RS: And you’ve actually had the chance to play with a lot of those people at this point. Has that been a part of it, that thrill?
JM: Yeah. It’s been a part of everything. The greatest thing that’s happened in my life is for people like Eric or Buddy or B.B. to do something very rare, which is to accept me, to accept a younger guy, a guy who’s made pop music but wants to play blues. To be accepted like that is all I need. You know, Albert Collins used to say at the end of a show, “Thank you for accepting me.” And I thought that was such a brilliant way to say it. And that’s really all it comes down to.
And for those guys, especially, I think there’s this understanding in the blues lineage that it’s going to be a tough time getting through to the inner circle. That you’re going to have some people play goalie — and they certainly do: “What’s this white boy doing?” is kind of a stock question that you run up against at this point in the game. And it’s almost like there’s two levels that my relationship with those guys works on: One is that we genuinely like each other; and the other is that they acknowledge that it’s going to be tough for me and they want me to know that they like me. So who cares about so-and-so from the so-and-so press, you know what I mean?