Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Will Wilde interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 61

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Will Wilde joins me on episode 61.

A sixteen year old Will stole his first harmonica while at a party and proceeded to put the rock into the instrument. He first started performing with his sister, Dani, as the harmonica player in her band. But Will has always had ideas of his own and soon formed his own band, with elements of rock and a heavy, driving blues style.

Will has a very active YouTube channel, with lots of tuition videos and great performances, such as playing the Free Bird guitar solo on harmonica, as well as collaborations with other harmonica players.

Will has come up with his own Wilde tuned harmonicas, placing the second position root notes in the top two octaves as draw notes, which really opens up the  top end. Seydel manufacture these harmonicas.

Watch out for Will’s new album, with a new band, coming out later this year, which will see Will   move move towards the genre of rock.

(select the Chapter Markers to select different sections of the podcast)

Links:

Will's website:
https://www.willharmonicawilde.com

Wilde Tuned harmonica:
https://www.wildetuning.com
https://www.seydel1847.de/rockharmonica

EuroBlues week:
https://www.euroblues.co.uk/blues-week-2020/

Will’s online store:
https://www.willharmonicawilde.com/store


Videos:
Performing in a duo with sister Dani:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykL8FXME9sA

Lynyrd Skynryd’s Free Bird solo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXP2-5IC2E

YouTube tuition videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmVJfqqiy8uDgmhZT0oI7zbBP6Hua_pDi

Parisienne Walkways video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPGv5hBE0Y

YouTube collaboration with Erin Oberg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dl4E1aqmgs

Pet Got The Blues Advert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPzEWd079Lo&t=30s

Wilde Tuning Introductory lessons for standard and minor tuned:
https://www.wildetuning.com/lessons

Progressive Metal - Phrygian Dominant scale:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tAH3p8IjRs



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

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SPEAKER_00:

Will Wild joins me on episode 61. A 16-year-old Will stole his first harmonica while at a party and proceeded to put the rock into the instrument. He first started performing with his sister Danny as the harmonica player in her band, but Will has always had ideas of his own and soon formed his own band with elements of rock and a heavy, driving blues style. Will has a very active YouTube channel with lots of tuition videos and great performances, such as playing the Freebird guitar solo on harmonica, as well as collaborations with other harmonica players. Will has come up with his own wild-tuned harmonicas, placing the second-position root notes in the top two octaves as draw notes, which really opens up the top end. Seidel manufacture these harmonicas. Watch out for Will's new album with a new band coming out later this year, which will see Will move more towards the genre of rock. This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zeidel Harmonicus. Hello, Will Wild and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_03:

Thanks, Neil. Good to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks Will. So you're based in the UK and I believe you were born in Macclesfield and now are living in Brighton.

SPEAKER_03:

That's right, yeah. Born in the same town as John Mayall. I was only there for like the first year of my life. Pretty much grew up in Wiltshire and then I've spent most of my adult life in Brighton.

SPEAKER_00:

And you moved to Brighton I think to start a music course on drumming, is that right?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I was a drummer before I was a harmonica player. I used to play drums in a punk band. I applied for a music college in Brighton. After applying there was when I started really playing harp. So by the time I actually got down to Brighton and went to that college, I wasn't really interested in playing drums anymore. I just spent all my time in my room just playing harmonica instead.

SPEAKER_00:

I've heard the story that you picked up, I think, one of those kind of novelty Guinness diatonics at a party.

SPEAKER_03:

That's right, yeah. I kind of always found the harmonica intriguing. Yeah, I just saw one laying there, a little Guinness promotional thing. Yeah, I just picked it up, thought I might maybe learn like a Bob Dylan tune or something. There's party trick kind of thing. If I'm honest, I just found it like, I was really comfortable with it straight away. I couldn't say the same about every other instrument I've picked up, but I've never found harp difficult at all. It's never been a chore to practice. It comes very easily to me. I've got guitarists like pro guitarist friends who they always found guitar really really easy and they found harmonica really difficult and different things for different people I think

SPEAKER_00:

yeah no it's interesting point though isn't it whether the you know people who take it up and you know become reasonably accomplished on it or you know because it comes naturally because something like you know playing guitar for example or piano or violin you know you know you've got more physical movements involved haven't you whereas obviously harmonica is you know is more less breathing obviously there's more to it than that

SPEAKER_03:

sure I think a lot of it's in in the listening though and just sort of understanding the language of it and and i was brought up hearing sunny boy williamson and muddy waters records and stuff pretty much daily so i'd always heard that sound so when it when it came to bending and scooping you know i could kind of just do it instinctively when i started

SPEAKER_00:

and this was your father was it who played the blues records around the house

SPEAKER_03:

yeah he never played any music himself he used to play a lot of uh a lot of blues and rock and soul and stuff

SPEAKER_00:

sure yeah and this this drew you to the harmonica. So it was the blues harmonica then that first appealed to you, was it?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I mean, I'd never really heard any other kind of harmonica other than, you know, Bob Dylan kind of stuff. Yeah, like I said, I was really into rock and metal and punk and stuff as a teenager. Always had this kind of ear to the blues as well because I was brought up around it. But it wasn't until I picked up that harp. I always really liked the song Help Me by Sonny Boy Williamson. And so I thought I'd try and learn that I kind of figured there aren't all that many notes in it. So if I could just find the notes on the instrument and get them to sound something like how he makes them sound with the vibrato and everything, I thought I should be able to work it out. So it was really just that song initially that made me want to play blues harmonica.

UNKNOWN:

Oh

SPEAKER_03:

As I started getting more into it, I started digging out all these Muddy Waters records and just any blues record that I could find, basically.

