Walking down the Place de Fürstemberg in St Germain. Paris, with "Rock and Folk" journalist Philippe Paringaux on a hot summer night of July, it was quite a surprise to hear coming from a doorway the piercing bottle-neck sounds of a young man who turned out to originate from Marseille, the Rhone delta rather than the Mississippi lowlands! Chris really had a thing going and though he refused to give us his last name he said he had a couple of friends he dug playing with and maybe we would be interested to hear them too. That's how I met Roger Mason and finally Karel Bogard who had all these fine numbers in his bag. Surprisingly enough they were all living around Belgium and so do Derroll Adams, who got himself quite a reputation from the time he was playing with Jack Elliot, and Roland Van Campenhout, a young and fresh new talent from Antwerpen. Karel who already paid his dues, specially playing with the Alexis Korner Band got everybody together and here is what came out, some good old "blues from over the border"...

Philippe Rault.

 

Three months ago, Chris, Roger and myself met jamming on the street in Paris. Since then, we got together at many different times and really enjoyed playing as a trio. By the time we came about to record this album, we all decided to bring along from Belgium Derroll and Roland that I had known for a long time as outstanding musicians. With their participation, this record, that we had planned in the first place as a blues L.P., took another direction, a mixture of country and city blues with some mountain banjo picking and also a Peruvian-flavored flute by Roland as well as some Cajun accordion featured by Roger on "Crowley two-step". We hope you will enjoy the variety of styles that came as a result from this different combinations. We want to thank Philippe Rault and Dominique Blanc Francard for their help and advice. We also want to thank Mike and Johnie Fae Sweet, Gie and Marianne, Danny Adams, Dominique, Patrick, Daniel, Richard for their support before and during the sessions, as well as Michel Magee for his hospitality and Christine and Serge for the food.

Karel.


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