Most great blues albums are born out of hardship and turbulence. Crown, the so-far career-best new record by Eric Gales, is no different. In the run-up to its release, both he and his wife and manager, LaDonna, were hospitalised with covid – a terrifying and lonely experience in which they said their last goodbyes, fearing the worst. The blues community rallied, sending support of a spiritual and financial nature, and mercifully the pair made it through. “I’ve never forgotten that prayers were being sent our way,” a healthy-looking – if tired from a day of interviews – Gales says today, sitting in a room in his North Carolina home stacked high with guitars, as his huge, handsome cat Blue looks on impassively. “Because it was tough.” Not everyone was so fortunate. The thank-you list on his new record speaks of loss, most recently of his father, and as Gales chats, a photograph of his family – his parents and his four brothers – gazes down on him. What they see is a survivor. But his grief is clearly still raw. “Man, I gotta tell you that it is still devastating,” he says. “There was seven of us to start out with, and four of them are gone. But I rest in knowing that my father, before he passed away, he saw me clean and sober. And my dad told me: ‘Son, I’m proud of you, and don’t you ever forget that.’ So that is something that I take with me, that my father did not leave here with me being in a bad state. "I can’t say the same about my mom. My mom saw me in active addiction. The only way that I don’t beat myself up about it is I tried to make today a little bit better than yesterday. And I know that my mom is looking down as well as my two brothers that passed away. I know that they’re looking and smiling, just like they’re doing in these pictures that I’m looking at now."