The Celtic Woodshed Session

High & Lonesome have been trying on and off to be accepted to perform at the National Celtic Festival, held at Port Arlington on the Bellarine Peninsula on the Queen's Birthday long-weekend in June.

The boys are well-known for their hillbilly bent - playing Bluegrass and Americana Country, but long-time followers will remember that High & Lonesome began more or less as a duo with mostly Celtic material.

Geoff has been playing Celtic material since the days of The Beatles, and there aren't many Celtic bands in Geelong that haven't utilised the wonderful fiddle playing of maestro Matiss Schubert.

And so it came to pass on Friday night that the boys thought it was time to record some Celtic material to support their application to perform at the 2008 NCF.

With the expert help of audio-buff Greg Bartlett, of Geelong, the boys got together again in The Woodshed, plugged themselves into the Geelong Folk Club PA mixer and live recorded four Celtic pieces into some state of the art 2-channel digital recording equipment.

The material recorded here was done without rehearsal or preparation - simply drawing on the individual players' back catalog of repertoire. The arrangements were worked out on the fly. It is amazing that all this was achieved in 75 minutes - as Matiss had a last minute call to play a gig (for money!) and had to leave by 8.45pm.

You can the hear results for yourself in the downloadable The Celtic Woodshed Session album.

Attached here is the first recording of the night.