Nick Moss, born in Chicago in 1969, started his professional life as a teenage bass player behind Buddy Scott and Jimmy Dawkins, learning to hold down the pocket rather than show off. In 1993 he joined the Legendary Blues Band and played bass on their final album Money Talks, and it was frontman Willie Big Eyes Smith, the longtime Muddy Waters drummer, who told him he needed to move to lead guitar. This episode follows what happened after Moss committed fully to that pivot.

The discussion traces his guitar years with the Legendary Blues Band and then the Jimmy Rogers band, the 1998 formation of Nick Moss and the Flip Tops and debut album First Offense, the founding of his own label Blue Bella Records, live albums recorded at Chan's in Rhode Island, and his 2008 production of Magic Slim's Midnight Blues. It then covers the rebranding as the  ...