I'VE BEEN EVERYWHERE

In 2006 me and Johnny Dowd played a show together in Kufstein, a beautiful town in the Austrian Alps. In the hotel bar afterwards we were carrying on drinking, having finished Johnny's bottle of home made over-strength Czechoslovakian absinthe. A German businessman got talking to us, and hearing that I played in Germany a lot, asked me where I'd played. I named a few places, and the man started asking me about other places – ‘Have you been to Wuppertal ?' I'd say yes, and Johnny would drawl ‘he's been EVERYWHERE!'

‘Have you been to Baden Baden?' – ‘He's been EVERYWHERE!'

This went on for a long time, until suddenly I heard myself breaking into song with the old American favourite ‘I've been everywhere m an, breathed that mountain air man' etc. A great recording idea was born…