On the Phil-ip side...

Jamie & I were able to drop by the Tats For Tots party at Danny & Cindy's place last Saturday, but most of our evening was taken up with an awesome concert by the incredible Phil Keaggy.

The concert was a benefit for the Gwinnett County Special Olympics organization, and was the final leg in his "Master and the Musician 3oth Anniversary" tour, celebrating, well, the 30th anniversary of that record. "Master and the Musician" was an instrumental album, which was an unusual thing for a Christian artist to do at the time. In the concert, they played the album in its entirety, along with some other selected music from Phil and the amazing band that he brought along with him. Pics with varied exposition below:

Phil started out the evening with a mind boggling acoustic piece. He made that guitar do things I could never have believed a guitar COULD do. At one point, I thought I heard a percussion loop playing in the background. He then picked up a small finger cymbal, and hit it, once. I started hearing that cymbal strike, over and over. I realized then that he had actually sampled the rhythmic drumbeat and bass line he had just played at that very moment, and continued playing with the sampled-on-the-fly rhythm "track". It was amazing. He did that several times during the night, and each time it was amazing how he made it flow into the performance.
On stage i counted 12 guitars, 2 basses, a cello, a mandolin, a flute, a keyboard, and one mysterious beast I had never seen the like of before:
This is a "Harp Guitar". It was played in the concert by Tom Shinness, an amazing musician in his own right with multiple albums to his credit. It was made in 1913 by the Gibson Guitar company. Apparently at the time there was an effort to make this sort of instrument popular that never really caught on. The harp strings were all in a lower register, so most of the playing on them consisted of bass lines, but it still made for a fascinating performance.

Unfortunately, Jamie & I had to miss the second half of the concert, where more vocal performances were promised, but the part we did see was breathtaking. If you ever get a chance, GO SEE HIM.