You and the rest of your band have just traveled half way around the world to tour across the United States. You count yourself lucky because you've been given the use of a studio for the week - you want to rehearse before heading out on tour. What you'd really like to do is play some Blues music, but no matter how hard you try, the arrangements you work up, just aren't coming together.
It turns out your host at the studio happens to know a bunch of old time blues musicians who record right here in this studio all the time. So when he asks if you would like it if he invites some of them over to jam, you might be a little intimidated but you still jump at the chance.
John Dee Holeman turned up… he picked up an old guitar and started to play… well like he'd been doing it all his life… All week we had been going over songs, arrangements… Arguing over this and that…When John Dee picked up that guitar and started playing it was the most natural thing in the world… as natural and easy as taking a walk … John Dee Holeman took a walk with his guitar and the Waifs tagged along… Vikki Thorn lead singer of The Waifs
The Waifs are folk group from Australia who have started to make a name for themselves at home and abroad. The last time Bob Dylan toured Australia he sought them out so they could open for him throughout the tour. But all it took for them to be reduced to awe struck children and students again – as evidenced from the quote above by one of the Thorn sisters who lead the group – was to spend the afternoon with John Dee Holeman recording the eleven tracks that have been released as John Dee Holeman & The Waifs Band
So who is this John Dee Holeman who can reduce a group of young professional, successful musicians to awe struck fans? Well obviously he's an old time Blues musician: his birth certificate and the way he knows his way around a guitar prove that. John was born in 1929 in North Carolina and was playing guitar by the time he was fourteen. 
He learned the basics from his older brothers, but his real education came from listening to the music of Piedmont Blues player Blind Boy Fuller on records. Piedmont Blues is a smoother, more country flavoured sound that came out of North Carolina and areas similar. It probably came about as a result of the cross pollination of the spirituals sung by the black slaves and the Irish and Scottish folk music being sung by the white farmers.
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