Hello all....
When I was a kid my brother used to hide his little tape recorder and make clandestine recordings of our family's dinner conversations. The tapes are long-gone now, but they had it all—the good, the bad, and the ugly. This record has a somewhat similar origin, because I was not aware that I had been recorded until I was handed a tape at the end of the night. And because I was unaware, there was no self-censoring, no self-editing going on in my head. There was no sense of "better play this right, because we're recording." If I had wanted to make a state-of-the-art, 20-bit digital recording, I would have hauled my shit up there and plugged it in. But perhaps then I would have been thinking about the recording process instead of just playing and enjoying myself in the moment.
My set that night was a mix of tunes I've been playing for years and some new stuff. "Not My Watch" is a new tune that has it's origin in a friend's heroin addiction. Occasionally he hocks his Rolex to me for a few bucks so he can get high. He's from a wealthy family that's aware of his habit, and they make sure he doesn't have easy access to cash. Sometimes he's in a methadone program and sometimes not. I'd rather give the guy some money and keep his watch wound than have him go out breaking and entering, or worse. He's going to get high one way or the other. That's all I'm going to say about that one.
"Snakebite Jig" is a tune I've been playing for a long time, since about 1982 I think, and it also has some twisted roots. "Snakebite" was what I called my girlfriend, because she had a violent temper. I upset her one night and she came at me with a couple of knives, but I'm happy to report didn't do any serious damage. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Whoever first said that knew what he was talking about.
"Bonaparte's Retreat" is a traditional tune that I have always liked but only just recently started to play. I use a sort of faux clawhammer / frailing banjo technique, with my thumb and the backs of my nails. Sometime back around 1977 I hung out a few times with Steve Noonan and he could play that stuff real well, so a little of it rubbed off on me I guess. I had originally intended to record this as a guitar/mandolin/dombek arrangement but I'm starting to like it more and more as a solo guitar thing.
Here's a rundown of what's on the CD:
Tom Long “Live At McCabe’s”
I've numbered the tracks this way so that if you just want to hear the music and skip my remarks you can program your player accordingly. Maybe the best way to think of this record is to consider it an "authorized" bootleg. I hope you'll enjoy it.
Tom