This is the first album I recorded to sell at my shows back in 2002, I was 24 years old (that’s my dog Daisy on the cover). I’d done random recording sessions from the time I started playing music in public in 1998 but not with the intention of making an album from them to sell from the bandstand. The album wasn’t released commercially, it took me five more years to figure out how to navigate that with my first official release ‘Hard Luck’ in 2007 but I did record three more albums leading up to that. In 2003 I quit my last job (blocking hats at a hat store) and made music my sole profession and have done so ever since which is absolutely crazy to me at 44 looking back.

Tom Page recorded this album and the three that would follow it leading up to ‘Hard Luck’. The Maddogs were my first official band and would be till I moved back home to NC in 2006. I met Jesse Major ( THE Maddog) who would end up playing standup bass with me for the six years I spent it Kansas and Darrell Greenlee played harmonica with us for the first few years I was there, they both appear on this album.

Around 2002 I had stopped performing solo acoustic Country Blues from the 1930’s and moved my way up to the early 1950’s electric Chicago Blues with Jesse and Darrell accompanying me. A few years later I added my first drummer (the late Tommy Crabb) to make a full band which by then played a mix of 1950’s Blues and Rockabilly.

Yesterday I cringed a little as I prepared to listen to these old albums because I haven’t heard them for over a decade and know I’ve grown by leaps and bounds as a musician since then. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how good they were other than hearing myself sing in a voice that wasn’t really mine and very technically under developed.

The musicianship is tight and the album was recorded very well thanks to Tom. All of the songs on it are covers but after talking with some people who told me that I better write my own songs if I was going to be in the music business, I took heed and never recorded another cover after this album.