LOOKING BACK AT 2004

Hey everybody, what a joyful ride it has been! Sorry I haven't been very communicative lately, but the last six months of 2004 were devoted to recording a new record, and of course, keeping up with our tour dates. The work has been worth it, as I'm real excited about our new "baby;" this one is all original material once again and a real natural blues album. And at this time, we do have a title and a street date: "All I Found" will drop on June 28th.

But more about that later. Right now I want to recap some highlights from 2004. One of the years biggest surprises was a solo trip to Latvia where I performed three shows backed by the Latvian Blues Band. The average age of this band is 22, and yet they are veteran players and really know the blues. As you can imagine, this was quite a surprise, but a very cool one! Our first show was way out in the country just a few miles from the Russian border. It started to feel a little scary out there, ya know, too many crazy movies seen in the 60's... "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!" The next two nights were at Bites Blues Club in Riga, the capitol. It's the only blues club in Latvia, so you know it's a beautiful thing. Thanks to promoter/club owner Ziggy for supporting the blues!

Our west coast tour was highlighted when John Mayall sat in with the band at Cozy's in North Hollywood.

Another highlight was backing up Joe Louis Walker at the Avila Beach Blues Festival. Joe is at the top of his game, and as always, one of my favs. We had a lot of frisky guitar duels going on!

On June 19th we played at the WC Handy Blues Festival in Kentucky. Every year they film this event and air it during the summer on PBS. So we're looking forward to being a part of that. A real show stopper that afternoon, was Sandra Hall and her fine band. You've gotta see the pics to believe it! Check out her guitar player and his axe...

It's no secret that Halloween is my favorite holiday! Here we are frolicking at Roy and Patty's Halloween Party, I think the pictures say it all...


As the year came to a close, we celebrated New Year's Eve once again at the Town Crier in Pawling, New York. New Year's Eve is so fun, cuz everyone gets to dress up, even my guitar as you'll see in the photo... And though Roy didn't dress up too much, he did put on a nice festive hat.

New Year's day we hopped up to Chan's in Woonsocket, Rhode Island where John Chan serves up fine chinese food, blues and jazz. This guy is so cool he has truly turned this place into one of the countries hottest blues venues, not to mention the fact that his mustache is the finest in the land.

As we get ready to head out for our European Tour, I'm thinking there'll be a lot of fun new photos real soon for the website. Belated happy new year to all and we'll see you down the road!