Gotta add something the ever-expanding “dream come true” department….Having someone come up to the mic and sing one of my songs.

That happened Friday night at the Irish Village in Brighton where I played an unlisted show of covers….well, MOSTLY covers. As per Irish Village (IV) tradition, special guests are welcome to come up and sing. I’m always amazed at the talented people in that place who, for most of the night just sit incognito sipping their Guinness and talking to their friends. And then for one or two songs, come up and sing like they, well, like the play and practice more than I do!

This Friday we had two guests, Elizabeth and Brenda…

Elizabeth is special cause she loves Bruce, as of course, so do I. She got up and did a dead-on version of Thunder Road, not even needing the lyrics. And as Melissa Etheridge will tell you, there’re a lot of words in that song! That was in addition to her fantastic Angel from Montgomery earlier on.

Brenda, I’d thought was gonna go with The First Cut is the Deepest, which I was semi-prepared for. Instead a curveball….Lying and Stealing. Yeah, one of mine. She said she wanted to do background and maybe kind of trade lead vocals a little, but I could tell she could handle the whole thing….and she did. Quite a thrill for me to experience, I have to say.

Speaking of the Irish Village and Lying and Stealing, if you check out the credits in the CD booklet, you’ll see that the backing vocals on that song were done by Laura McFarland. Laura was a bartender at the IV who, after much prodding, sang Hit Me With Your Best Shot a couple of times (yes, I do know how to play it on guitar!) and blew the place away. So when it came to recording the SWPH album and we wanted female background vocals on a couple of songs, we called Laura.

The IV is always fun…..sloppy, but fun. It was good to be back. Special hellos to some of the people who came out that night and Paddy O’s last week….Kim and Brian, Elizabeth, Maria, and friends, Brenda and friends, Kati and Andrea (where are my myspace friend requests???), Kim and Toni (same Kim), Kelly (BTE and Oasis were ready), and the Tufts graduating class pub crawl, who didn’t believe I went to Tufts until I started naming the dorms I lived in, the classes I failed, etc.