After I played the 2007 Notodden festival with Steve Winwood, the lead singer of Goodtime Charlie, a Norwegian R&B band, approached me. I had mentioned to him that I wanted to play in Eastern Europe because of the youthful interest in ‘classical’ blues. He told me that I would enjoy playing in Shanghai of all places! He said that the youth in that city, such as students there numbering in the thousands, were overwhelmingly appreciative of the old-style blues. It seems they so have had their fill of rap, heavy metal and even contemporary blues, that they want to ‘hear it like it was’! It reminded me of when I was that student age and I wanted to catch hearing the ‘last dogs at the bone’ of old blues before they passed on. I was certainly not interested in the contemporary white blues of that day!

I was able to play in Poland, headlining the Suwalki Blues Festival in 2008 and I want to go further east.