first start to play the harmonica you don't have every key I only had I couldn't afford loads so I only had a few keys but yeah listening to records and what little might appear on the television occasionally there would be documentaries or interviews with musicians is that famous film obviously of Sonny Boy at Granada Studios in Manchester.

SPEAKER_01: 9:08

So yeah you talk about learning in the way that we used to learn and I learnt too by basically learning from records and what do you think then about the difference between then and now where people have got tons and tons of resources on the internet and teachers on the internet and all sorts of videos and I mean what do you think the difference do you think there's better then or now or I guess what you take from it?

SPEAKER_00: 9:30

I think you have to say it is better now because everything so much more accessible and there are so many resources out there everything from backing tracks on say YouTube which are free and great to play along with and to work things out and to learn how to create a solo for instance music I teach online. I teach via things like Skype and Zoom and those kind of things. So it is more egalitarian, if you like, and more accessible. As with everything with the internet, there's good and bad and indifferent stuff out there. And I'm not saying this just because I teach harmonica privately and in classes, but nothing can really beat a face-to-face teaching scenario because you can ask questions and you can ask questions in the moment and you can, You can see the student and the student can see you. So you can look at things as basic as how they're holding the harmonica. I go back to what I said before. It's a great thing. It's a wonderful resource. But at the end of the day, nothing really beats a face-to-face chat about playing the harmonica.

SPEAKER_01: 10:55

Yeah, of course. I think you've got to separate the wheat from the chaff, haven't you? That's the important thing when there's so much on offer. I think if you've got a quality resource, then yeah, fantastic. I mean, the ability to be able to access so many players, it's just incredible, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 11:09

The only bugbear I have with some of the online things is that certain people advise beginners to tilt the harmonica downwards so that they can achieve single notes more easily, which works. It does work. But unfortunately, if you persist with that technique, you'll never be able to bend the notes effectively you won't have the control so that's that's the only thing that i sort of come across now and again i think that's that's not really great advice

SPEAKER_01: 11:36

i think you know maybe it's nostalgia where you think if you kind of absorb yourself and learn yourself from records that is somehow that makes you you know kind of go through the pain a little bit more but it's probably not true is i mean like you say if you've got a bit of guidance that's going to help for sure i

SPEAKER_00: 11:52

think it's a much slower process yeah i think the way i learned and And I assume that it's very similar to the way you learned. We do go up quite a lot of blind alleys and also are unaware of things that the harmonica can and can't do. These days, within seconds, you can find an answer. to a question. Things can be explained extremely quickly. For instance, obviously, when I first started, I knew nothing about bending the notes, nothing about holding the harmonica correctly, nothing about using cupping techniques and all these kind of vibrato and all these kind of things. So I think it does quicken the process, modern technology.

SPEAKER_01: 12:29

And you mentioned you're on teaching. You've got some online lessons on Music Guru, haven't you? I'll put a link onto that.

SPEAKER_00: 12:34

Yes. If you look at those, in my defense, I was ill I had a rotten cold and I had to get a 5am train from Manchester to London and then navigate the tube to Hoxton. And then they recorded me solidly for something like six hours. So I look like the living dead on that video.

SPEAKER_01: 12:58

So teaching is quite an important part of you. You work full-time as a musician, don't you? So that's how you supplement your income. Has that helped over the last year? Have you managed to do some online teaching?

SPEAKER_00: 13:09

I've done a little bit of online teaching. teaching and it has helped thankfully just in the past week I managed to restart face to face lessons which is wonderful it's been nice to sit across a table from someone and teach them how to play the harmonica Skype and these other things are useful but like I said nothing beats being there in person

SPEAKER_01: 13:32

and I'll put a link your contact details in case people want to get in touch about your own lessons and is the best way to do that through your email? Yeah, email's probably best. So getting on then onto your, you know, starting to the recordings you've done. So the first one I found of you is with the Moochers in the mid-90s. Is that one of your first bands and first recordings you made?

SPEAKER_00: 13:54

The first blues band I ever recorded with was called the Back Scratchers. And I think we recorded a tape recording back in the days of cassette tapes and then shortly after I formed The Moochers with a guitarist called Andy Pyatt who's a fantastic guitar player who now lives down in Bath and we did three albums with The Moochers and toured all over Europe and had some good fun and I think without sounding arrogant we recorded a couple of nice songs and funnily enough I spoke to Andy recently and he'd been listening to our old albums from the 90s and I had another listen and I thought actually they're not as bad as I thought it's a bit naive because I was only in my early 20s when we first started doing it so you don't know as much as you think you do at that age music The weirdest thing about listening to the very first recording I did was I sound like I sound about 12 because as you guys can hear I've got a relatively deep voice but these early recordings sound like I'm on helium. It's got a bit more gravelly over the years.

SPEAKER_01: 15:19

Were you doing all the singing with this band? Yeah. So you were touring Europe at this stage then with these guys as well, like you say, so pretty successful early on. I'm not sure you could make a career in music, did it?

