It blows my mind when I stay in the same time zone more than three days, four days. [laughs] I have a house in Houston but I’ll [go wherever] I’m invited to do the next show—whether it happens to be in Asia [or] I’m working in Perth, Australia—across Australia. Australia’s my number one following. When I’m in Australia I live in Perth. When I’m working in Europe, I live in London as well as Slovenia. I been going to Slovenia for 20 years. [sings a few bars in Slovene] You hear a few words in different songs and you pick it up. You pick it up along the way from being there. “It works [the other way, too]. I had to learn how to talk slower—get rid of that Texas drawl [imitates] and not talk slang because they wouldn’t understand what I’m saying. You have to fit in and then when I’m playing in Slovenia, I have to pause between each phrase so someone can translate. “I’m never home that long. I maybe do three gigs [in the States] in a year. If there’s a show to do as long as I can get there—the paycheck is covering it—and I can pay my band and get to the next show—that’s what I do. I don’t just sit in London and do the London shows. When I’m in the UK, the next day might be Asia. “Shows take me to the next place where I’m working. If I’m doing a show and I’m in London, I may have to fly out to somewhere in Tokyo, or fly out to Beijing, or to Sydney and do a show and then come back to London to do a show north of London. It might be Africa or I don’t know, India, anywhere around the world. That’s what we do. Byron Bay in Australia, every time I play there, it’s like a fam-ily reunion. There’s about 80,000 people there over five stages. “This is the life that I’ve been asking for. There’s a story to be told and all I ever ask is to let me tell that story. Give me the op-portunity to go and tell that story. I’m having nothing but a good time. [laughs] “Once upon a time I didn’t have [promoters] in my corner, but I still had the energy [and] the same songs that [became popular] in America and I received awards for the same songs I wrote for my dad back in the early ’70s, late ’60s. I finally have a chance to be heard. And I refuse to do a bad song. I refuse to do a song that people skip through [on my CDs]. I ask, ‘What’s your favorite song?’ No one can find a favorite. COURTESY BLUE ARMADILLO MUSIC X 2 Eugene Bridges (far right) at age 19 with the New Chosen Gospel Singers, Beaumont, Texas, 1982 . (left) Othineil Bridges Sr . [Hideaway Slim] with his son Eugene "Hideaway" Bridges . “All my life I been knocking on doors [in the States]. I got tired of being ignored. I got tired of being overlooked. I got tired of knock-ing on doors and doors closing in my face without [clubs and promoters] hearing what I had to say. I would even accept, if I sang a song and they said, ‘We don’t like that kind of singing.’ At least they had a chance to hear me. I couldn’t even get heard. It was racism [and], ‘We’re only looking for this age.’ “So, I bought a one-way ticket from Texas to Paris. I didn’t leave with a return ticket. I didn’t leave a ‘what if’ just in case. My mind was set. And, they signed me [to a recording contract] the second day I was there. “I had a chance to be heard. And, what you had was gold. What you had to say made sense. What you had, people can feel and they said, ‘Wow, why isn’t people in America respecting that?’ So, I don’t talk about that. I only count on the blessing that I receive, not the blessing that I want, not the people that don’t respect the music. I always listen to the blessing that I have. “And, the agent who heard me, my R&B, my blues, hearing my gospel and he said, ‘I’m signing you right now.’ He signed me that night and sent me on a train the other side of town where I was signed to the club Quai du Blues. It’s the Maxwell Café now. Back then it was called Quai du Blues, the House of Blues. “I would open up for the first 15 minutes and play for artists that were coming from America. Gloria Thompson, she was one of the singers that was already there. And the 30 • LIVING BLUES • April 2018