Although The Nighthawks have been around since 1972, I chose this record from 1993. Due to the fact that I rolled into the blues from the rockablilly scene as a singer-guitarist, I actually first became acquainted with the (then) more modern blues artists. That’s how I first heard of Microwave Dave and the Nukes on a blues program on Belgian radio. I liked that but didn’t pay any further attention to it at the time. Some time later I was on a road trip in the southern states of the USA and, as if by chance, ended up in a club in Nashville called Printers Alley. On the stage was a drum kit with Microwave Dave’s name on it. \u201cIt can’t be?\u201d I thought to myself, but it was. That night we enjoyed their performance and afterwards we went for a chat because I was also writing articles for \u201cBack to the Roots\u201d at the time. We had a nice chat and Dave invited me to come back and listen the next day. No sooner said than done and the day after, on my birthday, we were back at Printers Alley. The band came in, greeted us and I told them it was my birthday.<\/p>\n
Halfway through their gig they suddenly stopped: \u201cWe have a birthday in the house,\u201d Dave called out and I was allowed on stage. There he gave me my first harmonica and I had to play along with the band. I tried very hard but nothing good came out of it. I took the harmonica home and one day I put on \u201cRock This House\u201d by the Nighthawks. I tried to play along a little on the first song, the title track, and I heard that at least the key was already right. I played that song about 2,500 times after that and each time I tried to play along and each time it got a little better. So actually I can say that Mark Wenner taught me to play harmonica, accompanied by Danny Morris. Years later I even decided to stop playing guitar on stage and devote myself entirely to singing and harmonica, and to this day I’m still glad I walked into Printers Alley in Nashville on the right day then. And ‘Rock This House’ I still put on regularly because it remains a good record and with Bill & The Burners we even play their version of ’16 Tons’ now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11344","bluesvdmaand","type-bluesvdmaand","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n