songs of a coal miner’s son 8

With Gene Christy & Rod MacDow

Have a listen!

______________ FAIR THEE TITANIC

performed by Collins & Christy
at the Olde Heritage Tavern
recorded on Tascam digital recorder!
Thurs evening, Apr 18th__2013

episode eight . . .

sometime in the present – in a galaxy close, close nearby . . .

Wow!—what a week!

Could it have gotten much better?

I asked myself—and do you know?—I knew the answer!

No!

Last Thursday night at the Guthrie Center!

The stage in the Guthrie Center

Saturday, a 2-hour songwriter’s workshop with Sara Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion at Wood Bros. Music in Pittsfield!

Sara Lee Guthrie

Johnny Irion

Singer-songwriter & ace blues guitarist Jack Waldheim

Immediately after that, drove straight to a 5 pm gig at the Donny Brook Country Club in Lanesboro!

Donny Brook CC

And look at all the people who came to see my band, Bill Morrison and Rick Marquis and me, The Dossers, play the party on the patio!

Party People!

Then there was our regular Tuesday night at Portsmitt’s! Featuring this week good friend Bob Mozgala on his Roland all-digital polka-party accordion!

And today we wrapped it up with a 3-hour recording session here at Christy Studios with Bill Morrison on 6-string

Bill Morrison

and myself, getting tracks of my original tunes, words and music by Gene Christy, ready to get blog-i-fied! Boy, do I have my work cut out for me now! We recorded guide tracks and guitar tracks for no less than five numbers!—

1 Girl from the County Mayo
2 Tempest in a Teacup
3 Treasure from the Bounty of Time
4 Right, Lads, We’re the Dossers!
5 Tuesday Night

Look for all of these, and more, soon, on this blog, “Songs of a Coal Miner’s Son.”

Have another listen! While we’re waiting for me to finish that list!

______________ MAGGIE’S LAMENT
Words and music by Perry Daniels and Eileen Markland

Performed by Rakish Paddy
Perry Daniels on guitar and lead vocals, Eileen Markland on fiddle and back-up, and Gene Christy on Roland all-digital accordion
recorded on a TEAC VR-20 digital recorder!

So, as you see, I’m not the only one around here who can write a song! And if you didn’t listen all the way to the end—you missed a treat!—Eileen’s fiddle extravaganza on the theme of the Mason’s Apron!

Perry and Eileen

You can find Rakish Paddy at

http://www.rakishpaddyband.com/

And now for a special treat! Remember all those bands we listed last week? One of the features of our blog is to play you good listeners out there—2 versions –of the same song! Played years apart by widely-divergent bands in varied and contrasting settings!

Crazy, huh?

So, today we have the Black Velvet Band!

That’s the name of the tune, and also the name of the band! The backstory here is – – with Irish bands, the custom is to pick a well-known, famous, popular Irish melody—and name your band after it—so in the case of The Black Velvet Band, we picked one of the all-time most popular Irish sing-alongs, the story of that famous girl whose eyes shone like the diamonds—you’d think she was queen of the land!

By the way, Rakish Paddy is named after a fiddle-reel—–and the Ramblin’ Rovers were named after a humorous acapella tune by the Scots singer-songwriter Andy Stewart, of Silly Wizard fame!

So, here’s “The Black Velvet Band” done by The Black Velvet Band!

Listen to them now!

______________ THE BLACK VELVET BAND

by The Black Velvet Band
recorded at New England Sound, Milford, MA, 1989

Joyce McCartney, lead vocals-harmony vocals-tambourine,
Skip Hughes, baritone lead vocals and bass,
Bart Lee, lead guitar and harmony vocals,
Paul MacDonald, drums, lead vocals, harmony vocals,
and Gene Christy on the box

And here’s the very same tune, done not in a studio this time, but before a rollicking summer vacation crowd at Tom McGann’s Irish Enbassy pub’n’grub, Rte 28, Falmouth, MA—down on old Cape Cod—summer of 1988!

“Playing our hearts out and singing our asses off!” quote-unquote . . . who said that?–oh!–I did_!!

______________ THE BLACK VELVET BAND

Irish traditional
Lead Vocal by Bill McElaney of County Donegal on 6-string rhythm guitar, with Tom Neville on electric lead guitar and back-up vocals and Gene Christy on the box
performed here by The Ramblin’ Rovers
recorded live on analog tape 1988 on Cape Cod
transferred to digital by Mike Regan in 2005
enhanced into stereo by myself using Audacity 24 jul 2013

AND__lastly, but certainly not leastly—for this week—

We have none other than Eddie Dillon himself!

Eddie Dillon

Doing a classic Eddie Dillon number called

______________ I WISH SOMEBODY WOULD COME &
TAKE ME AWAY!

Words and music by Eddie Dillon
Vocal & guitar by Eddie Dillon
Gene Christy on the box
Recorded at Dillon Studios, Fairhaven, MA
__1991

You can find Eddie Dillon and a world of great music at

http://clancybrothersandtommymakem.com/ed_01.htm

And don’t forget, people, to go visit the websites, while you’re here, of our friends,

Bobby Sweet at

http://bobbysweet.com/

and Mountain Breeze at

http://berkshiremountainbreeze.com/pb/wp_a07f5f3f/wp_a07f5f3f.html

See you guys next week, same time, same station!