Can't Keep a Sippin' [new version featuring Al Wood]

from Moon Fear (double album) by Bill Boethius & Guests

/

about

Edit, remix and reworking of my 2015 track [on my first Droning Earth album ] , ‘Can’t Keep a Sippin’, with Al Wood guesting this time on incendiary electric blues guitar.

When I first heard Al Wood’s blues playing on Soundcloud, there was something about it that struck me as being very authentic, very fresh and very spontaneous.
Even though I tend to work in the area of experimental music and free improvisation, my own roots are in blues guitar, and I recognised in Al a kindred spirit, and he me.
What I like about his playing is his magical phrasing and his attention to his sound, his tone, his timbre.

Al is also a really nice guy, and he had suggested we do a collaboration at some time.

Anyway, I wanted to look back at some of my past tracks and rework them. This piece was the first, being a favourite track. The original was all me on acoustic slide and electric slide and electric bass. I fancied adding a straight electric guitar solo in the middle for the reworked version, but couldn’t quite cut it myself.

Perhaps I am so used to playing ‘outside’, that I couldn’t quite work the downhome mojo needed for the piece. I therefore asked Al to put a solo there.
He got out his Strat, and with an amazingly scathing tone, started to knock my socks off.
It is the mark of a masterful blues guitarist that he can play just a few notes and make a very emotionally complex and powerful statement with them.
Al’s guitar solo enters about four minutes in and just blisters.

With Al’s permission, I added a fair bit of post production, but the licks and tone are all his.

The piece is about drinking, of course, and the realisation that alcoholic self-medication is only a short term fix.

I dedicate the piece to Ruairi Ui Ghallchouir

credits

from Moon Fear (double album), released August 24, 2016
Bill Boethius with Al Wood

license

all rights reserved

tags