SPEAKER_00:

So you had your Guinness Diatonica, I assume it's a C harmonica. So help me, is it a B flat? So you quickly worked out you needed a new key, did you, I take it?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and actually that was a difficult one because even the record of that song, it's not quite an F. It's been a little bit slowed down or sped up at some time. Yeah, I think I got like a D harp and then... And A-Harp pretty soon realized I was going to need all 12, you know, just so I could play along with whatever I wanted to.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So as you said, though, you were sort of 16 this time when you started playing the harmonica. So this was a case then of you started getting lots of blues records. I think you listened to a lot of Muddy Waters and played along with him.

SPEAKER_03:

Especially, yeah. First year or so of my playing was just in my bedroom playing along with the King B album, which is Jerry Portnoy, and the Hard Again album, which is James Cotton.

SPEAKER_02:

I

SPEAKER_03:

think if I go out and play like a straight sort of Chicago blues set as a sideman, which isn't something I do very often, but if I do something like that, I always kind of default to playing like, like Jerry Portnoy or like James Cotton, you know, and I think it's because I immersed myself in that stuff so much in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they're great albums, yeah. You're sort of what, you're early 30s now, aren't you?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I'm 33 now.

SPEAKER_00:

You've done very well for yourself and made a name for yourself in the harmonica world. So congratulations there. So you started playing with your sister, Danny, first. She's a performer and she's a singer, guitar player, isn't she?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Yeah, she's like a bluesy soul country singer. But she signed to Roof Records, which is a German blues label in 2008, something like that. Yeah, it was pretty handy having her as a sister, actually, because I used to play drums with her as well as in the sort of punk band i was in at school yeah so once i picked up the harp i had someone that i could play blues with straight away i think i'd i'd only really been playing the instrument for like two months when i started going out gigging and i'd probably been playing for about two years when she signed with roof and we started going out on tour around europe i got a lot of a lot of live experience that way we made a few few albums on roof records one of which was produced by mike vernon who was probably one of my favorite bands Blue's producers. He produced all the early Fleetwood Mac stuff and all the Blue Horizon stuff. I learned a lot playing in the studio with him producing and all the session musicians that he pulled in for that as

SPEAKER_02:

well.

UNKNOWN:

......

SPEAKER_03:

i don't even know when i started my band it wasn't long after because danny wasn't playing the kind of blues that i wanted to play for the most part um at the time i i was into more like just straight ahead like chicago blues and that's what i wanted to do and that's what i thought i was doing when i go back and listen to it now it doesn't sound like chicago blues you know it's really like aggressive and like really sort of sloppy a bit punky and garagey sounding but but that's what i was trying to to do. Yeah, I started my band when I was, I don't know, 21 or something. Started writing songs and singing just so I could do the kind of material that I

SPEAKER_00:

wanted to play. And with Danny, I think now you do still perform with her sometimes, don't you, as a duo?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we played at a festival last weekend, actually. That's really the only time we tend to play together now is like acoustic duo stuff.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_04:

in the world To spend one moment with you, girl

SPEAKER_03:

We just booked a blues festival in Sweden later this year, going out as a duo. And that format works well for us. You know, we can both do our own separate things. And then now and again, we get to come together and do that thing, which is completely different to what I'm doing, you know, with my current band right now.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Yeah. So I think most people have probably heard of you. They've heard you by now. So Will Wild, you do this rock blues, you'd say?

SPEAKER_03:

Everything that is out there right now. Yeah. But I am looking forward to it. Launching a new band at some point this year. I seem to have been talking about this band forever now. But because I broke my neck in 2019 and then I broke my collarbone the year after and then there was a pandemic for two years. So it hasn't happened yet. Yeah, I did start a new band. It actually started out as a Will Wild record that we were making. Then it just turned out to be a hard rock record, not really a blues rock record. I decided to call it something else So I've started this new band. It's called Bad Luck Friday. We have a whole album and a couple of singles with music videos all in the can waiting to be released. But I can't let anyone hear any of it yet until we've got a release plan in place and schedule the tour and all of that stuff. But it will be at some point this year. I've been working with a guitarist called Steve Brook. Me and Steve are like the songwriting core of the band. Yeah, we spend a writing and recording and workshopping songs.

SPEAKER_00:

And this new band is still going to be this kind of rock blues?

SPEAKER_03:

It's just rock, just hard rock. There's maybe two songs on it which you could probably call blues rock, but not in the sort of 70s kind of classic rock, blues rock sense. We wanted to stay away from that and do something that's just kind of contemporary rock. It's mostly up-tempo. They're all songs with choruses and middle eights and not just a bunch of sort of throw away 12 bars with long solos on you know there's still some pretty like epic harp solos on there but it's kind of song first and and then the harp is like the icing on the cake you know

SPEAKER_00:

so we'll look at your uh your rock credentials then so first of all your name so wild is a great rock name that's your real surname i take it isn't it

SPEAKER_03:

it is it's my real name yeah

SPEAKER_00:

great name you were born to be a rock star with that name

SPEAKER_03:

yeah right i found what i said i found my my parents found this uh this thing in their loft when they moved house a little while ago. And I wrote it when I was, I think, five years old or something. I think at school, they asked all the kids to write on a bit of paper what they wanted to be when they grew up. And I wrote down, I'm going to sing rock and roll songs. And finding that actually kind of reminded me like what I set out to do. I kind of ended up in the blues circuit. Yeah, the last few years felt like I'd stagnated a little bit doing the same old thing. It was when I broke my neck, actually. I kind of realized that the stuff I'd been doing isn't really what I wanted to be doing. I always had this vision of just a contemporary hard rock band, but with epic harmonica in it. So, yeah, I thought I'd better get on and do it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, great. And I think that's, you know, that shows that you, you know, you definitely push yourself, yeah, to create new sounds. And I think, as you know, we'll talk through your albums in a sec, you can really see that, you know, you've kind of evolved through that as well. So you've had some great output so far, but yeah, good to hear that you're pushing it still.

