DW: Yeah, that�s my number one.
JW: I can never�
DW: Hendrix�s�?
JW: Yes, Mitch Mitchell. And you know it�s funny because I was just listening to Jimi Hendrix�s live compilation, a double CD, Band of Gypsies, that�s got Buddy Miles on it. Nothing against Buddy Miles; I think he was�Mitch Mitchell said at one point, �He [Buddy] is like a bloody piledriver back there�, you know. Buddy Miles is a helluva drummer, but for my money, I always loved the interaction that Mitch Mitchell, Noel Redding and Jimi had. That�s my favourite version of the band. As far as the drumming goes, Mitch was such a soulful yet technical player. He had amazing chops and John Bonham just had a pure, well, I guess there�s really no other word�a soulful feel.
DW: A rhythmic versatility, very unpredictable, too.
JB: One of the best analogies that I�ve ever heard describing Bonham�s playing, besides his incredible feel, was that his fills were just like someone knocking the foundation out from underneath a house and having it all fall in time, just such a great feel to it. He was always someone that, to this day, I would always try to emulate. It�s funny because John, unfortunately I�m now older than he was, died in his 30s, so it�s odd to be increasing in years and constantly striving towards something that someone did when they were so young.
DW: I always liked the phrase, �Cheap Thrills� because I thought it meant you don�t have to be really fancy to do something really well; you don�t have to put a lot of money into it.
JB: That�s a good way of looking at it. But, as far as the amount of money�I mean, the initial recordings, obviously, because they were mostly all analog tapes that were recorded live, did end up costing a bit of money to try to make them sound good. W didn�t just want to throw them together. I do understand what you�re saying, though. The performances are what really shine through on the album, but I did take as many steps as possible to make them coherent and flowing as best as possible from one track to the other.
As far as mastering them, it was quite a challenge to put that group of songs together, from so many different sources, to keep it, from top to bottom, at an equal level, as far as volume goes, from track to track, to make it flow. That�s one thing that not too many people notice. If you look at the way the tracks go, they start off with an instrumental, then go to a vocal and then to an instrumental, until I ran out of ones that actually had vocals, except for at the end (�Ah�w, Baby�). That�s really where there was trouble, with the volumes, a lot of the times, where the vocals were placed, so it was a good format to go from instrumental to vocal.
DW: You�ve been involved in some other projects, as well. You produced your father�s CD, Blues from Bottsville a few years back.
JB: Yeah. That was something we�d been talking about. I�d come home from school and he�d come home from his construction work, and he used to sit around and play his guitar and drink Jack Daniels. He was also a pretty good drummer, too. He gave me my first set of drums, so it�s just something that came about naturally after years of his influence. My brother plays guitar on the CD, as well as Marc Ford, who was in The Black Crowes and played with Ben Harper. Marc does a guitar battle with my dad. It was pretty funny because my dad didn�t really know exactly who Marc was. Marc�s pretty good.
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