I heard my parents play lots of Motown, so I knew all the Motown songs, but Smokey was always my favourite and that was always my favourite song when I was a kid.

I think my parents had the Platoon soundtrack and it was on that. I remember them playing that all the time. I was constantly hearing music growing up. Whether it was my mom playing piano, my dad playing records or my mom's family playing bluegrass, playing acoustic guitars and then growing up in the age of rap, so it's like all of that stuff is going on at the same time. It was really interesting.

“The Tracks of My Tears” is so catchy but musically it's incredible too. You don't realise it when you're a kid, but musically it's so nuanced and hooky and melodic. It was very bubblegum, but at the same time it had so much depth and so much groove that it really planted the seed.

I love sad songs and hearing a sad song from Motown that was so hooky was like perfection to me.

BEST FIT: Did Motown as a label serve as influence for Easy Eye Sound?

It has in a way, and it also hasn't. I guess I love the efficiency of the label, I like how they have their own studio - that’s definitely the model. But all those labels, the really great labels, had their own studios, their own vision.

Labels like Arhoolie Records, those are really big influences. The way their album covers are so direct and graphic, I love that, and it's very cohesive. It's like the overall design of everything, something like Blue Note where it's like every record has its own soul but they all are cohesive.

I put “Revolution” in the same category that I put ‘Foxy Lady’. I heard those two songs before I knew anything about guitar, but I was transfixed by the sound of it, and I didn't know what it was. I’d listen to it over and over again and think ‘Why do I love this song so much?’

It shares that ‘Foxy Lady’ thing, it was so bombastic and catchy, and it was the combination of the two that made my 14-year-old brain explode - I don't know what it was. I didn't know what John Lennon was talking about, didn’t know what he was saying - I probably had a lot of the words wrong because I was learning it phonetically. First and foremost, it’s how it made me feel initially. I think the best read is when you don't know anything and it makes you feel something.

The thing is, The Beatles are such a part of my DNA. I know every one of their songs. I don't even know which records they came off, because I would just listen to all the songs. I know all of them in my heart, I can always find something I like in a Beatles song.

I was writing with this guy one time, L. Russell Brown, in Nashville. He's a famous songwriter, he wrote “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree”. I said, “Doesn't this sound a little bit too much like the Beatles?” And he goes, “It doesn't sound enough like the Beatles!’

That was from that Junior Kimbrough record All Night Long. It really fucked me up, because I was just starting to get into playing the guitar really heavy, and it was like a new type of guitar music and it was current. It wasn’t like old blues music, or when I'd listen to Howlin' Wolf - he's been dead for decades, so I'm just alone listening to Howlin' Wolf. These guys, R.L. Burnside, T-Model Ford, they would actually be in my town soon and it was awesome, it was living breathing musicians that played this raw style of Juke Joint music that I really loved.

This record in particular was so unique, in that I could hear all of his influences, but I could also hear how he was himself completely. I loved that about it.

BEST FIT: Is it important for you to deep dive into the influences in a track you’re into and learn more about it?

Well, I sort of already knew them, like old Hillbilly music, old gospel songs and stuff like that. Junior was really inspired by Hillbilly music, he and Charlie Feathers were best buds and they played music together a lot. And in a song like “Meet Me In The City”, you can hear that, and I love that, because that's what's so beautiful about the music - it’s like it's a melting pot, but there's something magical about that record.

I dropped out of school and all I did was play music after that record came out.

BEST FIT: When you signed to Fat Possum was the history of releasing records like Junior Kimbrough a draw for you?

Yes, we initially sent our first demo to Fat Possum and they never responded!

I was a huge fan of Fat Possum, and Matthew and Bruce, are to this day two of my favourite people from the music business, which is few and far between. This is a tough business, and those two guys are so unique and quirky, one of a kind. Matthew says the funniest shit I've ever heard in my life - that I can never repeat - and they're true characters, they’re the kind of characters that you read about. It's like they were created by Cormac McCarthy or something.

When I was really getting into guitarists like Junior Kimbrough and stuff, I was searching for raw, stripped-down music and that was raw shit, those first couple of Hound Dog records.

I listened to him constantly. I used to play with a guy right before The Black Keys, I was playing weekly gigs all over Akron and Cleveland and wherever I could. I was making really good money playing local. I’d play a couple nights a week - if somebody needed a solo act that would play for three hours - and I could bring a little band and we could play it all.

I would play with this guy named Patrick Sweany and he was doing all these Hound Dog Taylor songs, so I would just play Hound Dog Taylor songs over and over again, playing the Brewer Phillips parts - the rhythm parts - and it was really fun, I love that stuff.

I’d listen those records non-stop driving back and forth to the gigs, listening to them, memorising every little fucking creak of the chair and everything. I love that song, I ended up naming my daughter Sadie because I love that song so much.

That was a really influential time for me, going to The Beachland and seeing shows. The Dirtbombs would go play and they were so fucking great, Mick Collins is such a good singer and the band was fucking great. It's the first time I saw a double drum kit and I loved it, I loved how it looked, how it sounded. So it's influential, and I love that song.

I was going to shows all the time, every week. We lived in Akron and not a whole lot would go on, but we were 45 minutes from Cleveland and Cleveland is where everything would come so I'd drive to Cleveland all the time, just to go see music.

I heard “Ode to a Black Man” on the record before seeing it live. Ultraglide in Black was a badass record. I loved it when it came out and I still love that record, I love their version, I love Mick’s voice on it, I love everything about it. I never heard the original, I didn't know it. I never listened to Thin Lizzy.