I stumbled across this the other day, had completely forgotten about it. A little bit of ancient history, getting close to twenty years old by my reckoning. Al Cross is playing the drums on this track, if memory serves that’s Henry Heilig on the bass, and yes I’m on the electric guitar (I’ve played electric as long as I’ve had an acoustic guitar so this recording wasn’t unusual in that sense). I don’t seem to have the masters for these sessions any more, didn’t make it through several life changes. I remember there was a particularly interesting arrangement of the pumping shanty ‘Leave Her, Johnny’. Oh well. I think I’ve still got the version of ‘Lanigan’s Ball’ somewhere. That was sort of my party piece for years. People told me later that it was ahead of the curve at the time, although I imagine it would probably seem kind of normal by today’s standards. I’ll see if I can dig it out for you. In the meantime, this was intended for dancing, so feel free…
the song–>Tom O’Bedlam
I never had any reason to release the tracks from these sessions, at the time there were no Canadian performers on the scene using electric instruments to play traditional music. No gigs, no support, that simple. God forbid I should’ve showed up to play jigs and reels with an electric guitar. Like playing political music, electrified traditional music was deeply frowned upon–unless you came from somewhere else. (’Where are the political artists in Canada?’ said the well known British political musician during his visit to an early Canadian folk-business conference. ‘Mumble mumble mumble,’ replied the individuals who were deciding who got hired or not at the time. I was there. Yes, that’s a quote.) Apparently things are different now. No longer being part of that world I really couldn’t care less. But yeah, the scene really was that provincial. Shame.