friend music

Skip and Friends

I had a great time playing tunes with Skip Healy this weekend at a benefit concert for the Juniors Fife and Drum Camp. I was hoping to get a good recording hot off the soundboard, but for a variety of reasons was not able to set it up. Instead I had to settle with recording with a single room mic. This is far from a perfect recording but I think it captures the energy. I had to fade the track out because there was some serious feedback in the later part of the track.

The whole gig was lots of fun and well received. I had never performed with Skip before and, therefore, had no idea where any of it was going, which of course, adds to the excitement. In addition, Skip’s style is to play the tune reasonably straight the first time through, but then begin to use the tune as a skeletal structure and move around it. Sometimes it can get way out there, which is really cool. This track stays relatively close to home but you will here some of the improvisational nature toward the end of the track.

In addition to Skip on flute, Mark Bachand on bodhran and myself on guitar, we invited Roger Hunnewell up to play some additional bodhran. Roger starts the track with a bodhran solo, unsure of where Skip will come in. You will hear rattling behind some of the first beats that Roger plays. The rattling is from the twenty, or so, rope tension snare drums sitting behind us on the stage. They were sympathetically playing along. Also, every so often you’ll here Skip pause for a note and call out a key change. Nothing like having a plan.

announce

Concert with Skip Healy

Skip
 
I’m excited to announce that I will be performing this Friday evening with a phenomenal flute player named Skip Healy. Skip is a world class musician who has performed with a variety of legendary musicians such as Paddy Keenan, John Doyle, Kevin Burke and Johnny Cunningham, to name just a few. Skip is also an instrument maker who is turning out some beautiful fifes and flutes at his Healy Flute & Fife Company.

The performance is a benefit concert for The Juniors Fife & Drum Camp at the Company of Fifers and Drummers Hall, 62 North Main St., Ivoryton, CT. There is $10 admissions charge. The concert is on Friday, June 8th and starts at 7:00 PM.

tunes-i-like

Breakfast at Rudy’s

Rudys
Here is a set of tunes that the Mariners are expecting to play in Switzerland this summer. I put together this recording as a reference track for them.

The title comes from our St. Patrick’s Day tradition of cooking breakfast in the parking lot outside of Rudy’s in New Haven before the parade. Good times.

I learned both of the tunes off a Kevin Crawford album called In Good Company.
 
In Good Company

He actually plays them in different sets on the album. The first is called The First Pint. I believe the second is called Mouse in the Mug.

I don’t own a bodhran so the percussion in the second tune is me tapping the back of my guitar.

tunes-i-like

The Roaring Bar Maid

I was going through my files and found this rough cut that I recorded a month or two ago. I learned this tune from Lunasa’s Otherworld album.
 
otherworld

Incidentally, this 1999 album was one of Green Linnet’s fasted selling albums. Also, on their web site you can listen to the track. They happen to call the tune the Butlers of Glen Avenue but I prefer the title The Roaring Bar Maid.

In any case, I don’t have any real plans for recording a more polished version of this tune. I was just experimenting with the guitar and trying to get it to sound decent with my recording equipment. I just happened to use this tune for the experiment.

tunes-i-like

I’ll Mend Your Pots and Kettles ‘O

snare
 
O.k., a new high def TV and a vacation have stolen me away from blogging in the last two weeks. I know, I know. Lame. The upside is that I have been productive in the Pigtown Fling Studio (the new name I’m giving to my studio space). I have been working on a march called I’ll Mend Your Pots and Kettles ‘O. I learned this tune from the playing of Jimmy Marshall, an accordion player from Worcester, MA, though originally from Ireland. Jimmy and his brother Eamon, who often plays at John Stone’s, have both been playing the accordion since they were children. They are close in age and Eamon is retired, so I suspect they have been playing for fifty-plus years apiece. They are both great and a wealth of tunes.

I started playing this tune on the guitar about a year ago. I always envisioned a nice harmony part to it. In this recording I experimented with using the penny whistle as a melody and using the flute for second and third voice harmonies. I rewrote the arrangement several times before I was happy. In addition, I recorded it three different times in the last two weeks. I have had a lot of fun with both the arrangement and experimenting with how to get a good recording of my guitar. Where I am at with this version is the guitar track is made up of four tracks. On the first two tracks I played identical part and panned one track all the way left and the other all the way right. I then played a melody track that is an octave up and sits in the middle. Lastly I added some light harmonics on the B part.

I also added a snare drum and a bass drum to the mix in one version. Unfortunately I do not really have any decent drums to play on and, oh yeah, I really suck at drumming. For the snare I used an old Eames Drum that my Grandfather gave to me when I was a child. All the snares were off it and I had to jury-rig them back on just to do the recording. It needs a lot of work. The bass drum is a real quality instrument. I found it at the local dump. It is a Magnum ProSound and is part of a children’s drum set. It has that great ringing quality that shouts out, ‘hey, I’m cheap, I’m plastic, but I’m guaranteed to drive your parents nuts!’. My wife was thrilled with this find.

prosound
 
Together the two sound like I’m beating a bag of wet bananas. Good enough for me. It gave me an idea of what a drum track might sound like. I will have to solicit the help of Captain Dan, Biscuits McGillicudy or some of my other drummer friends if I really want to make the drumming work.