SPEAKER_00: 15:30

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say we earned a vast fortune, but we made a little bit of money and we had a lot of fun. And we got to places that we might not otherwise have seen. We went all over Ireland, a lot of time in Belgium and Holland, a little bit in Germany, Switzerland, France. It was good.

SPEAKER_01: 15:49

I think probably in the 90s, we probably didn't think it was a great music scene then, but looking back then, what do you think? Has it got worse these days? Was there a reason a good music scene back then?

SPEAKER_00: 16:00

In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. I think looking back, it seemed to be a little easier to get a decent gig. Back in those days. I think it's a little harder now.

SPEAKER_01: 16:13

And what about, you know, for sort of blues bands? I mean, you know, it seems to be that blues is reasonably popular then. And yeah, you can still get blues gigs now. But yeah, maybe not quite as popular as it was back then. I

SPEAKER_00: 16:22

think it's like most things. It comes in waves. There's peaks and troughs of popularity. And I'm hoping that it will peak soon. again soon

SPEAKER_01: 16:34

yeah we're hoping that you know now we're coming out of the pandemic and the pubs are opening and the other venues that yeah we'll get some great enthusiasm for music

SPEAKER_00: 16:44

it's been quite heartwarming for me that the venues that I've played in the past have recently been getting in touch and booking us to play blues so I'm looking forward to that

SPEAKER_01: 16:56

yeah good to see they've still survived all this as well

SPEAKER_00: 17:00

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 17:00

So you played with the Moochers through the 90s. What came next from the Moochers for you?

SPEAKER_00: 17:06

After the Moochers, myself and Andy, the guitar player, also recorded an album under the moniker Depot, if you're American, which was more acoustic blues. We generally performed as a duo or occasionally with a double bass band. Then Andy emigrated to France, so I continued with that name, with a Manchester guitarist and singer called Fall Bradley, who was an extremely good country blues player. We, again, went to Ireland and a few other places with that. All during this time, obviously, I was still playing Irish music and formed a band called the House Devils.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_00: 18:02

We're the guitarist and singer called Matt Fahey. We have had the All-Ireland Fiddle Champion, who happens to be from Manchester, guitar, fiddle, flute, harmonica, etc. And we did two studio albums with the House Devils.

SPEAKER_01: 18:23

Is that one of those Cold in April?

SPEAKER_00: 18:26

Cold in April was a solo effort. It is Irish music, and it does involve the people that I've just previously mentioned, but I did that as a little solo album. I managed to put some bass harmonica on that album.

UNKNOWN: 18:49

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_01: 18:54

I mean, before that as well, you recorded a harmonica and flute album. Was that a self-produced album? That was a kind of mixture, obviously a mixture of flute and harmonica.

SPEAKER_00: 19:03

Yes, yes. I recorded that in somebody's spare room in Blackburn.

SPEAKER_01: 19:08

Oh, in Blackburn. That's where I'm from, Blackburn.

SPEAKER_00: 19:10

It was in Rishton. Do you know Rishton?

SPEAKER_01: 19:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:13

Yeah, this guy that I knew who was actually an extremely good harmonica player and very good sax player had a little home recording set up. The only trouble with that, he had a crazy neighbour who used to stand in her bath and hammer on the wall when we were recording. Which disrupted things a wee bit.

SPEAKER_01: 19:33

And then you've got, you know, sticking a little well on the traditional side, you've got an album on Bandcamp playing traditional harmonic with some great tunes on there, a little Maggie.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_01: 19:59

sort of mixture of bluegrass and Irish stuff and Away From Strangers. So is that something you did more recently?

SPEAKER_00: 20:06

I rediscovered that album quite recently back in March because I had recorded an album with Dick Farrelly in the August of, I think, 2011. Dick Farrelly, a fantastic guitar player. He was Van Morrison's guitar player in the 1980s. Just a fantastic player. Wonderful chops, you know, great skill He came over, flew over from Dublin, and we recorded that album. And at the same time, I also recorded an album with the House Devils. And they were, if you like, proper albums. They were properly released on labels, proper CDs in cases with information. In between doing those two things, I also recorded an album called Traditional Harmonica, which was more of the stuff that I wanted to do that was harmonica-focused. It kind of fell by the wayside because we invested all the money in the Blues album and the House Devils album. It never got properly released. So when I came across it again in a box in March, a friend of mine extracted the WAVs, as they're called, from the CD. I put it up on Bandcamp and it's been quite well received, which is very heartwarming.

SPEAKER_01: 21:19

Yeah, there's some good stuff on there. I've enjoyed listening to those. Yeah, I think that's a good produced album, yeah. You're playing a ceilidh band sometimes as well, do you, as part of your repertoire to get some gigs?

