i first met seamus through jd malone, when we did a show together some months ago in doylestown at puck – and i had played with him and his band on a couple of songs. i must’ve made an impression, because he called me and asked if i’d contribute some parts to his new record.
he emailed me most of the songs that he’d cut basic tracks for, along with his thoughts regarding instrumentation…and right away, there were a couple that stuck out to me for either dobro or weissenborn – my personal favorite being reno winter sky, although i also really liked thank you for the music and bell ringing out.
i brought in the dobro and my favorite of the weissenborns i own, an old superior/K&S that i bought on eBay years ago…it’s tuned down to open C, and since the song i was hearing it for was in that key – i figured it’d be a good choice. i added dobro to his song bell ringing out and then he pulled one out of the hat on me…he’d sent me all the songs, but some of them were more in line with what i felt i had to contribute than others. there was one that was a bit of a rocker that i wasn’t expecting to be asked to play on – a song called sheppard’s song that was written by a friend of his who’d passed away some years ago.
it was a rocker, something of a latin-flavored, santana-esque groove that i didn’t really see myself on…but he asked if i’d play lap steel on it, so i took a swing at it. now, whether the part i ended up cutting will find its way onto the final product or not remains to be seen, but – who knows? stranger things have happened.
i really felt good about the weissenborn part, though – it layered nicely into the acoustic guitar pattern, and added a nice counterpoint to it, without being too overbearing. and – because it’s a slide instrument, there were some nice legato passages strewn in there, too.
seamus is a monster guitarist – he was a founding member of Blackthorn, which is something of an irish supergroup in our part of the country…and there’s no getting around seamus’ heritage, but he’s not afraid to turn up the volume and rock, either…and there are some fingerstyle chet-atkins flavored pieces on the record, too – one in particular, moose rag, that’ll probably give folks a headache if they try to get under the hood of it.
we’re playing together in september at puck – should be fun. not sure if the record will be done by then, but i’m sure it’ll be great when it’s finished.
...from the rear view mirror 