gerry mckeveny: News

I'm thrilled to say that I have three new songs available for download. "Broken Wide Open", "Silver Star" and "Waltz For Mary Jean" were all recently recorded at Water Street Studio in Catskill, New York and benefit greatly from the engineering and production skills of Bobby "Icon" Eichorn and the lovely backing vocals of Maria Ornelas. Just click the Myspace link on the links page to check 'em out!

Earlier this week I put in some hours at Water Street Studios in Catskill, NY recording a couple of my new tunes with Bobby "Icon" Eichorn at the controls. Bob and I met back in the early 80s when we were both working at a music store on Long Island. He's gone on to build an impressive resume as a songwriter, composer, player, producer and go-to-guy for such artists as Carly Simon and the remarkable Richard Thompson It was challenging and revealing to work with someone with such experience, such highly developed skills and such acute ears. I hope to have the tunes available for download by the end of April.

How good can a musician-singer-songwriter-performer get? For an answer to that question, I suggest you go see Richard Thompson. This past Saturday night at Huntington's IMAC(a great venue)Mr. Thompson-aided and abetted by Debra Dobkin and Judith Owen-took the audience on a musical journey through the work of a diverse array of artists that included King Richard I, Cole Porter, The Kinks and Nelly Furtado. Through it all this particular road-worn music business vet was entertained, dazzled and moved-and all of this without one of the greatest songwriters of all time playing a single one of his own tunes!

Awe-inspiring...

I'm excited to say that you can now listen to this old Fugitives chestnut on the music page-I'm hoping to make it available for download soon. It was loads of fun recording our four-song demo on 2-inch 24-track tape all those summers ago-and fun to listen to now. enjoy!

It thrills me to be able to say that the 2nd Annual Oysterman's Breast Cancer Benefit was a resounding success. Kudos to the staff of Oysterman's, the other bands-the Neighborhood, the Stanton Anderson Band, Three Chord Monty, and Blues Box-and to all who came and listened. See y'all next year!

Congratulations to Don Alder from Vancouver, B.C. on his win at this year's International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. It was my first year participating in the competition and I felt so privileged to be among so many fine guitarists.
Many had travelled much further than I had to be there-though I think the distance award has to go to Yu Watanabe, the Japanese Fingerstyle Champion, who had come all the way from Tokyo along with Hidenori Okada, another excellent guitarist, when our paths converged on the flight to Wichita from Chicago O'Hare.
I offer my heartfelt thanks to all the other guitarists in the competition-as well as such performers as Tommy Emmanuel, Pete Huttlinger and Beppe Gambetta-for entertaining and inspiring me. See you all next year!

I'm thrilled to announce that my first booking of the coming year is at the Grounds and Sounds Cafe-a new series being held at the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Stony Brook. For more info check out http//:groundsandsounds.uufsb.org(see links page.) See you there!

Look on the photos page for some shots of my new guitar-built for me by my good friend the very gifted Scott MacDonald. Months and months of hard work and caring craftsmanship have yielded me this extraordinarily beautiful instrument. Even better, I've had a chance to get used to it before my set at Bradstock Sept. 2, my concert at the Bayport-Blue Point Public Library on Sept.6 and my participation in the International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship in Winfield, Kansas on Sept. 13. Who's doing better than me?

Check out yours truly along with my fellow Fugitives playing "I'm Tore Down" at Meschutt Beach!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNar7nHje-0

Once again, it will be my pleasure and privilege to perform at Bradstock, Sunday, September 2nd. More info to follow!

Congratulations to my old friend Marty Attridge for the appearance of his song "If You Ain't Got The Money" on a recent episode of "Without A Trace". Look for some of his other tunes on iTunes under the band name Who Are Those Guys?

Tune into 89.5 on your FM dial on Tuesday, May 22nd at 4 p.m. in order to hear yours truly playing a few tunes with my buddy Robert Steven Williams in a live broadcast from Connecticut's outstanding WPKN.

My pal Robert Steven Williams has just told me that his song "Jersey Cowboy" from his I Am Not My Job cd was featured on Car Talk on NPR a couple of weeks ago. a)I'm happy for my friend having one of his songs get some attention, and b)the song features a burning Strat solo by an outstanding and criminally underrated guitarist who shall remain nameless...a solo which, of course, is not featured on the NPR broadcast. But seriously, I think it's pretty cool, don't you?

Listen to a rough version of a brand new instrumental-"Waltz For Mary Jean" on the Music page.

I'm thrilled to announce that I will be returning to perform at the Bayport-Blue Point Public Library this coming September 6th.
I'll be playing stuff from both CDs and a whole bunch of new stuff-hopefully some things not yet even written!

I'm excited at the prospect of playing a show at the Rockwood Music Hall this May 2nd at 8:00 p.m. with my good friend Robert Steven Williams. The venue is at 196 Allen St. in Manhattan-between East Houston and Stanton. I played a lot of the guitars on Robert's cd I Am Not My Job-and I'm sure he'll be playing some of those songs, as well as some new ones. I'll be playing stuff not only from High Road and Healing Season, but also some new stuff. It should be a blast. See you there!

I have to thank George Trapani, Jane Ross, Dick De Bruin and everybody who came down to the show at the Songbox last night for what was the best night I've had in quite some time. I hope to see you all soon.

I was teaching a student in East Northport this past Saturday when from an upstairs bedroom I could hear the unmistakeable strains of Chet Baker's intro to "That Old Feeling". Understandably intrigued, I inquired as to who was listening to it, finding out that the student's 13 year-old brother was a trumpet student and had begun to listen to Chet at the urging of his fifth grade teacher-and was still listening to him. Cool, right?

When I was 13 it was Yes, The Strawbs, The Grateful Dead...Late For The Sky and Astral Weeks were still years away, as was Chet. I don't know if music arouses the same sort of fervor in my students as it always did in me, but I find their sheer openness to be tremendously heartening.

I'm very excited at the prospect of playing the Songbox this Saturday. I hope to see you there.

This past Tuesday I-largely on impulse-attended a workshop/concert given by the wonderful David Wilcox. Much is made of David's innovations with capos and tunings-and rightly so. However, I was infinitely more impressed-more moved and inspired, really-by the extraordinary commitment and integrity that mark his songwriting artistry. I was immediately put in mind of his friend Pierce Pettis, who struck me in much the same way. In both cases I left feeling called both to be a better artist-and a better person. Thanks, David, for a great day!

I'm very excited by the prospect of performing at the Songbox on March 24. Songbox is a long running concert series that has been bringing some great music to us all for years. I'll get to play tunes from both High Road and Healing Season, as well as a bunch of new things I've been working on. I'll be sharing the bill with Johnny Cuomo, a local singer-songwriter-storyteller. You can learn more about him at www.johnnycuomo.com. To learn more about the venue, or to make reservations, write to songbox@optonline.net.