SPEAKER_00: 21:29

Yeah, there's a steady market for ceilidhs, usually for weddings, occasionally for birthdays, and I quite enjoy doing them. To be honest, as gigs go, they're quite easy because we have a caller who explains how the dance progresses. So they spend 10 minutes explaining the dance and then we play for five minutes and then they spend ten minutes explaining the next dance so it's quite a laid back affair really

SPEAKER_01: 21:59

It's a guilty secret of mine Matt in recent years I've quite got into going to a ceilidh because first of all you hear some live music which is great and I like the tradition of music and they actually explain as a gentleman actually how to do the dance which you know as a man I find quite useful because otherwise I've got no idea like most men I guess so well, yeah, I quite like the Cayley these days. And do you play, you know, harmonica as part of that as well, some flute and whistle and other things?

SPEAKER_00: 22:26

Yeah, I always try and shoehorn a bit of harmonica in there, play some jigs, usually jigs, to be honest, in the Cayley setup, and obviously mainly on the flute and a little bit on the pipes.

UNKNOWN: 22:46

Now we're fine.

SPEAKER_01: 22:49

I haven't been to a ceilidh with harmonica yet, I'd like to hear that. But yeah, the ceilidhs are great. Yeah, a good place for musicians to play as well, like you say, getting a nice lot of rest.

SPEAKER_00: 23:00

Yeah, it also keeps your chops up on playing the tunes because some of the dances you do have to play perhaps for, say, up to 10 minutes, maybe even more. So it does get your muscles into it.

SPEAKER_01: 23:17

Great, yeah, so as you say, you play with the House Devils, and this is a good album. And then the album with Dick Farrelly is the Keep It Clean album, yeah?

SPEAKER_00: 23:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 23:25

Yeah, so on there you've got a few jazz tracks. You've got Bags Groove.

SPEAKER_03: 23:36

Bags Groove

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

Yes, yes they

SPEAKER_00: 23:48

are.

SPEAKER_01: 23:50

So what about your approach to playing jazz on the diatonic or the chromatic at all if you play it on that

SPEAKER_00: 23:56

too? On the diatonic it's a case of being a little bit circumspect and trying not to get carried away for me personally and just trying to hold on for dear life sometimes. With the chromatic obviously there's a little more flexibility but I would not call myself a jazz player. I love it, I love to listen to it and I'll have go at it from time to time. But yeah, a lot of respect for people like Olivia Aker, Oreo and Tootsie Lemons and people like that. Hermijn Douwelu from the Netherlands, you know, fantastic jazz players, proper jazz players.

SPEAKER_01: 24:34

But I think, you know, what you do with those two songs, though, is a good example for people who kind of want to dip their toe into jazz and you can kind of blues it up a little bit on the diatonic, can't you? And it works quite well on the diatonic, doesn't it, to do some reasonably lightweight jazz like that. It's a good idea, I think, for some variety.

SPEAKER_00: 24:51

Yeah, but I mean, unless you're an overblower and can play chromatically on the diatonic, it's always going to be a wee bit limited. So you have to try and sort of keep your powder dry. Yeah, just try and maybe think a little more. I wouldn't say less spontaneous, but a little more... careful tread a little carefully I think

SPEAKER_01: 25:12

I mean one thing you certainly get in jazz tunes more than standard blues songs generally is you get a melody yeah so you know you kind of get a melody to play don't you as you do on those two songs that we mentioned so is that something you know you spend the time learning the jazz melodies and that's you know the difference with the blues songs

SPEAKER_00: 25:29

to be honest with those two he just turned around in the studio and said I'm going to play this one play along play along with it I'd obviously heard C jam blues before and I think I think I'd heard Baggs Groove before as well, but I'd never played them before. But he was, again, such a competent guitarist, it wasn't too much of an ordeal just to play around it.

SPEAKER_01: 25:52

And there's a song on there, If It's Love, with a jaw harp on. Is that you playing the jaw harp on

SPEAKER_00: 25:57

there? Yes, I do own one, and I do bring it out from time to time.

UNKNOWN: 26:06

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_01: 26:10

I've got one recently actually, but I haven't played it too much. I'm a bit put off by the fact that you have to put it against your teeth and it vibrates against your teeth. That's right, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 26:25

Not if you're doing it properly. It's not supposed to hit your teeth. No. When I first started to try and play it, it hurt a lot. I kept whacking it into my teeth. So, yeah, you're just going to have to very gently rest your teeth on the metal strips, leaving a little gap for the tongue to vibrate, the metal tongue to vibrate.

SPEAKER_01: 26:48

Yeah, I know. So you do put your teeth on it, though, don't you? That's what I meant, yeah. I find that quite uncomfortable because it kind of vibrates again. it's a very strange feeling but I'll have to have another go with it.

SPEAKER_00: 26:59

Yeah if you ever get the chance and this isn't me trying to make you suffer listen to some of the Mongolian jaw harp players because they're incredible because they set up a complicated rhythm and then they do like overtones a bit like that Mongolian overtone singing and you know sometimes it's really percussive and then sometimes it's really melodic and the range of tones that they can achieve with it are just incredible.

SPEAKER_01: 27:24

You did some work with Paolo Fucci, who's an Italian blues player. You released the album Kicking Up The Dust.

