On a Friday evening around 1992 or 1993, I first met Max Spiegel. He showed up at my house with a mutual friend, Steve (an incredible musician),  to shoot some stick and shoot the shit. We became fast friends—it was as if we'd known each other for years. In the course of the night, Max plucked around with my vintage '71 Sears guitar. He played a couple of songs, we goofed around with some funny lyrics. We drank some beers, shot more stick, shot more shit. We talked about jamming the next day. I hadn't played much keyboards in years, but we thought we'd get together and play around 10 am. Generally such conversations had sincere enough intentions, but wound up with people waking up, sobering up and forgetting all about it.

Well, lo and behold the doorbell rings around 10am Saturday morning. Damn! Time to dust off the ol'  keyboards (literally) and get down! We set up, plugged in the mic, and turned on the amp. Max stepped up to the mic, "Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Mudcat Café." It just fit. We all loved the blues. We were jammin' in our own juke joint.