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.