I first met Jeffrey some 5 years before the Ramblin' album came about - advance warning: chronology will probably be somewhat vague throughout.

We met at my (and his) local pub. This is the pub where he met the Cocteau Twins, and we all know what happened there. I vaguely knew who he was but wasn't really that familiar with his work. But we got talking. Jeffrey was pretty easy to talk to after he'd had a few drinks, and virtually impossible if he hadn't. This went on for a few months, and I got to hear his life story many times. Anyway, one evening I was playing with a couple of friends at the pub in the function room. It was the local Labour party's annual event. Jeffrey wanted to join the party. Not attracted so much by the political ideology as the after hours drinking.

As it was for labour party members only, I told him we would have to say he was with the band, and would have to do a song. Obviously, we had nothing rehearsed, so we started to think what song we could all do on the fly. I remember "Roadhouse Blues" was a suggestion, but he didn't like that one. I suggested Van Morrison's "Gloria", and he seemed to like that idea. We decided that the best thing to do was to keep him to last; otherwise his cover would be blown. So he watched us going through our set of polite covers, getting slowly shit faced. I then announced him as a kind of star guest, although no one in that room would have had a clue who he was. So on he comes, and we break into Gloria, to the utter bewilderment of the audience - most of whom would have considered Phil Collins a bit racy and subversive. I still think it was one of the best performances I have ever seen him deliver!

So, next day, Jeffrey says to me that he really enjoyed the evening, and moreover really liked my playing - although how he could remember any of it was beyond me. Jeffrey had at one time pitched an idea to Patrick Mathe from New Rose Records to do an album of traditional material in an authentic style. Patrick liked the idea, and in fact had been hounding Jeffrey to get on with it. Jeffrey said that he had never really found anyone that he could do it with but thought that I would be right for it. At that time, Jeffrey had wanted to do mostly traditional country stuff with (naturally) a dark heart. The Murder Ballads.

At the time I was working at the now sadly defunct Dobell's Jazz record shop in Soho. They had a blues and roots department, so we had plenty of access to material. Jeffrey would come in late afternoon most days, when there were fewer people around, and I would put on the stuff he wanted to listen to. I would then sneak it out that evening, we would tape it, and I would put it back next morning. We built up a pretty considerable library of stuff. So there we were, surrounded by pre war country recordings - Grayson and Whitter, Riley Puckett and the skillet lickers, Wade Mainer et al. Jeffrey wanted to do them as close to the originals as possible, including the mistakes - part of the charm apparently. So instead of letting rip on the rhythm parts, I was required to learn the good Old Timey Pluck 'n' strum style. This was something that I found really clunky and counter intuitive, and very difficult to put any passion into - still, if that's what he wanted! To add to my frustration, I would spend hours learning a guitar part, and then Jeffrey would casually announce that he no longer wanted to do that song, as it was "kind of corny!"

We would rehearse in my bedroom, some of which would be captured on cassette on my boom box. My friend Mike Sugatte who lived just up the road from both of us had a home studio setup, which was pretty decent for its day. It was local, and moreover, it was free. Songs which were deemed good enough to leave the bedroom would end up on Mike's reel to reel. "Handsome Molly", and "Omi Wise" were starting to sound usable. These were traditional numbers that we got from the Grayson and Whitter record. However, they required some violin. As it happened I was in a sort of avant-garde industrial post-modern folk outfit at the time, so we had our violin player. Then we did "Old Reuben." As Jeffrey said, how could we not do a song whose opening gambit is: "On the first day of the year, Old Reuben came round here, and she never has moved out since that day, so I took my razor blade, and laid Reuben in the shade, and I started me a graveyard of my own."

When we did the demo for that one at Mike's, Jeffrey got me to do the vocals. He would often do that when we were fooling around. I think he liked to be relieved from vocal duty and just play guitar. He loved rocking out to "Like a rolling Stone", and would always get me to do the vocal when we played it. By degrees, and in some ways to my relief, the project started moving more towards pre war blues. Jeffrey had by now pretty much taken up residence in Dobell's, and our knowledge of the genre was becoming vast, we were literally listening to it day and night. We would try and outdo each other as to who knew more blues trivia - him, as you ask!

It was about this time (I think) that "Pastoral Hide and Seek" came out. The band were due to do a sort of "comeback" show at the Town and Country Club in London, and the first single from the album, 'The Great Divide", had been made single of the week in Melody Maker. Jeffrey was worried if they could do this track live as there were a lot of guitar parts on it, but realised that they had to do it. So he decided they would do it as an encore and get me to come on as additional guitar. As I had an acoustic 12 string at the time, he thought it would be a good opportunity to do "Breaking Hands" as well, from the Mother Juno" album. That was the first time that song had ever been performed live.

