French Version

Buddy Whittington - Interview - October 4th 2008

1. Can you introduce yourself ?


My name is Buddy Whittington. I'm from Fort Worth (see also Exploreist), Texas and I've been playing guitar for John Mayall Bluesbreakers for 15 years, and I followed... the guy who was before me was Coco Montoya and I still see Coco a lot on the road, we play together a little bit, Coco and Walter Trout , one of the guys that had played with John all over the years, we get together and played some, you know, and we've done, oh gosh, I've done probably 8 or 9 albums with John since 1994, so I've been there for a long time.




2. Which songs do you prefer ?


I like them all. The first one was called "Spinning Coin" I like the song "Ain't No Brakeman", we did it tonight, that was one of my favourite ones and there was one of the "Blues for the lost days" called "Dead City" ; that was another favourite of mine and, oh we did on the Freddie King record, we did "Big Legged Woman" and we did, let me see, my other favourite on there, is probably "I love you more and more every day" which was the first one that we did tonight. But we always do something that we like, that's the great thing about it, we made, we don't record stuff that we don't like, you know, so that makes it fun.






3. Do you like France ?


Oh, we have a great time. We like to do a lot of dates in France because you know, there are so many cities to play. André Soulies, the promoter that works with us, he used to bring Ray Charles in, and he would play maybe 6 or 8 cities with big shows with Ray Charles. We play 20 small shows and sell as many tickets as he did in 8 shows but we play smaller cities. We like it because we meet a lot of nice people, and have a great time.




4. Can you talk about your solo album ?


I've been waiting to do this for a long time, (showing the CD), it's my first solo album Buddy Whittington. It is released in Europe on Blues Boulevard and it's available on line at www.music-avenue.net, on Blues Boulevard Records, also available on Amazon.com, and all the regular outlets on the internet. You can also get it at myspace.com/buddywhittington if you fail to get it anywhere else but over here the best place to get it is at music-avenue.net. Now the original songs that I've been trying to get together for a long time and my wife finally just said go and make that album, and it took me a long time to finally get it going and I've had the songs around for a long time and I had one cover song of an old ZZ Top song it's a favourite of mine called "Sure got cold after the rain fell". I hope Billy F Gibbons didn't mind me doing it but I just love the old song so much that I decided to just put it on there. I have pretty good luck with it so far it's gone pretty good. I planned next Spring and next Summer to do some touring in Europe behind it with some guys... I've been working with some guys in the UK, the Splinter Group, it used to play with Peter Green and Roger Cotton and Pete Stroud and Darby Todd and myself have been out in the UK playing a little bit and I'll be over there next month doing some dates. So everybody jump out and buy a copy.






5. Are you going to tour in France too for your album ?


I'm trying to get it together with André Soulies right now and we"ll try to do it next Summer maybe. There is a chance that maybe Mick Taylor might be involved, you know, we might do a "Co-Bill" or something like that. I love playing with Mick. I hope it happens because I would love doing it.



6. If you had three wishes, what would they be ?


I think I pretty much have everything, you know what I mean. I've got, I've been married to the same lady since 1982 and let's see...not 1982....(laughing)

Bernard (the cameraman) : I can cut it if you want !...

Buddy : Yes fix it ! It's been since 1988 we've been running around together since about 1977, that's what I mean to say. I have two kids, I've got one just turned 18, and one just turned 15 and playing my guitar and making house payments, so I'm happy, you know.