SPEAKER_03:

Cheers, yeah. think that probably the only person who's done something like this would be blues traveler and john popper yeah not that my stuff sounds anything like that It's a lot more down the hard rock thing. They're quite much lighter kind of sound, you know, and I'd say my lead playing is more, it's a lot more blues based than his. He kind of has his own thing going on as far as songs and choruses, but with sort of virtuoso, crazy harp solos on them. He's the only person I can think of that's done anything quite like that.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you know John Popper?

SPEAKER_03:

I don't know him personally. He did post one of my videos once. He posted my video for Lazy and he wrote, I've been told not to swear, but a word that begins with F and ends with ing and then badass. So that's one of the quotes that I have on my website at the moment from John Popper.

SPEAKER_00:

So a bit more, you know, onto your sort of rock, your approach, you know, an interest in playing rock music and rock blues. And that's, you know, something that you brought to Harmonica, which is very unique to you. as you say, blues travel may be the closest thing that you had to that. You mentioned that you listened to rock for your teenage years. Image-wise, you've got the great image. You've got the skull biting on the harmonica as your logo, which is great. Who came up with that one?

SPEAKER_03:

That was me. I basically drew a really... bad version of it because I can't really draw took it to a tattoo artist and asked them to make a better version for me so

SPEAKER_00:

yeah no it's great and you know you've got the image you've got the long hair you wear sleeveless t-shirts you've got large biceps as far as I can tell as well so you've definitely got that rock image

SPEAKER_03:

yeah I don't know I suppose like most of the bands and artists that I've been into have always had a very strong image and strong sort of stage presence you know as a kid like Michael Jackson was my favorite artist you know like massive showman and then through my teens I was into like say a lot of like rock and metal bands and stuff so yeah I remember actually like starting on the blues circuit when I was about 20 or whatever my whole identity my whole life had always like my image had always been tied to whatever music I was into you know so like growing up I was like a goth and a punk or whatever whatever I was into at the time got into the blues circuit and I was like I didn't really know what what to dress like for this you know what i mean because you can't take cues from the people that come to the shows most of the people on the circuit don't really have an image you know like the the sort of what i would think of the blues image is is like john lee hooker or something with his suit and his hat and stuff but that doesn't really work unless you're one of the original like black american authentic guys so i sort of went for the 60s 70s image for a while because i thought you know all the british blues guys are I was into like Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and free Paul Rogers and stuff or dressed like that that's because it was the 60s and 70s

SPEAKER_00:

well it's interesting though that you know you've obviously thought about images being important right and you know you've done really well with your band so you're clearly maybe people should pay more attention to the image

SPEAKER_03:

side well yeah I mean getting back into rock is quite good because I enjoy the whole thing you know the writing and the production and the image and everything that goes together to make the final product I think a lot of the time that stuff people just think oh it doesn't matter it's all about the music you know and it is all about the music but we're still professionals.

SPEAKER_00:

On to the playing then for your approach to playing rock kind of music on the harmonica which is again is very unique to you and you know you definitely have come up with a you know unique sound there is something you're trying to do to try and emulate electric guitars when you're playing?

SPEAKER_03:

Kind of I wouldn't say necessarily I'm trying to emulate the sound of the guitar because certain things work on the guitar that just don't work on the harp even if you can play all the right notes and sometimes they just sound weak on the harp. But a lot of my influence has come from guitar players. So blues guys like Albert King, a lot of my phrasing is based around that. those kind of Albert King ideas. And Peter Green, Paul Kossoff, Buddy Guy and all that.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, the reason I say that to some extent is I know that some of the songs on your latest album, you play guitar solos as some of your solo, at least partly, haven't you?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so there was like Lazy... All the lines on that are like Ritchie Blackmore lines. But when I'm soloing on that, just the sort of improv solo sections, I'm just doing my own thing. I don't sort of learn all the solos note for note.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure, yeah. But there's one YouTube video you did, which is the Freebird solo, which I think you are playing the guitar solo, aren't you, on the Freebird solo? Yeah,

SPEAKER_03:

yeah. Yeah. YouTube's different. It's all about just getting clicks and it's a bit more about sensationalism rather than art a lot of the time. But I find it fun sometimes to just take a famous guitar solo and put it onto harp. I've actually learned quite a lot by doing that. With any instrument, I think a lot of people end up playing the same kind of licks just because of how the notes lay out on the instrument. Certain licks are very comfortable to play and you end up with the harp kind of playing you after a while, after this note, you always go to that note. But with my tuning that I developed, I don't have anyone to listen to for, you know, to learn licks for this tuning because no one else has done anything with it. I realised that all the guitar stuff that I've always listened to and loved, a lot of it is possible now on this tuning. So I can go back and learn some of that or, you know, take inspiration from it at least.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, it's interesting that approach that, you know, like you say, learning off guitars, certainly from the fact that playing rock music, you know, probably works quite well, yeah, because there isn't a lot of, well, there isn't any rock or harmonica players as we've established at least not very many

SPEAKER_03:

even when I'm playing like hard rock stuff all of my lead playing is still blues based most of the time anyway it's still mostly centered around that minor pentatonic thing Although actually, most of the rock guitarists that I listen to are blues-based players as well. If you think of guys like Slash, Angus Young, Gary Moore, I know he's had a blues career as well, but they're all kind of blues players at heart that have just sort of adapted to rock by adding intensity and speed. And it's more just about the delivery and the attitude. And a lot of that has to do with the vibrato, in my opinion. I get a lot of harmonica players asking me, how do you play rock? And it's same as you play blues just you

SPEAKER_00:

know

SPEAKER_03:

just a bit more

SPEAKER_00:

rock attitude you know the bands that you've had you've played quite a lot of rock festivals yeah so how are you received at rock festivals a harmonica player maybe by guitar players but generally by the audience i take it yeah well received yeah

SPEAKER_03:

yeah i mean the majority of festivals i've played to date have been more blues festivals and rock but we played at the rambling man fair in in kent a few years ago and that that's just a hard rock festival it went down really well people really like It was really that day that made me realize that actually, yeah, this could work because this is a proper rock crowd. These people probably don't know much about blues, but they still get what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_00:

I've also read that you've been called the Hendrix of the harmonica. What do you think of that label?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I don't know. I kind of liked it at first. And then I realized there's about five people that have been called to Hendrix's harmonica, like Sugar Blue, Johnny Mars, Jason Ritchie. Yeah, I'm not too keen on that anymore, if I'm honest. It's a bit of a novelty thing. But I quite liked it being on the posters and things when we toured in Germany a few years ago because the crowd on the European blues circuit, the blues scene... is primarily a blues rock scene and it's heavily dominated by guitar and kind of Hendrix, Rory Gallagher, Gary Moore kind of stuff as opposed to more traditional blues. Yeah, having the Hendrix of the harmonica on the poster just kind of made it clear that I was in another like Little Walter copycat kind of thing and it was going to be more of a blues rock show. So I didn't mind it, but Hendrix isn't really an influence on me.

SPEAKER_00:

So you say, you mentioned that I think you've toured in Europe a lot, haven't you? Has that been the main place you've played and you've done very well over there? So how's that been?

SPEAKER_03:

yeah so i suppose because it all started with my sister signing to to roof and so we toured a lot in germany then and then i signed to terrible record label called rock the earth records based in uh hamburg so most of my touring was over there as well but i'm out of that deal now fortunately so

SPEAKER_00:

so your first album probably with this record label is and was in 2010 called unleashed and i think um

SPEAKER_03:

yeah

SPEAKER_00:

you use the same band that your your sister was using you there were session musicians you asked them to record this album with you

SPEAKER_03:

yeah that's right basically that session that we did with Mike Vernon producing I just pulled in all the same session players that he chose for her record you know Jamie Little on drums who used to play for Sherman Robertson Roger Innes on bass who's played for just about everyone on the blues circuit Stuart Dixon on guitar who I know he used to play with Marcus Malone he's played with a lot of different people too Pete Wingfield on keys it was Pete Wingfield who recorded 18 with a bullet

SPEAKER_00:

many years ago did you have much time to prepare for this album or was it you know you guys agreed and you know how did you choose the songs for it and that sort of thing

SPEAKER_03:

I wrote all of that album myself demoed it up actually there was one song on there that my sister wrote for me Angel Came Down the rest of it I wrote myself I made demos for everything Really rough demos. I'm not the best guitarist or bass player. And then sent them to Jamie, who produced it and all arrived at the studio. And he had ideas of what he wanted to do with them in terms of arrangement. And it took about a week to make the whole of that album.

UNKNOWN:

It's pretty quick. It's pretty quick. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

And then three years later, you released your album Raw Blues, which I think is definitely a development in your sound.

SPEAKER_03:

The idea with that one was just, as the name suggests, to do more of a raw blues kind of straight ahead Chicago-y blues kind of sound. I wanted to make it not rock, but aggressive. Like if you think of the way that Buddy Guy plays blues, Paranoia is quite obviously, I think, inspired by Buddy Guy, a stylist So it's kind of just straight up blues, but just played very aggressively and in your face.

SPEAKER_00:

And you wrote quite a lot of the album again, did you?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think I wrote pretty much all of that, except for Get Me Some, which was a cover of an old Thomas song. He's a friend of mine from San Diego.

UNKNOWN:

Get Me Some Come on.

SPEAKER_00:

You did Mean, Mistreated Mama on there. That's a definite Walter Horton one, right?

SPEAKER_03:

As in the approach to the harp, yeah. I think the song's like Leroy Carr or something like that. Yeah, kind of like Big Walter Horton, James Cotton kind of approach to that.

SPEAKER_01:

You're a mean, mistreated mama Your

SPEAKER_00:

next album in 2015 is a live album, Hamburg Live. Is it some songs off previous albums, some new songs on there as well, I think?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, there's songs from Unleashed, Emerald Blues, plus a few new ones as well, Put On The Road Again, a Cantique song on that too. Put On The Road Again It's a very high energy album. And I had Danny Giles on guitar for that. He's a great blues rock guitarist.

SPEAKER_00:

So again, the approach to rock and, you know, sort of rock type blues harmonica, you know, is how much you use effects. So on the song, What Makes People, is it kind of tremolo effect?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that was something I used to do around that time a lot. It's just the tremolo that's built into the Fender. I've seen a Fender Super Reverb at the time and I used to just set the intensity and the speed to like 10 and step on it and it'd go like cut in and out really fast. But I've never used a great deal of effects really. On that live album there's an octave pedal on some of that as well.

SPEAKER_00:

It's interesting that you should say that though because I'm sure a lot of people probably think you do use effects because of the sort of sound and high energy you get but generally no, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Not really. I've gone through phases you know i've gone through a few phases where i've just gone and got a load of effects and used them but like most of my stuff that you see on youtube there's not really any effects there apart from reverb and delay most of it comes from from the playing and from my tuning i remember when i was at spa convention in st louis and i was demonstrating my new tuning that i just made at the time then to jason ritchie we were just sort of standing outside and and i was like

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

doing all that stuff. And he said, oh, it sounds like you're amplified. And I thought that was quite cool because I always kind of thought that. So no one else had picked up on it. It's just getting a really bright tone. So you get that cut to the sound, adding that vibrato to it and make it sing, just produces this very electric kind of sound. A lot of people would say it's a guitar-like sound. As far as effects, I always have a bit of reverb or delay. Like most people, you know, it just breathes a bit of life and a bit of space into the sound. Usually the drive I just get from the amp, I don't use drive pedals very often. And that's really it. Like there'll be the odd bit in a song where I might use something more extreme, like a univibe or a wah pedal or a ring modulator or something like that, just for like one little couple of seconds in a song to produce some weird effect. But just my overall tone is really just the amp mic and some reverb

