I recorded this version of Peggy ‘O on my iPhone the other night while practicing for a show in July. It was the first time we tried banjo with it…and I quite liked it. Mark Evans on banjo, Luke Stark on bass, and I on guitar and vocals.
I first heard Peggy ‘O on a recording of the Dead from the seventies. It was one of those moments where I was completely captivated by the combined beauty of the melody, the story, and the way the Grateful Dead wove together the piano, bass and guitars. It was the only song I listened to for at least a week.
Here is a youtube video of a Dead version of Peggy ‘O from the seventies. Not as much piano in this version as the one I fell in love with. But still, you get the sense of what a powerful ballad this was. If you don’t get chills at least once during this performance…well…I’ll get off my Head soapbox now.
The members of Stoneybatter Band can often be found playing tunes at John Stone’s Public House in Ashland, MA. Here is half the band in the pub working out a new set of tunes late one evening. The first tune is one that I wrote called The Marlin Spike. The other two are tunes Jim dug up and I’d tell ya the name of ‘em if I could remember ‘em.
I’m gonna make a concerted effort to post at least one video a week of something musical. The only rule is that the video will be one that I took. I will not be reposting video’s of my new favorite band, The Avett Brothers, who have a very deep repertoire of some of the best songwriting I’ve heard in years, or versions of Phish’s brilliant Split Open and Melt, which some have called the “best sounding chaos you will ever hear”, or even gems from the Transatlantic Sessions. Nope, none of the above. Instead, I will post just videos of people I know that make great music…and maybe a few from me.
Here is the first from my buddy Mustachio. He is playing a tune that he recently wrote. He didn’t have a name for it…so, in the interest of getting this video posted, I named it for him. The video is from April 12th, 2011 at John Stone’s Public House in Ashland. He played this after everyone had pretty much gone home, which is always the way it works. Musicians know that the best stuff is always played when no one is around to hear it.
Late at night, after the session ends at John Stone’s in Ashland, Mustachio and I usually try to sneak in a bit of practice before they throw us out. One night in February I decided to see if there was enough light in the room to record us running through Farewell to Fiunary. We almost had a near disaster when the waitress came over shortly after recording this to pick up a bunch of empty pint glasses that were sitting on a stool. What she didn’t realize was that pint glasses were sandwiching my iPhone, which was carefully balanced on its edge while recording. This could have been a really expensive video. Fortunately, I was able to leap up in time to catch the phone before it plummeted to the floor…and here is the video that was on it.
My friend Tracy captured this video of my band, Stoneybatter Band, from the front row of Club Passim. She took the video on her iPhone during the 2011 BCMFest. Gotta luv the iPhone. Thanks Tracy.
Back in the summer of 1990 I jumped on a plane to Switzerland with my good friend Roger. Our first stop was the Lugano Fife & Drum Muster in the beautiful Italian part of Switzerland. After a brief stay in Lugano, which involved meeting my good friend Massimo for the first time and escapades at a youth hostile, Roger an I boarded an overnight train to Basel. The train was full, and Roger’s drum case was too wide to fit into the train car. So, his drum spent the night between cars and we spent the night trying to sleep in the aisle way. Being young and naive, and hearing horror stories of how the train cars often split during the night, leading the unsuspecting traveler to Liechtenstein instead of Basel, we felt fortunate to arrive in Basel in good shape, good spirits, and with all our instruments.
We then made our way to the airport, where we were to meet up with the Ancient Mariners, who were arriving for their visit with the Swiss Mariners. We walked in to find the Swiss Mariners, who we had never met, all standing in the waiting area, looking through a glass wall, where they were expecting to see the Ancient Mariners arrive at any moment. We walked up behind them and said hello, which entirely confused them since there was only one way through that glass wall…and we didn’t come through it. Apparently nobody told them we were coming early by train.
After a brief explanation, a good laugh was had by all. The Ancient Mariners showed up ten or fifteen minutes later, we all had the first of many beers and a week of celebrating had commenced.
Later that week, we performed for a couple thousand people at the Augst Roman Theater. The memories of that concert, until now, had been slowly fading, being replaced by more recent escapades in Switzerland. Today, however, I saw a video that was posted from that concert and the memories came rushing back.
This is a video of the Ancient Mariner Chantey Men singing a goofy, crowd-pleasing song called the German Clockwinder. What the Chantey Men didn’t know was that the rest of the Swiss Mariners and Ancient Mariners had spontaneously lined up behind them and started bopping up and down, and singing along…if you can call ‘boop, boop’ singing. And, in the end, for reasons I never understood, we all decided to fall down. Goofy, corny, odd, but the crowd loved it. I guess sometimes people just want to see the entertainers make clowns of themselves. And we did. But, more importantly for me, it was the first real moment that I understood what a special group of friends I had, both here and abroad.
Incidentally, Roger and I are the baby faced ones hanging out somewhere over in the left side of the line.
A couple years ago my boys and I made a video of a Thanksgiving Song.
Now they are a bit older, sound less like gerbils when they sing and are back with this new, edgier Thanksgiving Day video. Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving.
A lot of folks have been asking why I’ve not posted about Mariner Week. Well, I have, just not here. I’ve started and will continue to post over at themariners.org.
In short, the week was great. Here is a photo of me mugging with a Fasnacht mask after all the festivities and just before getting into my Jeep to leave the Deep River Muster. Although I was smiling, it really was a sad moment.
Just to whet your appetite about themariners.org I’ve included one recording here from my week with the Mariners. This is a set of two tunes called In the Back Seat and McGowan’s Motorcar. Both these tunes were written by the founder of the Mariners, Roy Watrous. Joe, myself and a few others had planned on performing it at the Mariner Muster, but when it came time to play it, the announcer skipped right past the piece. Oh well.
This recording is at Dan’s Firehouse late one evening. Joe and I played it for our Swiss friends since they never got to hear it during our concert.
I was talkin’ to Luke today about the Planxty video below. Somewhere in our conversation, I was reminded of this video of Matt Molloy and Dónal Lunny. First, Matt Molloy is the master of all masters in the Irish flute world. However, in this video he is being closely watched by another flute master. Watch as the camera pans right around 1:08 and you realize that Matt is not just playing for any audience. In fact, he is playing for James Galway…who looks concerned that he may not be able to top Matt’s chops.
Alright, I promise, no more videos for awhile. I just couldn’t stand to have that IE6 post at the top of my blog for more than ten minutes.