SPEAKER_00: 27:50

Yeah, we did that in... How long did it take us to record that? Six hours. We basically played the live set in the studio and released it. It's mainly covers. In fact, it's 99% covers. I think there's one original on there. It captured quite well the sound of the live set, which is kind of what we wanted. And it did quite well. It was quite well received. I think that was 2016. Are

SPEAKER_01: 28:15

you still playing with Paolo now?

SPEAKER_00: 28:16

No, not played with Paolo for a few years now. These days, I generally play with a guitarist who's based in Sheffield called Alex

SPEAKER_03: 28:25

Haynes. And I

SPEAKER_00: 28:43

also play with another guitarist and singer called Tom Atta.

SPEAKER_01: 28:52

great yeah and so you're mainly doing duo work with those guys

SPEAKER_00: 29:12

Predominantly, yes. And mainly, you know, in terms of expense for the venues. A lot of the venues can only afford to pay for a duo. But occasionally, if we're lucky, we'll get to take a rhythm section out. I do occasionally put on blues events at a venue called The Met in Bury near Manchester. And that's a fantastic venue with a great stage and a wonderful PA. And there we've managed to do, you know, four, five, six-piece gigs. Next year, we're doing Scarborough Blues Festival with Tom with a full band. And I think that's April next year. But unfortunately, I think it just comes down to the bottom line. Duos are cheaper.

SPEAKER_01: 29:59

Yeah, I mean, at least they, you know, you get the nice space for the harmonica and the duet, don't you? You're not competing too much with the volume, although it's nice to play some loud electric amplified harmonica too. It's kind of nice not to. So yeah, so great. So yeah, you did the album with Paolo and then you did an album 2018, which I really enjoy. You know, really well produced one, I think, The Sea of Blues. Paolo's playing on that album, I think, isn't he?

SPEAKER_00: 30:21

He is, yeah. He played guitar on that and also Tom. Tom had to play guitar on some of the tracks. In fact, I even played guitar on one of them. Yeah. Yeah, the one with three chords. But yeah, so it was a mixture, if you like, of band tracks, all those tracks there with rhythm section, a great bass player from Barbados who's lived in Manchester since the late 60s called Bowley.

SPEAKER_01: 30:44

Was he the inspiration for doing the Dubbed and Burning song then? And also the Modest Man, because you kind of got the two sort of reggae vibes, haven't you?

SPEAKER_00: 30:54

Well, I've always loved ska and reggae as well as blues there isn't a massive amount of harmonica in blues and reggae historically although toots hibbert was quite a good harmonica player from toots and the maytals i came up with those two songs uh in fact dubbed and burning is a sort of reggae version of the old gospel song keep your lamp trimmed and burning done by uh mississippi fred mcdowell and uh blind willie johnson for instance When I thought about doing those songs, I knew that I would have Bo there and Bo would make it sound correct because he's a fantastic bass player. He actually played with Desmond Decker when he first came over to the UK. He was in the band.

SPEAKER_01: 32:01

Dubbed and Burning is a great track, I think. It works well. Are you playing chromatic on that one?

SPEAKER_00: 32:06

I am, yes. A 16-hole chromatic on that one.

SPEAKER_01: 32:09

yeah so what made you choose chromatic for that because you did so traditionally you know you might go for a more rhythmic approach from the diatonic so i was interested to think yeah it's definitely yeah it's chromatic on here yeah

SPEAKER_00: 32:19

it was partly because it's it's four octaves so you got four octaves to play with and also because it's in a minor key um we did it in e flat minor i could play with the sliding if you're playing in that way the water blues player would call third position using a using a minor scale or the dorian mode if you're going to be pedantic one it's quite straightforward but also you can just by releasing the slide and then replacing it you get a little semitone dip which is quite effective and also you can use the octaves so you've got those different textural things you've got the single note playing across four octaves so from quite low and throaty to quite high and then you've got the potential to use the octaves and also the glissandi and things like that I just thought it kind of suited the track a bit better than doing it on the diatonic although I have for instance on the Kicking Up The Dust album we covered a Derek Morgan song from Jamaica from the 60s which is in essence a 12 bar blues song but it was recorded on for Trojan Records with Lee Scott Perry who's a famous producer so it's kind of a basically a scar 12 bar blues that lent itself to the diatonic

SPEAKER_01: 33:36

so yeah you're chromatic playing traditional songs on chromatic as well you're you say as well as are you mostly playing sort of third position blues stuff on there?

SPEAKER_00: 33:44

If it's in a blues contest most of the time I am playing in third position though occasionally I will play in other keys in other ways. What I have played and recorded quite a few reels and jigs and such like and polkas on the harmonica because I'll say on the chromatic harmonica because you can do things like go from on a G chromatic for instance go from D minor to E minor to A minor key changes that will be more difficult on a diatonic

SPEAKER_01: 34:14

yeah great and you're able to you know to get around those tunes okay and the chromatic obviously a bit more tricky I'm dealing with the slide

SPEAKER_00: 34:20

but on the plus side with the chromatic you've got the slide there that can provide the triplets Because with that kind of music, it's full of triplets. There's a variety of ways of doing them. On a diatonic, you can use a U-block technique. You can wobble your chin or you can move your head. But on the chromatic, you've got another option where you can basically tap the button extremely quickly and it gives you that triplet.