SPEAKER_00:

on your lungs of course yeah and so in 2016 you you released a single parisian walkways which is a i think lizzie and gary moore song right which i think was a you know an important song for you and an excellent song as well

SPEAKER_03:

absolutely yeah that does feel like a turning point for me because up until then everything i'd done or recorded had all been kind of done before to a degree like i might have had some my own licks and stuff but it was really just typical kind of blues harmonica might be a little bit faster or more aggressive than your afro player but it was really just typical blues harmonica stuff and then with Parisian that's not a song that you would I mean loads of guitar players cover it but not a song that you would associate with harmonica at all and she's in the natural minor and harmonic minor scale and it's got some some long kind of epic vibrato notes in it I just remembered listening to that back when I got the first mix from Danny Giles who who produced that. That was the first time I'd really listened to something back and gone, yeah, I'm really happy with that. That's cool. You

SPEAKER_00:

found your sound, eh?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. I really like hearing harp over different changes and over different chords, more melody rather than just the same old kind of blues licks over the same 12-bar changes that you always hear.

SPEAKER_00:

That song, Prison Walkways, appears on your 2018 album, Bring It On Home, which has quite a lot of rock covers on there. There's That's

SPEAKER_03:

right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So you mentioned Lazy already. That's a Deep Purple song. You've got Bring It On Home, Led Zeppelin's song. You've got Politician, which is a Cream song, and then a few others. Even Beatles song, Black Sabbath song on there. You know, what was the thinking behind doing the kind of rock covers album?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, one, Off the back of the success of the Parisian Walkways single, I just kind of thought it'd be interesting to repeat that kind of idea, take some classic rock, more guitar-like stuff and see what I could do with it, with the harp, push the boundaries of the instrument a little bit. Two, I was in that record deal that I talked about earlier and I really wasn't happy in that deal. Long story short, the live album was supposed to be my final album of that deal. And then at the last minute, label tried to pull a fast one and to me that it wasn't going to count against the three album deal and i had to do another studio record so i was like well i'm not gonna write any more songs for this record label because i know they won't do anything at all to to promote them or to sort of help in any way so Yeah, I thought I'd just record a covers album and have some fun with it. Came out well, though. Cheers. Yeah, there were some good things to come out of that album. I'd say Lazy particularly is the one that really went down well. again it kind of pushed the boundaries a little bit and and sort of opened up new things for me

SPEAKER_00:

so as well as your albums you've got a very active youtube channel it's clearly something that you know you put a lot of attention on you get some great videos out there uh you know i think you've got quite a big following haven't you that's something you you see is really important yeah

SPEAKER_03:

yeah i mean especially the last couple of years you know since the pandemic obviously all the live stuff stopped so i pretty much just became like a youtuber the past couple of years but i'm You can connect with a lot more people just by posting videos on YouTube than you can going around touring clubs. So it's a really good way of growing the audience.

SPEAKER_00:

And you've done a few collaborations on there as well. You've done one with Ellen Ohlberg.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

and one with Rochelle Plass as well.

SPEAKER_03:

Brendan Power and Roly Platt, Sarah Saputry. I might do some more at some point, someone for a while.

SPEAKER_00:

So you've also got quite an extensive teaching library and I think you've got a teaching channel on YouTube. I think you've got about 85 videos or so last time I looked.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I haven't put up any new teaching stuff for a while. So all the videos that are up there, like tutorial type videos are quite old now. I used to just make them on my phone, you know, like no editing or anything. I'd just turn my phone on and start talking and playing but people like them and you know the content is good i think even though it's kind of

SPEAKER_00:

it's interesting to see a lot of we'd like to say they're probably a little bit older but a lot of them are blues aren't they rather than than rock stuff so it's interesting to see that's definitely where your roots were in the harmonica playing

SPEAKER_03:

sure yeah plus most people i think most harmonica players out there particularly those that are going to be watching you know tutorials are primarily interested in blues so sure yeah putting up sort of rock tutorials is a bit bit niche i think yeah i I am going to start making some more tutorials soon. I'm currently in the process of filming a course which will go on sale in a few months' time.

SPEAKER_00:

Great. Is that by your website?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. I'll probably be shouting about it all over my social medias and YouTube and everything soon. But yeah, there'll be links to it on the website too.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's just touch briefly on your singing because clearly as well as a harmonica player, you're the singer in the band as well. So how did you become the singer and being a rock singer, is that something you always wanted to do?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. It is always something. that I'd wanted to do from a very young age you know I was very shy as a kid so no one would ever have heard me sing growing up you know and I suppose I kind of started singing out of necessity when I was 21 or so when I started my band so I could play the kind of material I wanted on the harp it's only really the last few years that I've started to take vocals really seriously I don't know I used to just just sing you know and my technique wasn't particularly good and I was never really happy with the sound that I made. I'm not really happy with any of the vocals on my previous releases. But moving into... recording rock stuff i realized that obviously the vocals really i really need to step up vocals you know

SPEAKER_02:

yeah

SPEAKER_03:

and work on my power and my range and grit and distortion and all those things so yeah i've been working with with vocal coaches and putting a lot of time and effort in the vocals the last three four years now

SPEAKER_00:

yeah i mean it's good to hear it's a familiar story on here you know there's a lot of people i interview on here who didn't feel i was confident at singing right but you know i i know i kind of knew i had to do it to be as a harmonica player and to be the band leader yeah so it's a similar journey to you yeah

SPEAKER_03:

yeah i mean the with the new record like i said i'm not trying to appeal to just the niche harmonica audience or the niche kind of blues audience with this we're kind of going for the the mainstream rock market it doesn't matter how good your harmonica solos are you know if the songs and the vocal aren't good then it's just not going to go anywhere you know i'm fully aware of that

SPEAKER_00:

got you um i've got you singing on blues is my first love is that is that you rapping on that song oh god yeah that was a long time ago

