Just can't help it. It's natural to me. And it was from the beginning as a little boy. And it's a different thing from pop or rock music--there's a tradition, one which requires that it be reinvented and made new, but stay rooted. Bluegrass, which contains a lot of blues and the earlier string band music, has the same tradition.

And the apparantly simple words which should carry a wealth of 'understood meaning' and which are almost always in the first person. And the blues scale which doesn't conform to Western European ideas of scale and harmony. And the rhythm and meter. Rockers try to play blues in 4/4 time when the blues is usually really in 12/8 with accents placed oddly due to african 3 against 4 rhythms.

And the quiet traditions of instrumentalism. Almost all great 'electric' guitar players record with acoustic guitars at some point because of tradition. And the great sense of playing at lower volumes for at least part of every show. And the entirely different tradition about electric amplification: small tube amps with no 'effects'. And the continuing acoustic instrument tradition which is seen as having the same validity as amplified instruments.

Sitting in the dark and singing with a few friends feeling good feeling bad feeling good. "How long, how long, has that evenin' train been gone, how long, how long, baby, how long.