Phil Keaggy in concert

[Travis Hartnett <tiktok@sprintmail.com>]

I saw Phil Keaggy play last night, and that guy's a looping monster.  He 
was playing amplified acoustic, and started off most tunes by quickly 
building up a grooving "drum" part by tapping and slapping the body of the 
guitar, often adding a shaker part by waving one over the soundhole, where 
the internal mic could pick it up.  And then, he was off--singing, 
playing, overdubbing, recovering quicly and gracefully from any mistakes 
(forgotten lyrics, switching hiccups, whatever).  It's a cliche, but he's 
a one-man band up there.  Looper's appeared to be a JamMan and DL4.  A 
highly recommended performance, unless you've got a serious aversion to 
Christian lyrics and a bit of between song prosyletizing.

I remember a thread a few months back about building up a list of 
essential looping recordings, and his name came up but no-one seemed to be 
familiar enough with his extensive catalog to highlight the loop-heavy 
material, but if you're interested I'd suggest Acoustic Sketches, which is 
all instrumental with oodles of JamMan and liner notes for each tune by 
Phil detailing tunings, JamMan use, etc.  It's from 1996, and he's 
progressed WAY beyond that now, but it's still a good example.  He's also 
got a new all-guitar album (Freehand) which I haven't had a chance to 
listen to yet, but I suspect it's also got a bunch of looping since it 
seems to be a big part of what he's up to now.

TravisH