I play the blues because blues makes me move around, inside and out. After thirty five years chasing it I'm better at it than I used to be but nowhere as good as I want to be. There's always some little "thing" that you've heard that you want for your own and that keeps me hungry for more, whether it's the Memphis Jug Band, Booker White, Muddy Waters, Lightnin', BB, Albert "the Iceman" Collins or whoever. They'll bring you up and never let you down. There are so many of 'em that died before we found them but their music just goes on and on. Blues popularity goes in cycles. It fizzles out of the public eye and you think it's down and then outta nowhere it's back again with new players building on the old foundations. Always reinventing itself but never going too far beyond the line and the tradition that the first players layed down. It's got an unwritten constitution that separates the real thing and the phony thing and if it grows a rotten branch that branch usually rots off the tree, the tree drops it's leaves for a while but the roots and the trunk still live and bloom again when it knows it's time to give us some shade and keep us all real cool when times are getting hot. Here's an idea. Go out and listen to some live blues this weekend. It's gettin' hot out there and the BluesTree is bloomin' ;~)