Summerfest 2008 - Dueling Guitars: Brooks Williams, Pete Kennedy, PJ Wright and Raymond Gonzalez
New Bedford Summerfest 2008
Sun. July 6, 2008
New Bedford, MA USA

Day 2 started with a great workshop called Sacred Harp which I did not record (SD space was running low). People were seated in sections corresponding to their vocal ranges, handed songbooks with the shaped note symbols, and after a little explanation, led through some of the hymns ... beautiful harmonies!

I then went over to the Whaling Museum theatre to catch the show I had been eagarly anticipating since reading about it: Dueling Guitars.

Shredding with acoustic guitars and a uke! How can you lose?!?
These talented guitarists did not disappoint.

Raymond battled through some technical problems, starting with a song whose name I can't quite get from his introduction. If anyone knows the actual name of the tune (I've played snips of the songs of all 6 of his CDs on his website and nothing sounds like what he played), please enlighten me.
Then PJ tried a little Brian Wilson number: one could tell he wasn't really comfortable with the tune yet.
Pete followed with a little Gershwin tune played on his uke.:-) The recording does not do this justice, because part of the kick was seeing the looks of amazement and amusement on the other guys' faces when he launched into the familiar theme. I have to say it was very difficult to keep from cranking the volume on the quiet parts of this but I refrained because I did not want to spoil the dynamics of the piece.
Brooks gave Pete his due and then wowed us with some nice fretwork on Blues for Dixie.

After that the bar kept getting higher and higher, with PJ winning the crowd over with the Steve Gibbons Band song "Tulane".

Tracks:
01 - Link to the Beat - RG
02 - God Only Knows - PJ
03 - Rhapsody in Blue - PK
04 - Blues For Dixie - BW
05 - Arkansas Traveler - RG
06 - Peter Brown's Fancy - PJ
07 - Alabama Rain - PK
08 - On the Rolling Sea - BW
09 - Reel & Pretty Molly - RG
10 - Bread And Circuses - PJ
11 - Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring - PK
12 - Key to the Highway - BW
13 - Funny Bone - RG
14 - Tulane - PJ
15 - Guitar Slinger - PK
16 - Frenzy and Fear - BW


Zoom H4 (44 kHz) > Audacity (splitting and normalization, as well as some minor cleanup) > TLH
In the interest of full disclosure, I mistakenly saved some changes to my wav file after messing around with Wavepad's compression function (I was under the mistaken impression that Wavepad worked like Audacity, creating a project that was separate from the original file ... dammit). The music does not seem to have been affected, but you can definitely hear the effects during the applause.