For diesel, the blues are never far away. From his classic hit Come to Me to last year’s Days Like These to his blues based 1996 collaboration with Chris Wilson, Short Cool Ones, he’s always infused the spirit and the sound of the blues into his music. But they’ve never been as blues-to the-wall as they are on Project Blues: Saturday Suffering Fools, a loose-limbed, fired-up trawl through the music that inspired one of Australia’s rock legends. “The album is like an encyclopaedia of what blues is to me,” diesel says. Rather than continuing down the same road as Short CoolOnes, the new album takes a sharp left turn. “Having done the harmonica and guitar thing, I thought about the whole thing with horns,” diesel recalls. He enlisted former ‘Injector’ Bernie Bremond, plus his father Hank and brothers Mike &Brian Lizotte on horns, and with drummer Lee Moloney and bassist Richie Vez anchoring proceedings, Diesel’s Project Blues was go. Choosing the songs wasn’t hard - these are tracks Diesel has lived and loved for years, mixed with five off-the cuff originals inspired by the vibe of the covers he was picking. Then it was just a case of throwing the boys in the studio and letting rip.