Below is the version without the drums. I would love to hear what people think about adding drums. Should they be included on the track or should I nix ’em?

friend music

Einstein Lives and He Plays the Bouzouki

Einstein George
 
I know, your thinking, ‘Ghezzz, I had no idea Einstein played the bouzouki’. Well, neither did I. But surer than shaving cream he sits in on our session every Tuesday evening at John Stone’s. He, of course, goes by the alias George and will not show me the time warping vehicle he used to propel himself into the present, but I can assure you, here he is. You can see for yourself on his MySpace page where he is seen playing the guitar and includes a few great tunes he wrote.

Einstein … err…George, or as I like to call him, Mustachio, wrote this beautifully mellow tune called Anna’s Dream, which he has graciously allowed me to include on my site.

You can hear more of Mustachio’s playing on a real nice album called The Artery Project. He is the one standing in the middle but since the picture is so small you’ll have to trust me on this one.
 
Artery Project

Someday, if we are lucky, we may hear Einstein in a Plùc recording (we convinced him to join the band). Until then, come on down to Stone’s for a pint and a glimpse of the genius himself.

friend music

Mash-up, Morph, Mung

Mighty Bee of Ynturest
 
Mash-ups are all the rage when it comes to web sites. But the idea is not new. People have been taking disparate ideas and mashing, morphing and munging them since the dawn of gray matter.

Well, last night I was morphed, munged and maybe a little mashed. I’m pretty excited about it. My friend Luke found the Screaming Wretch, which Plùc now refers to as Touretts Jig, and molded it into an electronic wonderland. Luke’s instrument, you see, is the computer and with tools like Reason from Propellerhead Software he can make just about any sound he would like.
 
reason
 

Within a few hours Luke worked my wretched melody into something entirely new and exciting. He is, of course, very self deprecating about his talents and quips that I was only ‘mildly amused’ when he told me that he was playing around with the tune. This, of course, is a bold faced lie that, in time, I might forgive. Apparently he did not want the fact of my elation get in the way of his good story.

In any case, check it out. Screaming Wretch Redux (Tribal Bacon Mix!) by Luke Stark. It rocks!

announce

Picnic with Heroes

I just had this picture sent to me of the Roman theater in which the Ancient Mariners will be performing later this summer.
 
Augusta Raurica
 

Doesn’t that look cool! I can’t wait.

Here is the translated advertisement they are running in Basel:

Picnic with Heroes
Tuesday, 14. August 2007 7:30 PM
Swiss Mariners
The concerts of the Swiss Mariners in the Roman theater In Augusta Raurica are unforgettable. The oldest Drum and Fife Corps outside the USA with their traditional American Drum and Fife Medleys will return to the walls of the Roman Theater as to say “back to the roots”.

I’m not really sure I get the heroes bit, but that’s O.k., it is cool anyhow.

Here it is in German if you’re interested:

Picknick mit Helden
Dienstag, 14. August 2007 19.30 Uhr
Swiss Mariners
Die Auftritte der Swiss Mariners im Römischen Theater in Augusta Raurica sind unvergessen. Jetzt kehrt das älteste Drum and Fife Corps ausserhalb der USA mit seinen traditionellen amerikanischen Trommel- und Pfeifer-Melodien in die römischen Mauern zurück – und damit «back to the roots».

new music

Castaway: Blackwater Tide / Licking the Moss

blackwater
 
Back it 2001 I was on a kick where I would go into a studio once a month and record. The one month interval was working well since it would give me time to both save money for the session and plan out what I was going to work on. After several months, however, I got a bit lazy and found myself unprepared for a session I had the following morning. Slightly panicked, I pulled out the flute on the evening before the session and was inspired to write the first of the two tunes included here. The first tune in the set I named Blackwater Tide. The second tune, which I wrote in ’99, is called Licking the Moss. This is one of those recordings that is part of the Castaway album.
 
bw1
 
Blackwater Tide seemed to be an instant hit. The Sudbury Ancient Fife & Drum Companie started a new medley, called Blackwater Indeed, with the piece. The Company of Fifers and Drummers included the tune in their latest music book with a drum part written by Dom Cuccia, a former Hellcat. Most recently the Bluff Point Quahog Diggers Fife & Drum is working it into a new medley that I think they are preparing for this summer!

It is fun to see a tune make some rounds.

For the first time I am publishing the harmonic arrangement for this tune. When I get a chance I will record the arrangement and post it here as well.