On the Tokyo blues scene, the gut power of Delta blues has had few finer exponents than Steve Gardner. A Mississippi native who has made Tokyo his home, Gardner learned the blues at its source in the Mississippi Delta. While visiting the bluesmen and blueswomen in their homes there as a photojournalist, Gardner liked to hang around and blow a little harmonica after the photo shoots.
Gardner got more than just photos, though. The results can be heard on his two albums, the recently released "Big Delta Crossing," and 2002's "Rambling on My Mind." He took time to talk not on a dusty country porch over a jar of moonshine, but over coffee in a crowded Tokyo cafe.
You were originally a photographer.