The name is Polish in case you’re wondering, but my people have been pronouncing it like “Willis” ever since Ellis Island. At least that’s what they tell me. It was my older brother who first introduced me to roots music, and blues in particular. He used to give me vintage records that he bought cheap at flea markets. Jimmy Reed, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters; they just didn’t play that kind of music on the radio in those days, not in the factory town we grew up in. Connecticut was a long way from Chicago, but I still connected with the post-war blues that city is famous for. The way Walter Jacobs played harmonica was the coolest sound I’d ever heard. I took up the harp in my teens, bought a guitar from a friend after that, and later started writing songs.
“Go west young man”, they said, and so I did. When I arrived in California in ‘89 I found the same thing that most of the ‘49ers found before me; the easy gold was long gone. The Impala I drove across the country is gone now too, but I still have the guitar and the harps. As for finding fortunes, I discovered that they turn up in unexpected places. And the routes I’ve traveled aren’t all that different from anybody else’s, not in the ways that matter most. The songs I write are about things I’ve found, and lost, along the way. I named the CD "No Parking" because one of the bigger lessons I’ve learned on this trip is to always keep moving.
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