SPEAKER_04:

yeah that

SPEAKER_03:

was like how long ago was that any rapping on your new album no there's not been any rapping since since that release actually

SPEAKER_00:

so So you got yourself definitely noticed. You got yourself some TV work. You did a cat advert for an insurance company playing some nice bluesy harmonica on that

SPEAKER_03:

one. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

more

SPEAKER_03:

than insurance advert with the cat and the dog on the port. You

SPEAKER_04:

can't always tell why your pet's got the blues. That's why more than pet insurance comes with VetPhone, a 24-hour

SPEAKER_03:

pet advice line. Man, that cat can play it. That was my friend Danny Giles actually on the guitar for that. He was the dog and I was the cat. We got approached by some friends who run a sort of sync company. And yeah, they were pitching for this advert and needed a blues thing. And we were the first people that

SPEAKER_00:

they thought of. Yeah, superb. Yeah, no, it's nice to have it. I love it at the end of it. He says, oh man, that cat can play. Yeah. That's a very good line for the harp there. And you've got some other bit of TV stuff. You've been on the Yolanda band sort of. Yolanda's band jam, yeah. Yeah, it's like a

SPEAKER_03:

popular kid's show.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. We talked a little bit about your YouTube channel teaching. So another thing that you do as well as your YouTube is you teach at the Euro Blues Week, which is an event, a week-long event in the UK. Right. So you're teaching there again this year, July 31st to August 5th, I think the dates are, along with Grant Dermody is the other harmonica player, isn't he?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Yeah. I think there might be one or two others as well. I think Mark Wenner from the Nighthawks is coming over for that. Eddie Martin might be there as well. Yeah, Eddie Martin is there, yeah. Right, I don't know if he's teaching harmonica or slide guitar. He does it all. Yeah, it's a really good week, you know, if anyone can make it. It's like an acoustic blues week. And it's not just harmonicas. There's groups of guitarists and slide guitarists and vocalists as well. So there's different workshops going on all day. So you can pick and choose. You can come sit in with me for a bit and then go off with Grant. You can even go and do some guitar for a bit if you wanted to. And there's loads of chance to jam and play with other people and perform in the evening as well. I'm basically completely self-taught as a harp player, except for I went on one of these blues week things when I was like 16 I went on one of their weeks and one of their weekends and yeah I learned some of the sort of fundamentals there and then that kind of set me up set me up for life really

SPEAKER_00:

and as well as this you also you give Skype lessons as well don't you if people are interested

SPEAKER_03:

yeah still doing lessons on Skype so I do have some availability at the moment if anyone's interested in that just give me a message through the website

SPEAKER_00:

question i ask each time will is if you had 10 minutes to practice what would you spend those 10 minutes doing

SPEAKER_03:

for me it varies i don't really ever have like scheduled sort of routine like planned out you know now i'll practice this kind of thing you know it's really just if i get an idea in my head that i want to be able to do or if i just hear something on the record i'm like oh what's that this week it was i heard gary moore doing a thing something like that on the guitar. I was like, oh, I haven't really heard someone do it quite like that on the harp before. Like, I wonder how that would sound on the harp. So yeah, it's trying to get that up to speed and the sound right. But main things I tell people to practice are, one is scales. And these are all things I'm going to go into on my course when it comes out. One is scales. You know, as harmonica players, we're really just soloists, you know, especially as a blues harmonica player. It's not, it's not about learning scales. songs you know it's about improvising solos over blues songs you know and to do that you definitely need to know need no scales you don't need to know very many just the the blues scale and the major pentatonic scale that that's pretty much it you know you don't really hear anything else other than that so scales get them you know so you can move around them at speed fluently and you Then just working on your sound and all the nuances. So it's one thing just playing the notes. But... Getting the vibrato and the scoops and the tone and all these little... inflections that make it sound vocal and soulful and interesting rather than just playing the notes.

SPEAKER_00:

And chromatic harmonica, do you play on it? I thought I heard you playing on My Brother Jake. Is that you playing chromatic harmonica on there?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I do play chromatic on there.

UNKNOWN:

......

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I do a fair few sessions, like recording sessions on Chromatic. Usually in the sort of Stevie Wonder style. I don't really do the sort of West Coast, like jump blues kind of thing. Never really got good at that. But yeah, I like to use Chromatic for playing really kind of sweet, happy songs. uplifting kind of solely pop kind of stuff like like stevie wonder uses it

SPEAKER_00:

so have you spent a lot of time working on chromatic chops

SPEAKER_03:

not really i mean a lot of it it just translates from the diatonic but because well i really only use it for recording sessions these days you know i'm not particularly great at improvising on it in in certain keys especially you know but if i'm just recording a solo for someone then i'll spend a bit of time just on whatever is required for that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you kind of work it out. Yeah,

SPEAKER_03:

just get into it and I can have as many runs as I need to. So I can really trick people into thinking that I'm pretty good at it, but you wouldn't want to hear me trying to improvise on it. It would be a lot of bum notes.

SPEAKER_00:

We touched on a few times already about your wild tuned harmonicas. So what made you come up with that? I think you were inspired by Brendan Powers. Was it his Power Bender?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I was inspired to create some kind of tuning by just through years and years of frustration with Richter tuning. I still play Richter tuning like most days. I still love it for certain things, but I've always been frustrated by it. particularly with not being able to put vibrato and scoops on all the notes that I want to put it on and a lot of that has to do with the fact that I've always had good guitar players in my band and a lot of them have been like blues rock kind of players like Danny Giles especially who was on the live album the Bring It On Home album has a kind of Gary Moore kind of style to him yeah so guitarists one thing they do a lot is they'll put a lot of vibrato on that on on the root note an octave up but we can't do that in second position because our root note is the sixth blow which doesn't bend so i made that a bendable draw note that bends a full tone just like hole two so yeah holes one to five are just like the same as richter holes six seven and eight are a repeat of two three and four so anything you do in the lower octave octave in holes two three and four you can now do in the upper octave in just the same way you've got your flat five and your minor third as draw bends so you don't need the overblow and the overdraw and then hole nine is just like hole two again so you've got your root note on the draw it bends a whole step And then Horten is something that I nicked off of Brandon, which is just to reverse the blow and the draw reads. So the blow band that you have in Horten becomes a draw band. And it is pretty similar to... Brendan's power bender and power drawer tunings, but I think there's about four reeds different, but those four reeds do make quite a big difference.