SPEAKER_01: 34:44

Another song I really like on that album, Sea of Blues, is the Rivers of Jordan.

UNKNOWN: 34:53

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_00: 35:07

That, well, I shamelessly thieved it from Jay Bird Coleman, who, I don't know if you've come across Jay Bird Coleman, but his story is quite an interesting one. I think it's got some parallels with mine because he died in abject poverty, and I think I'm going to go the same way. But he was actually a real tour de force. He would play gigs just on his own with a harmonica. kind of accompanies vocals with this harmonica not singing and playing simultaneously but in such a way as to create a full sound and he's just a fantastic player great tone apparently for a time he was so popular in his local area that he was managed by the Ku Klux Klan so it's very hard to get your head around that idea in the 1930s and in the deep south if you've not come across Jay Bird Coleman I would recommend digging out his stuff because he is amazing and um The Rivers of Jordan is a straight lift from his version.

SPEAKER_02: 36:15

Another

SPEAKER_01: 36:19

song on there you've got is a song called Playing With Myself Boogie, which is you playing multiple harmonicas, which is something that you've got into, I think, recently, haven't you? You've released another song called Many Harps, and you've done a few, I think, Box Room Blues as well as another one where you record multiple harmonicas onto tracks. So what about that?

SPEAKER_00: 36:40

Yeah, I like the idea of it. My first proper attempt at it was that tongue playing with myself boogie. I've got a chord harmonica, not the great big chord harmonicas that cost as much as a car. I've got a little one that plays six chords. I had to choose a key that I could use the chords on, so I ended up doing it in the key of G. I laid down a rhythm track using those chords. I don't know if you've ever tried to play a chord harmonica. The little ones have a bass note and then a four-note chord, so you can kind of go, you know, note, chord, chord, note, chord. So, and they've got some seventh chords on, which is good for blues. So, and it basically recorded eight 12-bars on the chord harmonica, and then recorded a bass line on the bass harmonica, and then recorded some parts on diatonics, playing a kind of, what you might call a boogie rhythm, you know, sort of dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum, and then overdubbed a couple of solos in first position, and a couple of solos in second position, just to give a different flavour.

SPEAKER_01: 38:04

And these are songs entirely just harmonica, no other instruments?

SPEAKER_00: 38:07

Yeah, just harmonica, nothing else.

SPEAKER_01: 38:09

Yeah, so you've done a few of these now, as I say, mentioned a few though, I mean, it's great, you know, as a harmonica player to be able to hear them, like you say, you can hear you're changing positions, you've got the chords in there, and you know, any more plans to produce any of these multi-harmonica songs?

SPEAKER_00: 38:23

Yeah, until a petition is taken up, or you know, that the police come round, I will probably continue you to explore this strange avenue. One harmonica that I own that I've never managed to actually record with or use in anger is a chromatica. They're almost two feet long. They have just a chromatic run of notes. So it just goes C, C sharp, D, E flat, E, F, F sharp, et cetera, and so on and so on over, I think it's four octaves. And There are two holes and it plays the same note, blow and draw. So you can play endless glissandi. The only use I could think of it would be if you wanted to simulate a rainstorm. I keep meaning to try and use it. One day, maybe I will. But it's a weird and wonderful thing. I

SPEAKER_01: 39:16

don't own one of those. I own most types of harmonica, but not one of those. So you've also, you know, recently, I think probably through lockdown time, I'm guessing, you've released a few songs that you've recorded on your own, as well as these, you know, harmonica, multiple harmonica ones you've released a couple of recently, haven't you? You've released Better Off Alone, which is an original song by you. I think you're playing, singing and playing guitar on there as well. Yeah. Yeah, so again, and multiple harmonicas and Bye and Bye.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.........

SPEAKER_01: 39:56

So you're recording these at home. You've got sort of a home setup. You've been doing these over the last year.

SPEAKER_00: 40:01

Yeah, just a very basic, probably obsolete technology now. But it's a little machine called a BOSS BR800. It's a digital recording device with four, five inputs on it. You can apparently get 24 virtual tracks on it. I haven't figured out how to do that yet. So everything I record is basically six tracks. If I can use it, then basically anybody with a portable thumbs could use it. So I've got a large diaphragm micro relatively cheap one and this little recording machine so you record each track and then I use a very simple free program called Audacity to mix it slightly and EQ and such like and edit it and away you go.

SPEAKER_01: 40:48

Yeah brilliant I think there's a lot of interest in that these days isn't there again maybe over the last year or so where people have got really interested in doing home recording and so yeah interesting that you're using a kind of a machine like that rather than a computer to do it then you You've not attempted, well, apart from Audacity, of course, but you're recording into this box, as you say.

SPEAKER_00: 41:07

Yeah, and that's what communicates with the laptop for editing purposes, but I am not very computer literate. It's a miracle that I'm talking to you now, to be honest. I didn't go down the Cubase Logic Pro Tools route because I know that it would just frustrate me and I wouldn't be able to understand it fully.

SPEAKER_01: 41:28

Great to hear that, you know, you say you can record in that way and, yeah, and get some good stuff out yeah so great and um but yeah basically you say you're just using one large diaphragm microphone you're nothing else microphone wise

SPEAKER_00: 41:40

for recording uh just that large diaphragm mic uh not even i mean i've got obviously some sm58s but i don't bother using those uh it it's it's been educational in a way in terms of mic placement Just the distances needed to successfully record vocals and acoustic harmonica and then amplified harmonica. It's getting that distance right so you're getting the quality of the sound, but you're not obviously overloading it and distorting. Or on the other side of the coin, it's not too quiet. So it's been interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 42:15

Have you been picking up the amplified harmonica with the large diaphragm mic as well?

SPEAKER_00: 42:19

I have, yeah. Making use of the smallest room in the house. Very undignified for the amp. It sits on the toilet. And the microphone is set up by the bathroom door. And it seems to work.

SPEAKER_01: 42:33

I saw that picture on Facebook, yeah. So is that for the acoustics, the reverb in the bathroom, or you just like putting your amp in the toilet?

SPEAKER_00: 42:42

Yeah, yeah. That's probably one good reason. It's the most straightforward way for me to do it, really, in the house. Just stick it on the toilet, set the microphone by the door, and away you go.

SPEAKER_01: 42:55

You've done really well getting out some tracks. You've been obviously very active over the last year or so with getting these out. And getting some tracks down, it's obviously been important to you to some tracks down you know over the years and get some albums out yeah

SPEAKER_00: 43:07

Yeah, definitely. It's not just purely for the purposes of expressing my angst to the world. You need to record so people can hear you and know who you are and hopefully come and see you play somewhere.

SPEAKER_01: 43:22

Yeah, and as well as that, I think, you know, going through this sort of pain of recording, you know, you think you can play something until you record it and listen back to it, yeah, and you go, I've got to play that a hundred times before, in some cases, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 43:33

Yeah, I save most of my bad language for the studio. to be honest. The amount and volume of swearing is just unreal. You think you have something in your head, okay, I'll play this part over this particular piece of the tune, and by take 25... You're thinking, I'm never going to get this. It never seems to come out the way it does in your imagination.

SPEAKER_01: 43:56

Yeah. But I think once you do record something and you go through that pain, then you can really play it. I think that's a really good way to learn, isn't

SPEAKER_00: 44:03

it? Yeah, it is. It is. I also forget as well, unfortunately. I'll do something and it will work, in my opinion. And then I'll listen to it a few months later and think, I have no idea how I did that.

SPEAKER_01: 44:16

And you've got a lot of airplay on radio, haven't you, with your tracks? You seem to have got on all sorts of radio stations all around the world with your tracks on sort of various blues shows and things.

SPEAKER_00: 44:26

Yeah, it's been very gratifying and I'm very grateful. I get played nearly every week in Brazil, which astounds me. Tasmania, where was that? I was on the radio in Uruguay this week. North America. But I've been played in all sorts of weird and wonderful places, which is lovely.

SPEAKER_01: 44:45

So how do you get on radio shows? Is it something you push out yourself?

SPEAKER_00: 44:49

Yeah, well I can't afford to pay somebody to do it for me so yeah, it's a case of research, looking around on the internet usually for blues DJs or blues radio shows and there are also things like, there's a company called Airplay Direct which is an American company, where you upload tracks and then you can send what they call a digital press kit out to radio stations DJs and they can download the tracks from the site. That's been quite useful for a lot of the American airplay. In this country it's quite well organised. There is a sort of, I forget the term now, a sort of confederation of British blues DJs and you can contact them all in one fell swoop by sending an email to their main email address.

SPEAKER_01: 45:39

Fantastic. And get a bit of exposure. Do you even get paid for these radio appearances?

SPEAKER_00: 45:44

It's kind of a slight I was on Radio 2 last July. Keris Matthews was kind enough to play that tune, Playing With Myself Boogie, on Radio 2. And obviously a sizable royalty accrues from that. But the royalties from internet radio and very small stations is obviously very small. But every little helps, you know, and I'm always grateful.

SPEAKER_01: 46:11

Yeah, no, great. Great to well done for getting out there. And you played other things as well. I think you've had your music on a Sky show called Intergalactic.

SPEAKER_00: 46:20

Just before the first lockdown in 2020, I was asked with Alex Haynes, the guitarist I work with from Sheffield, to compose two tunes for two scenes in this Sky sci-fi series called Intergalactic. So we wrote the tunes. The producers liked them. So we went to the woods in Orderly Edge, which is near Manchester, in the middle of Manchester. march and sat there for 17 hours in the freezing cold playing about four seconds of each tune over and over and over again because i don't know if you've ever done any filming but they sort of say action then they say cut about four seconds later move the cameras do it all again move the cameras do it all again add infinitum until you lose the will to live and so but we did it anyway but i had a quick scan quick skim through the uh the series on uh on the television the other week and I couldn't see our scene. So I suspect that they may have cut the scene.

