Peter Wilkes & David Harley

I played quite a lot with Pete – an excellent fiddle/guitar player and singer who introduced me to a number of Richard Thompson songs – in the 1980s.

We recorded my song ‘The Weekends Are The Worst’ with Gail Williams doing the vocals, but the vocals didn’t survive the deterioration of the master tape very well. And in fact I’ve changed the tune since then. There’s a demo version (including the words) here. When we gigged, Pete and I used to use the ‘Dives and Lazarus’ tune followed by the slip jig ‘The Butterfly’ to play out ‘Weekends’. Unfortunately, the ‘Dives & Lazarus’ tune didn’t survive either, but an alternative version where I double-tracked acoustic guitar did. So here’s that guitar version leading into ‘The Butterfly’ with Pete, and with Gail playing bodhrán  (though that sounds very muffled). I really like the arrangement though, even though the sound quality isn’t as good as I’d like.

Backup:

Peter Wilkes, violin; Gail Williams, bodhrán; David Harley, guitars

When we gigged, Pete and I also did Thomas Anderson together, but the version recorded at the time didn’t survive, so the version I’ve linked to here is much more recent.