SPEAKER_00:

You've also got a minor tuned one as well, haven't you?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, always liked natural minor tuning. I find it very useful for anything really that needs the full minor scale rather than just the pentatonic. So if you think about it, natural minor tuning is just Richter, but with the 3rd and 6th degree of the scale flattened when you're playing in second position. So wild minor tuning is just like a natural minor version of the wild tune and I just flattened the thirds and the six. So you get a minor third and a minor six instead of

SPEAKER_00:

major ones. So what do you think the advantages of your tuning are? You know, it definitely opens up the top end so you can play it in the same as the bottom end, but obviously you've got the root note on the sixth draw as well as you've touched on. So is it, do you think it's mainly opening up the top end and in that sixth draw, is that the main advantages?

SPEAKER_03:

Definitely it was at the top end and The middle as well. I do a lot more stuff in that middle octave. It's because you've got four, five and six draw in a row. So there's a lot of stuff that I do in the middle octave now that I never did on Richter, even though I had the same notes there just having them laid out differently changes things a bit yeah sure yeah but yeah you've got minor third and the flat five in the upper octave which if you think about it it's it's kind of ridiculous that you don't have those on a standard harp with you know unless you're an overblow player with this being primarily we associate the harmonica as being a blues instrument and you know 90 percent of blues harmonica you hear is in second position and there are two notes missing from the blues scale in one of the octaves so i've always thought that was kind of ridiculous and and needed needed addressing but the the main thing even more so the notes is just what you're able to do with the notes so you know the the root third fifth and flat seven are always on a draw or a draw band in my tuning and they're always you know bendable so you can add that so You can put as much vibrato and expression on them as you like in the same way that guitar players do.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll put links onto the podcast page so people can obviously go and find more details about your tunings and everything on your website. So that's great. You now have these manufactured for you by Zydle, yeah? So they make an 1847 and a Session Steel version. So did you make the tuning yourself first and then get Zydle? How did it come about with Zydle?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I made the first ones. I did experiment with a few different tunings first. before arriving at this one, and Brendan Power very kindly sent me a couple of his tunings to try out, and they were almost what I was looking for, but not quite right for me. But they did really help to inspire the tuning that I've ended up with. So I made the first ones myself, got my little grinding tool, and just kind of ground the ends of the reeds down to retune it. Yeah, and then I got Seidel to make some just for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Using their configurator, so you kind of ordered the right read yeah

SPEAKER_03:

that's it yeah and then I was at the spa convention and I gave a talk about tunings and about this tuning in particular and Bertram from Seidel was there and he really liked the idea of it so I spoke to him and Lars who's the head of Seidel in Germany see if we could do something and make it available commercially and it's been pretty successful

SPEAKER_00:

yeah fantastic well done for that coming up with your own tuning that's got to be a definite amount of pride with that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's the one thing really that has changed my style more than anything else. I don't really care what amp or mic or pedal or whatever I play through. If I have this, I can play like me.

SPEAKER_00:

So you're mainly using this tuning when you're performing and recording, are you?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, a lot of the sessions I do for other people, I still use Richter just because usually if someone wants some moniker on a record, they want that kind of old school sound that they've got in their head. They don't want something really progressive But yeah, on my gigs, I pretty much use this tune-in exclusively.

SPEAKER_00:

And when was the first time you recorded on your albums?

SPEAKER_03:

Lazy was the first song. And actually, when I recorded Lazy, I'd only been using the tune-in for like a week. So yeah, got a lot better on it since then. That was a few years ago.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, that is interesting because that's currently the last album you've released, right? Yeah, right. So do you use it on many other songs on that album?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's on a few. I can't really remember. remember now i think it's on the end of politician

SPEAKER_00:

But I think that's interesting because, as you say, you probably hadn't been playing it for that long when you recorded this album. So your next album, which you've talked about, you're going to have definitely a new level of wild tunes playing, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and I couldn't really have made a hard rock album before I had this tuning, I don't think, because I would have felt too restricted with what I was able to do. Whereas now I can get all the intensity that I want for playing heavier stuff, so...

SPEAKER_00:

like you say, that intensity and the vibrato and the root note, particularly the sixth draw and what is now the ninth draw, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It really lets you get that intensity and also, yeah, which you don't get, you know, on the blown notes quite the same, do you? So, as well as having the wild tune created for you by Seidel, you're also a Seidel endorser, yeah? Yeah, I have been for a long time now. You're clearly playing Seidel harmonicas, which are your favourite?

SPEAKER_03:

The 1847, definitely. I still can't really make up my mind between 1847 classic and silver. I don't think there's a lot between them one's plastic comb one's wood

SPEAKER_00:

have you tried the lightning

SPEAKER_03:

yet i haven't

SPEAKER_00:

actually no i've got to say i i got one i tried it for i thought yeah it's quite nice and then i picked it up again more recently and i've got to say i really love it genuinely so uh yeah definitely worth giving them a go

SPEAKER_03:

yeah i will do i mean two of my favorite players charlie musterwhite and james cotton used the side late in 47 so and i think my kind of attack is is quite similar to there's work for them it works they work well for me as well so

SPEAKER_00:

yeah fantastic so you've talked about using different tunings clearly you like minor tunings with your wild minor tuning do you use any other tunings besides minor

SPEAKER_03:

yeah i mean the three i've always used have been obviously richter natural minor and country tuning so richter for for doing the typical like major and minor pentatonic kind of thing country tuning when you want to get the full major scale but you want that kind of cross up country-ish expression and natural minor obviously for fully minor stuff i've had a couple of others like i've got one there's a video on youtube i did ages ago called progressive metal and a tune and i made for playing frigid and dominant which is pretty cool. And there's other ones, other slight variations that I've made.