UNKNOWN: 47:17

Oh dear.

SPEAKER_00: 47:18

Don't say oh dear because they paid us quite handsomely for doing it. But I was kind of on 8 out of 10 Catsills Countdown last year as well. They called me in to play the clock theme on the harmonica because it's filmed in Salford in Manchester at the Media City. So they wanted a bluesy version of the clock theme. You know... It's only 30 seconds of music, so I turned up. They pressed record in the studio, and I did it. And then Jimmy Carr came on and mimed to it. So I'm not actually on. You don't see me, but it was me playing while he mimed on a tremolo harmonica. Purists will be there screaming at the television screen, you know, it's the wrong harmonica. It's like I went to the cinema to see a film about Charles Darwin once years ago, and it is a true story that Charles Darwin gave a harmonica harmonica to an orangutan in London Zoo to see what its reaction would be to the sound. But in the film, he gives it a chromatic harmonica and they weren't invented until the next century. So I just turned to the person I was with and said, that's it, the film's ruined for me now. It's the wrong harmonica.

SPEAKER_01: 48:31

Yeah, so a question I ask each time is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_00: 48:37

If I had 10 minutes, I would work on bends for a fair bit because it's like a muscle that needs to be constantly flexed the control of the bends and doing bends as quietly as possible but successfully so I'd spend a bit of time on a diatonic on all three just working on those bends I'd probably do a little bit of tongue blocking work just to again keep the wheels oiled the rhythmic work and the placement of the octaves probably for like the last couple of minutes I'd just go nuts and just play around mess around have some fun

SPEAKER_01: 49:10

Okay so we'll get on to talking about gear now so you're a sidle and door sir

SPEAKER_00: 49:15

yes i am

SPEAKER_01: 49:16

which uh which ones do you like of those

SPEAKER_00: 49:18

for blues i predominantly use the 1847 classics with the wooden comb i've got i've got more than any sane human really needs but i've got one in every key and i've got low tunings i like them i like them they're durable reliable the intonation is good the tone is good i like the feel of them some some people may find them slightly perhaps a bit too chunky compared to the dimensions of say an old-fashioned marine band, which are slightly smaller. For me, they feel comfortable and they do what I need them to do when I need them to do it. I do have a set of lightnings. I do like them. I keep them for best, as it were. Also, I've got one of the symphony chromatics. It's a lovely, lovely instrument.

SPEAKER_01: 50:03

That's the one with the magnetic slide, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 50:05

Yeah, and it comes in a heated case. When I first got it, I had a gig at Manchester Jazz Festival playing in the Midland Hotel And we had a set to do, shall we say, midday, and another set at 3pm. So I did the first set, put the harmonica in its heated case, and forgot that I'd left it on. So when it came back three hours later, I could barely pick it up. It was read out. So if you do get one, don't forget to turn the damn thing off. But yeah, they're lovely. And I use the Saxony chromatics a lot for traditional music. usually in the key of G. For Irish music, a G chromatic and a G diatonic tend to be the most useful for playing the tunes on, especially if you want to play in a session.

SPEAKER_01: 51:08

Yeah, I find, obviously, so G and D are the common keys, aren't they, for those songs. But I find the Gs are very low, though, so they're hard to cut through. So how do you overcome that on the lower Gs?

SPEAKER_00: 51:19

I don't really have a problem cutting through with them, really. I think mainly because once you start playing the harmonica in the session, most people just put their instruments down and stare at you. But yeah, I think the cutting through business, it's a bit like, well, it's very, very much like the projection when you're singing, projecting a voice. It's just trying to introduce that little bit of diaphragm to push it out slightly without obviously using more air or blowing more violently. To be honest I've not struggled with cutting through.

SPEAKER_01: 51:50

And when you're playing traditional songs with the diatonics what do you tend to use for those?

SPEAKER_00: 51:55

Well obviously with Seidel you can get any tuning configuration you want so I ordered up a few Nobles in fact as you mentioned before with the Paddy Richter tuning so a G diatonic basically with three below tuned up to the note of E and I've also got a couple in D with that Paddy Richter tuning as well and I find the Nobles are great for the traditional stuff and also for bluegrass as well but one thing you'll find if you're playing bluegrass on the diatonic you'll need to do the bends in hole number two as well if you're playing Irish traditional music and a lot of the also Scottish traditional music you don't tend to need that bend in hole number two I don't know if this helps, but if you imagine the tin whistle, the bottom note on it is D and you don't go below that D. So you wouldn't need the bend in hole number two, but you do need the bend in hole number three or the note there because you need that note of E. But then two draw is a D. So you don't really often need to go below that. But if you play bluegrass, you do. It still makes it easier to use that tuning, but you do still have to do a bit of bending as well.

