Hi Ron -

I was the "Guest" who posted the pic of Mike above. Thanks again for organizing and hosting a wonderful night of music at the Hurdy Gurdy.

On that evening, I was sitting in the front row and took a handful of photos -- you can grab any or all of them in this photo album.

Of course, you can use the for the Hurdy Gurdy site. But I'll worn you that my photo skills aren't very good -- I won't make people forget David Gahr any time soon. ;)

(btw the last photo in that album is a screen shot from Mike's Early Southern Guitar DVD -- I'm amazed at how he plays guitar & panpipes at the same time. I guess you'll have to ask Homespun Tapes or somebody for rights to use that one).

Two things that I remember most from Mike's show that night:

1) How he moved effortlessly from instrument to instrument. In fact, with my pictures, I tried to snap one of him playing each instrument -- banjo, gourd banjo, guitar, Jew's harp, autoharp, fiddle.

2) When he came out for the encore, he asked for request. I shot up my hand and asked for "Will the Circle Be Unbroken". He asked me if I wanted him to play it on autoharp or guitar. Since I'm a guitar player, I requested guitar, but he was already holding the autoharp and decided to start the song on that instrument. Then he stopped and said, "Wait a second, we've got one of the greatest banjo players and one of the greatest autoharp players in the audience tonight." And that's when he brought up Tony Trishka (who had played in the first set) and Drew Smith (who had been sitting next to me; I had no idea who the guy was). Mike switched to guitar and they did "Circle" plus a few more songs for the encore.

What a show. What an artist.

All the best,
Michael