Wake

I joined Finnegan’s aWake as a flute player in Knoxville, TN, in 1998, I believe, a few years after their first, self-titled CD was recorded. I remained a member through 2000 and the recording of the second album, “Wake.” Wake was intended as an archive of the recent new music of Finnegan’s a Wake for we knew the band would be breaking up before too long. Two of us, guitar/bouzouki player Mark Warford and myself, were graduate students at UT--Knoxville and would be graduating soon. Not long after Wake was recorded in 2000, fiddler Russell Hopper departed for bigger and better career opportunities in Birmingham, Mr. Warford for New York, and myself for New Hampshire.

We often described ourselves as a solid second-tier band, and I guess we were. One reviewer of Wake complemented the band on a solid, quality recording but lamented the loss of the unique all-strings, Appalachian style of the first CD. I would agree. The addition of my flute playing changed the band’s sound considerably. Nonetheless, I am grateful to have had the experience and to have Wake for posterity.

Specific notes about some of the tunes:

Set #2: The tune “I Buried My Wife And Danced On Her Grave” was listed on the CD jacket as “I Buried My Wife And Danced On Top Of Her,” but I listed it here in this way to allow linking to the proper version of the tune in the The Session database.

Set #4: “The Orphaned Seisiun” is of my own composition, so that tune is not in the database (seeing that posting it myself is frowned upon) and, therefore, does not link.

Set #6: “Dr. Gilbert’s” was listed on the CD jacket as “Dr. Gilbert’s (Fancy Concert Reel),” but I shortened it here to allow proper linking to the database.

Set #7: The jig listed as “Gan Ainm” is in the The Session database as “Jim Ward’s,” but that name is rather artificial. It hails from the Altan album Runaway Sunday in the set called Ciaran’s Capers, where Finnegan’s aWake got it. It is not named separately on the Altan album.