Rory Gallagher on guitars (yes again!)

 so any excuse I say . . . . . . 

 Rory Gallagher: “I use a Fender Stratocaster, mostly, and have a Telecaster for slide guitar. I kind of like Fenders. They’re good and crisp, and they travel well. Gibsons are nice, but they’re a little more low key. Fenders have a much more vicious sound. People have made guitars for me, but I never end up playing them, or I haven’t so far. I’m attached to the one I have.”

“For acoustic, I have a Martin D-35 or a National steel-bodied, “the one-resonator Acolian. I used to play the Martin a lot more, but now I just, more or less, work on the National because it’s a lot brassier. The material I do suits the National.”

“I don’t have any real Irish music in my thing, even though it creeps in here and there. But I don’t deliberately play any Irish gigs or anything. Oh, I like that when it happens, but I don’t see myself as an electric Celtic rocker.”

“When I started playing , the first guys I liked were Lonnie Donegan (of “British skiffle” fame), Buddy holly, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Gene Vincent. And later on, Tommy Tucker, Willie Dixon, and Muddy Waters….the obvious blues people. I played on The London muddy Waters Sessions (Chess), and did a few Willie Dixon numbers that time. I have the album, yeah. Muddy was really good at it. I have the London Muddy Waters-Howling Wolf Sessions as well.”

Photo: John Prew

Don's Tunes

Rory Gallagher - Pistol Slapper Blues/Too Much Alcohol - 2/14/77 RTE Studios, Dublin

playing his National Resonator Acolian

ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST : More VH-1 Storytellers ED SHEERAN - DUBLIN 2015

Ed Sheeran - VH-1 Storytellers, Whelan's, Dublin, Ireland, 1-24-2015

Paul at ATSE says: A couple of weeks ago, I posted a Taylor Swift album. Now, I'm posting an Ed Sheeran one. I'm starting to threaten to post music from currently popular music acts! ;) The reason Sheeran has come across my radar screen is because he did an episode of "VH-1 Storytellers" in 2015. Here it is.

I plan on posting most of the Storytellers episodes I can find. But most is not the same as "all." There are a handful that I've found that I won't be posting because I just can't stand the music. (For instance, Kanye West, the Backstreet Boys, Jay-Z, and Kid Rock.) With Sheeran, I was on the fence. But I gave this album a listen, and I decided it's okay. Not my favorite by any means, but there's real musical talent here. 

Perhaps I was helped by the fact that this doesn't suffer so much from modern overproduction issues due to it being a relatively stripped down live performance. Most of the songs feature just Sheeran and his acoustic guitar.

From what I can gather, the Storytellers show was basically finished in 2012. But three years later, it came back for one more episode, at Sheeran's request. Since then, in 2023, the show has kind of been revived by CMT, a country music channel, and has broadcast a few episodes of country artists. I haven't been able to find any full episodes of those.

As I write this in 2024, Sheeran is massively popular, and has sold over 150 million albums worldwide. At the time of this concert, he had only released two albums. But both of them were massively popular. For instance, his second album, "x" (a.k.a. "Multiply"), sold about ten millions albums worldwide. So even though he performed in a club that could only hold a couple hundred people, he had a super enthusiastic crowd. As you'll hear listening to this, it sounds to be mostly women, who screamed quite a lot and also sang along with the songs. 

But the crowd noise you'll hear is actually toned way down, because I ran all the songs through the MSVEP audio editing program specifically to separate out the crowd noise. I didn't remove it entirely, since it was part of the overall sonic picture, but I lowered the volume of the crowd way down during the songs, while keeping it high at the ends of songs.

It seems some extra songs from this performance were made available on the Internet but not as part of the TV show. I couldn't find them. If you have them, let me know and I'll add them in.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Don't (Ed Sheeran)
02 talk (Ed Sheeran)
03 The A Team (Ed Sheeran)
04 talk (Ed Sheeran)
05 Bloodstream (Ed Sheeran)
06 talk (Ed Sheeran)
07 Thinking Out Loud (Ed Sheeran)
08 talk (Ed Sheeran)
09 Take It Back - Superstition (Ed Sheeran)
10 talk (Ed Sheeran)
11 Photograph (Ed Sheeran)
12 talk (Ed Sheeran)
13 Sing (Ed Sheeran)

Now I get that after his meteoric rise to fame from his clear and skilful singer songwriting there is always backlash - especially us Brits love to hype a star up and then knock ‘em down. I don’t personally do this and remain almost frighteningly loyal and usually for life. I LIKE him! I don’t really care who knows and care nothing for any naysaying or cancel culture BS. 

I LIKE HIM OKAY? Got it? Now Get!