SPEAKER_01: 53:04

Yeah, and you're mainly playing, what, first position on these tunes? Well,

SPEAKER_00: 53:08

no. For instance, there's a set of tunes out there. It's on the House Devil's Album. It's on the SoundCloud page. I think it might be on Bandcamp as well. Called The Hearty Boys of Ballymote. That's the first tune. So it goes from a tune in G, so first position, if you like, to a tune in E minor, and then to a tune in A minor, which is technically third position, if you think about it in a blues way. So yeah, those tend to be the main keys on the G diatonic, obviously. G, E minor, A minor, occasional tunes in D that don't have a C sharp in them, and very rarely some tunes in some quite unusual keys. It just depends on how they were written. So for instance, the There's a tune you could play using the Phrygian mode, and it's technically in F sharp, but because of the way it was written, you can play it on a G diatonic.

SPEAKER_01: 54:18

Yeah, great. Yeah, so obviously you're playing different positions in there, and the Paddy Richter's good for that, isn't it, with that three blow razor tone, as you say. So do you play any other tunings beside the Paddy Richter?

SPEAKER_00: 54:29

I don't. I use standard Richtotune diatonics and the Paddy Richters, and that's it. and obviously chromatics, but you know how they're tuned.

SPEAKER_01: 54:39

Do you do any overblows? No. On the embouchure-wise, what do you do?

SPEAKER_00: 54:43

I flip between three techniques. I use a fair amount of lip pursing or puckering, as the Americans call it. I use quite a lot of tongue blocking, and I use quite a lot of U-blocking as well, especially if I'm playing the traditional stuff, because, again, you can do the triplets by moving the tongue. It's just my personal taste, but it makes it a little bit easier to achieve them at high speed

SPEAKER_01: 55:06

Yeah, I've never really tried the U blocking then. Is that something you picked up later on?

SPEAKER_00: 55:10

Yeah, I just tackled upon it before I had a name for it or I'd ever heard it discussed. But in essence, it's a process of sticking the tip of the tongue underneath the hole that you want to play and the sides of the tongue block off the holes that you don't need. And it's good for accuracy at speed. It's good for the triplets. And it's good for big jumps up and down the harmonica. We don't do too many of them normally.

SPEAKER_01: 55:34

And equipment-wise, what amplifiers do you like to use?

SPEAKER_00: 55:37

I've got a lovely little workhorse 5-watt valve amper with a 10-inch speaker. It's a VHT, and it's been modified for harmonica, so preamp valves have been changed, circuits have been altered slightly. All done by a fellow called Nigel, who lives in Rochdale near Manchester. His company's called Al Micco Magnets, and he modified this VHT, and I've had it for about 10 years now, and it's been... A fantastic little workhorse. Obviously great for duo gigs. It's got sufficient volume for that context. And I've even used it successfully with bands, you know, where it's been mic'd up. I've also got a custom boutique amp, if you like, also made by Nigel Briggs, which he calls a Mighty Mo. And that's an 8-inch speaker, also 5 watts, in the tweed cabinet. That's what I used on Playing With Myself Boogie and By& By and many harps. That's the amp I used on those. It's, I think, a cracking sound for amplified harmonica. I've got a Fender Bassman 59, a reissue, obviously, not an original one, which, to be honest, I mainly tend to use just for an extra bit of oomph. So what I will do is go into the VHT and then from the line-out socket of the VHT go into the Bassman. So, if you like, the VHT is acting like a preamp. for the bassman so by combining the two I get quite a lot of grit which you can alter it doesn't have to be really dirty but I get I move more air so there's more presence to the harmonica and if I am playing with a band then it does give a bit more body without feeding back too much I've got a Fender Champion 600 modified for harmonica that's something ridiculous like a 6 inch speaker I don't use it very often to be honest but I have one also got a A 1964 Fender Bandmaster, which is what they call a piggyback amp. So it's a 2x10 inch speaker cabinet with a head on top. It's 40 watts. It's 1964, so it's battered and bruised. It's got cigarette burns on it. But it sounds absolutely devastating. When playing with a band, you can just use that. Most cases, to be honest, I tend to use the same microphone. I've got quite a few bullet mics, but I've got a 1952 green bullet with a controlled reluctance element inside it. That's my go-to.

SPEAKER_01: 58:10

And any effects, any effects pedals?

SPEAKER_00: 58:12

No, I've got one pedal. It's a volume pedal, which is basically just on and off. Obviously, people have volume pots on the microphone, but I just find it a little bit easier using the foot.

SPEAKER_01: 58:23

So what about the future plans? Things starting to open up for

SPEAKER_00: 58:26

you now? Yeah. I've got quite a lot of gigs booked in between sort of next week and the end of August. At least one a week, sometimes two or three a week. So yeah, hopefully things will return to some kind of normality.

SPEAKER_01: 58:40

So thanks so much for joining me, Matt Wartlake. It's

SPEAKER_00: 58:43

been a pleasure. Thank

SPEAKER_01: 58:44

you. Thanks so much, Matt. And over to you to show us how you do it with those many harps.