In the summer of 1991 we set off to Haarlem, Holland to record the thing at long last. We needed a drummer, so who better than newly appointed Gun Club stick man Simon Fish - A.K.A. Willie Love. Bass and Harp were pickups in Holland who we had to rehearse in for a couple of days, and then we were set to go. We were trying to make it sound as authentic as possible, and record the songs as they might have been recorded at the time - particularly with the acoustic stuff. So it was just a guitar mic, vocal mic, and an absolute minimum of effects. I remember at the time a number of people complaining that these tracks sounded like demos rather than proper recordings, which in fact was exactly the point.

For the electric songs, we did most of the takes live, with each amp in a different room (including the kitchen) to prevent the tracks leaking into each other. Only vocals, some extra guitars and harmonica were added later. In an interview for Zig Zag Magazine in 1992, Jeffrey said: "If there's anything I hate, it's '70's and '80's blues records. I wanted to make this record listenable for people who listen to the real records too… We put the guitar up too loud, took the bass drum off the mix, so we got this really crude sound… What's even worse than that is it's out of tune! I kind of enjoyed that. I thought we were going maybe too far there, so I went back and re-recorded the guitar in tune and it sounded really dull in comparison."

The first public outing for the project was in 1992 at a festival in Rotterdam called Ein Abend In Wien - a night in Vienna. It was apparently pretty much the Pandora's Box festival under another name. Romi came with us for emotional support. Me and Jeffrey did a few of our numbers. Then Tres Manos from Urban Dance Squad came on to play lap steel on Willie Nelson's "It's not supposed to be that way." We were then joined by Romi on Bass for "Mother of Earth, with me switching to drums - well, a snare and high-hat. When Jeffrey had asked me if I could play any drums, I explained to him that my Dad had been a professional Jazz drummer for 30 years and he had me playing paradiddles on the practise pads at the age of five. All of which was true - I just hadn't done very much since then.

Anyway, all I really had to do was keep time and throw in the occasional rim shot, so it went OK. The next morning we had to do pretty much the same set again for a radio session In Hilversum. Whilst this was bad because we were hung-over, it was good because we got to stay the whole weekend, even though our set was on the first day of the festival. But then again it was bad because I was too tired to see Nirvana play that night - a lifelong regret. Nick Cave was doing a reading from his book at the festival. Jeffrey, Romi, me, Nick and his manager went to Dinner that night at a Japanese restaurant over the road from the hotel. Jeffrey was describing the project to him, and explaining its evolution from a murder ballads album to a blues album.Later that night he gave Nick a cassette of the country stuff that we had been listening to. Who knows, perhaps this was the inspiration for Nick's "Murder Ballads" album.

Not long after the album was released, we did a couple of shows in Holland on the same day. A festival in the afternoon, and supporting Golden Earring in the evening - yes, "Radar Love" Golden Earring. For these shows we were joined by Willie Love and one of Jeffrey's ex roadies on bass. Jeffrey and me came on first to do a few of the acoustic numbers, then the other two would come on and we did the electric stuff from the album. We also did some songs from "Wildweed". A few weeks later, we did a blues festival In Groningen (Holland). It was back to the duo for this one. Jeffrey was really nervous about this gig because the audience were hardcore blues fans as opposed to Gun Club acolytes. But it went down really well, and it was the only time that I have played with Jeffrey when someone didn't shout out "Sexbeat!"

Then came the tour. The duet tour. Jeffrey's final tour. It was me, Jeffrey and Edwin Heath. That was it: that was our crew. Edwin was driver, tour manger and sound engineer - a one-man dynamo. It was a damn hard tour. For one thing, we were in a car, which gets pretty claustrophobic after 10,000 miles. Secondly, you require a home office license to take methadone out of the country. Jeffrey naturally left it too late to get one and consequently was only allowed two weeks supply - which he used in a week. So he would send me into every chemist we encountered to buy up their stock of codeine. This, when mixed with alcohol seemed to take the edge off. Thirdly, he had just split up with Romi and was, to say the least, taking it badly. Anyway, the story of that tour could fill a whole book.

In spite of all these setbacks there were some extraordinary moments on that tour. Audiences were stunned to see Jeffrey laughing and joking, on stage at least. An album of that tour is coming out in February 2007. Listen to the version of "Lucky Jim" we did in Vienna. (I think). It is one of the most spine chilling vocal performances I have ever heard! When we got back, Jeffrey continued to drink pretty heavily, and it was really taking its toll on what was left of his health. I went round to his place one day and he was yellow. I phoned his doctor who asked me if he was drinking again. I said he was and that he was in a bad way. The doctor said in that case he could do nothing and suggested I call an ambulance and have him admitted to hospital as an emergency patient. So I did.

That night I got a call from him saying that he didn't like the hospital food and would I go to the Japanese restaurant that we often went to in Notting Hill and bring him a takeaway. This was at 3.00 in the morning. I phoned later that day and was told that he had discharged himself. This effectively blew his chances of receiving medical care in England. So with his health deteriorating fast (and living on his own, unable really to look after himself)), it was time to go home. We spent about a week packing up his stuff, getting rid of things he didn't want, and cataloguing his photos. I took him to the airport and saw him to the boarding gates. For the second and last time in his life, he gave me a hug. I never saw him again. Here's to you, my darling ramblin' boy.