Steve Winwood would rather not say

Ask Steve Winwood how he goes about preserving his trademark voice against the ravages of time, and he has a somewhat unexpected answer.

"Strange to say, one thing I always insist on not doing is interviews while on tour," he said, laughing, in a recent phone chat. "It does take a lot out of your voice, so I like to get all those done well before the tour starts, to give the voice a rest. In the bad old days before monitors and that kind of thing, it was a lot easier to strain your voice."

Fortunately, we got our interview in before Winwood's U.S. tour starts Tuesday night in Durham. For details on that and more, see the story in Friday's paper.