On the road

Seasick Steve heads for the highway

i've been playing my whole life and it don't matter to me whether there's three people there or 30,000. I do the same thing. I just go out there and bang on the floor and yell a bunch. See if we can turn it into a little bit of a party.

I've just finished my biggest UK tour yet; most of the venues held about 3,000 people. It was like wandering into a sardine can - they were all sold out and it was wild. There's real normal people who have seen me on Later... with Jools Holland as well as teenagers.

I don't know why what I'm doing appeals to such a wide audience but it makes me feel good, I can tell you that. After the show I sit around like an old rag to dry off. I ain't no big partier but we want to play some small bars so we can hang out.

Still, I don't travel so good... I was popping them travel sickness pills on every leg of the current dates. I get worn down. When I played the Albert Hall before Christmas it felt very strange. I was sick but I didn't know it. I had bronchitis and had to go to hospital a few days later. It's tiring going out even for young fellas, so for me... But I love playing, so this is just what I gotta do.

I got one of my guitars, the "three-stringed trance wonder", from a friend down in Mississippi. It's a piece of junk. My wife heard me fooling with it and said: "That's real good." Then I played it on Jools's show. It's actually a horrible guitar. Hard to play and it tears your fingers up. So it's a weird combination of hating it and at the same time being grateful.

I bring along a drummer, Dan, and also my youngest son; he's playing the washboard. Dan got sick in Wolverhampton and chucked up into a bucket behind his drumkit nine times during the show. Some dodgy breakfast we'd had. We'd swapped plates that day, so it could have been me projectiling over the front row. The smell onstage was almost too much.

Seasick Steve is currently on tour in Europe

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