Up quite late last night with Leannan Sidhe, working out new arrangements for a bunch of their music, since I’ll be guesting with them in Richland, Washington for six shows, June 29th and 30th. I’ve never done anything quite like this before. They have a BAND VAN. I’m told it’s kind of scary but that’s okay. I’ve never had a band van. ADVENTURE!

Hopefully not this kind of adventure.

At this point it looks like I’ll be bringing the zouk, mandolin, and bodhran, doing a lot of different things on different songs. Oh, and vocals – I’ll sing lead on “Song for a Blockade Runner,” one of mine, maybe some extra vox on “Voiceless,” one of Shanti’s, and co-lead vocals on “King of Elfland’s Daughter,” a duet which is on Leannan Sidhe’s second CD but originated with the early Celtic rock band, Phoenix, back in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Elfland’s Daughter is a fun song on zouk, I gotta tell you. It’s chorded for guitar, but honestly I like how it sounds here better. I’m borrowing some guitar tricks and figuring out how they sound on my instrument, and it’s different, but kinda bitchin’.

I just wish we had a fiddler to do the solo, but half their band can’t make this gig, which is why I’m onboard at all, and is, in turn, why this song made it onto the setlist, because I have three octaves of vox at my disposal which means yeah, I can do Alec’s part, so suddenly it’s back on the radar. And and and.

Really, it was a fantastically productive session. Hopefully we can keep that up in the full-band rehearsals.