​The Chicago Blues has always been at the heart of my music, the driving force behind my desire to be a musician. At the age of 12 I saw John Lee Hooker playing in the Maxwell street market in the movie “The Blues Brothers” and it was the coolest thing I had ever seen - I knew I wanted to play that music. Soon after I discovered Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Junior Wells, James Cotton and so many others, and I was hooked for life. 

But in the course of 35 years and 9 albums of playing the Blues, I had never gotten around to recording an album of pure Chicago Blues. Until now. 

In “Exile”, I have gone back to the source, recording in the city which is the home of the Blues, in some of Chicago’s top studios, where some of my musical heroes have recorded. I have mixed in a few classic songs by Muddy Waters, Little Walter and James Cotton together with a few original songs which I felt had a “Chicago Blues style” to them - and another by my mentor, the man who taught me to play the Blues, Ted Cooper. 

But the most important ingredient in music is the people who play it - and I had the privilege and the pleasure of working with some of the finest Blues musicians that Chicago has to offer today: producer and guitarist Dave Specter (Delmark recording artist), bass player Rodrigo Mantovani (The Nick Moss band), pianists Brother John Kattke ( Buddy Guy, Son Seals), and Johnny Iguana (Junior Wells), and drummers Marty Binder (Albert Collins, Buddy Guy) and  Joel Baer ( Buddy Guy, Guy King). By the time they were done giving it the Chicago treatment , you could almost hear the L train rolling overhead and feel that wind coming off lake Michigan. The icing on the cake are the pleasure I had in singing duets with two of Chicago’s finest Blues singers, the legendary Deitra Farr, and international Blues star Guy King

I hope you enjoy “Exile - the Chicago Blues sessions”