Tuesday, November 18, 2008

OK – I’ve got something for the blog. Late last week my friend Randy passed away. He’s been battling cancer for 9 years – 2 years ago, he was told he had 2 months left. I met Randy when our sons played on the same soccer team, and initially it was soccer and hockey that formed the basis of our relationship. Eventually, though, we discovered that we had some common ground musically. Randy came from Newfoundland, and he had a strong love of Celtic, folk and bluegrass music, but he also was into blues, jazz and world music. He was a pretty accomplished guitar player, but he shied away from performing, so I only heard him play when the two of us were playing alone. Whenever it was a larger group, he’d just listen. I had heard that he had taken a turn for the worse a few weeks ago, and I went to visit him. He looked much older and weaker, but after we talked about this and that, he said that he wanted to do some recording, and he asked me to come back with my guitar to help him. I did that a few days later, and we spent a couple of hours going over the material that he wanted to record. We were supposed to get together to do the actual recording a couple of days later, but he died before we could do that.

Over the years, Randy sent me a bunch of links to You Tube videos of performers that he liked. I had never heard of most of them, but most of it was very good. I believe I’ve mentioned him in a past entry in this blog, and included at least one of the links that he had sent me. I thought a fitting tribute to Randy would be to share a few more of them with you today. Enjoy!

The Subdudes - Standing Tall

HEM - Redwing

Martin Tallstrom - Freight Train

Griffin House – The Guy that Says Goodbye to You

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