SPEAKER_00:

So although you only use the wild tuning on your last album, sounds like you were maybe using different tunings on your early albums as well, were you?

SPEAKER_03:

I think on my albums, the only other tuning you would hear would be the standard, like, natural minor. Do you play any overblows? I do, and, you know, I don't use them a lot, but I can overblow. There's a couple in Lazy, actually. But I tend not, you know, because I don't play jazz. I don't do many, like, chromatic runs and when i'm playing blues and rock these days i'm mostly using my tuning and the only note you you need to overblow for on my tuning is a minor sixth in second position i don't need six overblow because i've got it as a draw band i don't need the five overblow because i've got that as a draw band and i don't need the uh seven overdraw because i've got that as a draw band so

SPEAKER_00:

exactly i was going to make that very same point i think your tuning lends itself for those missing notes doesn't it that you know overblows aren't so key are they

SPEAKER_03:

yeah i always although i can you know i've got no problem over but i much prefer the sound at least in in my own playing when you have a note as a natural draw note or natural draw band

SPEAKER_00:

and what about your embouchure you were tongue blocking puckering or to get that big sound you get puckering

SPEAKER_03:

95 percent of the time i'd switch all my bands are always played puckered sometimes i'll switch just for one one or two notes when i want a tongue slap or something obviously i use octaves with the tongue if i'm playing like an old school big water horton kind of shuffle then i might play it all tongue-blocked, but mainly puckered.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was going to say, does your wild tuning lend itself maybe better to playing puckering because you're not playing, you know, the kind of tongue slaps and the sort of traditional tongue-blocking technique?

SPEAKER_03:

It's mainly to do with the tone. I like having a bright tone. I know a lot of old-school kind of blues players like a really fat, bassy tone. which you get from tongue blocking. But for rock, you need that cut to the sound. You don't actually want a load of low end in it and you need more treble. So you definitely cut through the mix more with a pucker.

SPEAKER_00:

And what about microphones, amplifiers?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, the amp I've used on my latest record, which isn't out yet, is a Mesa Boogie Mark V, which isn't a typical harp amp at all. Is that a tube amp? Yeah, loads of guitarists use them. I think John Popper may have used one for harp, but I don't know. don't think I've ever seen another harp player use them. They're very high gain, so they're pretty prone to feedback when you plug a mic into them. But in the studio, that's fine because you just put the amp in another room. So live, I've been using my Fender Vibralux Reverb lately. I was just using a standard Shure SM58 for the last few years until very recently a friend and fan of my music sent me a Beyerdynamic m88 which i've been using because it's it's really nice very strong output and

SPEAKER_00:

nice

SPEAKER_03:

mid-range and

SPEAKER_00:

so that's another dynamic mic then

SPEAKER_03:

yeah

SPEAKER_00:

yeah kind of like a kind of vocal dynamic mic that's right

SPEAKER_03:

yeah

SPEAKER_00:

so you're definitely keeping away from the kind of traditional bullet type microphones or harmonica that's

SPEAKER_03:

yeah the main reason really is i just don't feel as comfortable performing with it in my hand you know stick mic just

SPEAKER_00:

Are you singing through a different mic? Yeah. Do you use a small amp sometimes in smaller gigs, duo gigs and that sort of

SPEAKER_03:

thing? I was using the Honey Boy 5, like 5-watt tube amp for a while, but I found, especially when I started doing the heavier stuff, it just wasn't quite powerful enough for me on stage. But it did sound great. Sometimes if I want that traditional Chicago vibe, little Walter kind of sound. I use a really small little turntable extension speaker that I have in my studio. That's got a little oval speaker in it. And that sounds good because you can, you can basically max out the volume on it. So you get some really nice natural breakup, but yeah, mainly I use, use fenders two tens or four tens on stage.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, great. And so final question, you've already talked about you've got a new album coming out. Did you say when we can expect that out?

SPEAKER_03:

I don't want to say until the date is actually confirmed, because I really don't know at the moment. But I can say I got the masters for the album last week. It's sounding really good. and we've made music videos for the first two singles so just gotta to uh get the sort of release plan in place

SPEAKER_00:

and so you mentioned you're out of this record contract with this german company uh yeah so are you releasing this independently are you with another record company

SPEAKER_03:

i'm not entirely sure yet i'm in in talks with with a label at the moment but we we still need to discuss

SPEAKER_00:

okay yeah yeah great and what about um touring you've been doing a lot of touring so uh before the pandemic are you you know managing to get out there more now i've got some tours left end up hopefully in the back of this album you're going to release?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, the gigs are coming back. I haven't been booking gigs lately because... of the fact that you know i've started this new band bad luck friday so i'm not really actively looking for will wild blues gigs at the moment because i don't want them to get in the way of the new band when that starts so i need to get get the record out and then we can hopefully get get a tour off the back of that i am doing a tour in germany this october though something called the brighton blues cartel uh it's basically a package tour three blues artists from brighton or touring germany together my friend danny giles is is on it and and steve brooke as well so yeah that should be fun

SPEAKER_00:

so thanks so much for joining me today will wild thanks for having me thanks to zidel for sponsoring the podcast and be sure to check out the great range of harmonicas and products at www.zidel1847.com or on facebook or instagram at zidel harmonicas thanks so much for will wild for joining me today great stuff from will and he's really taking the harmonica in new directions with his rock style fantastic stuff Check out the podcast website at harmonicahappyhour.com and remember to check out the Spotify playlist which contains all of the tracks played during the episode. It's just over to Will now to play us out with his take on the great Thin Lizzy and Gary Moore track Parisian Walkways.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC