Jody Stecher has an 8.5 minute, more 'introspective' version of his classic 'Oh the wind and rain' version of 'The Two Sisters' on his recent solo CD on Appleseed Records 'Oh The Wind and Rain: Eleven Ballads' - this time accompanying himself on oud and mandolin. Evidently, 'Going Up the Mountain' (a great LP) which had his original 'Oh the wind and rain' is to be reissued next year by Acoustic Disc.

Jody has this interesting note to 'Oh the Wind and Rain' in his Appleseed booklet: 'The extraordinary painting of this ballad by Martha Lewis reflects how there can be many understandings of a song like this. Her red-coated and skeletal fiddler suggests the drowned and now skeletal sister's lover transformed by grief, a counterpart to the girl's own transformation into an instrument. I sing the song with the idea that the fiddler is the only one in the story who is not personally affected by the tragedy. He has wandered by, and ably, joyfully, applies his craft. If life deals you lemons, make lemonade, if bodies, then fiddles! He is a celebration of the spirit of the artisan - including the ballad maker - who builds from the materials at hand ... I've been told that in the oldest versions of the song, the instrument is a harp which finds its way to the king's hall where, like Ulysses's bow (and what is a harp but a multistrung bow) it sits unplayable - until, one day, the pushy sister shows up and then the harp sings: SHE did it!'