I was about seven, living in a Chicago apartment that butts up against the El Tracks not all that far from Wrigley Field, when late one night twiddling my radio dial, I discovered what I later came to learn was the low down and dirty Chicago Blues. From that day to this, my musical sense has remained profoundly changed. Around the same time in my young life, I had the good fortune to travel on the shiny silver trains that plied the tracks from Chicago to New York and also to Santa Fe and beyond. Somehow the rhythm of all of those tracks, the gutsy harmonica wails and moans, elegant dining cars, and later in time, funky diners along Route 66 and everywhere else, became fused in my mind and heart, and to this day, my harmonicas, which I play badly but with gusto, bring all that to mind.