Michael Hedges - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MA, 11-12-1997

Here's a concert by the fantastic and underrated guitarist Michael Hedges. Guest poster Fabio from Rio was instrumental in having this album get posted. He's the one who found the video of this and suggested that we turn it into an audio album. He also has an interesting personal story about Hedges, so I've asked him to do the write-up and share that story. Take it away, Fabio:

It's been almost 30 years since we lost one of the greatest guitarists of the last century in a fatal car crash on a slippery road near Mendocino, CA, on December 2, 1997. It is a pity that so many people have never heard of him or his music. Hedges was not only a remarkable guitar player, but also a hugely talented composer and singer. He practically reinvented acoustic guitar playing, and many of his techniques and innovations have since been embraced and incorporated by guitarists all over the world. So, it is about time that more of Michael Hedges' music found its way onto the Albums That Should Exist blog, and this - his last known recorded concert, just weeks before his death - seems like a good place to start!

I saw Hedges live once, during his only visit to Rio, Brazil, in 1996, about a year before his untimely death. He performed in a small underground bar at a hotel near Copacabana Beach. By then, I had only recently been introduced to his music by my brother, who is also a guitarist. There were perhaps 40 people in the tiny venue, and we were seated at a table right next to Hedges. If I had stretched out my arm, I could literally have grabbed his leg!

After the concert, we and two other guys stuck around at the bar. Before long, Hedges — drinking something that looked like an almond milk power drink — showed up and started chatting with us. He talked to us for what seemed like ages, as if we were old childhood friends. He answered our questions, accepted some CDs of Brazilian music (apologizing that he had nothing from his side to give us in return), and even tuned an acoustic guitar to one of his signature tunings, showing us how to play some of his licks. It was basically an impromptu 15-minute masterclass! That gives you an idea of what a great guy he was.

But that was a different concert, and unfortunately it wasn't recorded. (At the time, I didn't tape the concerts I attended.) Here, about a year later, we have a good example of one of his typical late-period concerts. It consists of original instrumental pieces and songs he sang himself, some excellent covers, the occasional oddity (such as the recitations of "Jabberwocky" and "Oklahoma," and the brief, jokey "Free Bird" rendition that precedes "All Along the Watchtower"), and an overall wonderfully relaxed atmosphere, with plenty of laughs from the audience.

Hopefully, we'll have more Hedges here at ATSE soon. Paul and I have compiled a great collection of almost all the live covers performed by Hedges into a four-volume set, which we'll be sharing soon. And I have around 50 of his live concerts in my collection, so there should be plenty more to come eventually, if there's interest.

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Thank you, Fabio. The only that I'd want to add to that is some information about the audio editing. The video sounded pretty good at first listen, but it turned out it need a lot of work. There was a lot of hiss, so I ran all the songs through the MVSEP program to get rid of most of that. The vocals during the talking bits didn't sound good either, so I ran all of those through the Adobe vocal enhancer. I also ran all the songs through MVSEP again to improve the balance between the lead vocals and the instruments. On top of all that, it turns out the audience was very quiet during the songs, except there was a LOT of coughing. Pretty much every song had at least one cough, sometimes more. So I had to remove those one by one. There might be a couple that I've missed, but it's way better than before.

So ultimately, this was essentially sounding like an audience boot at first, given that it was a fan-recorded video instead of a professional one. But after all those edits, I believe this sounds as good as most soundboard boots. 

This album is an hour and 45 minutes long.

01 Aerial Boundaries [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
02 While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Michael Hedges)
03 talk (Michael Hedges)
04 Jitterboogie [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
05 Baal T'shuvah [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
06 Ragamuffin [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
07 talk (Michael Hedges)
08 Rickover's Dream [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
09 Free Swinging Soul (Michael Hedges)
10 Rough Wind in Oklahoma (Michael Hedges)
11 talk (Michael Hedges)
12 Silent Anticipations [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
13 talk (Michael Hedges)
14 Confortably Numb (Michael Hedges)
15 talk (Michael Hedges)
16 Arrowhead [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
17 talk (Michael Hedges)
18 Shell Shock Venus (Michael Hedges)
19 talk (Michael Hedges)
20 Because It's There [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
21 talk (Michael Hedges)
22 Ritual Dance [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
23 talk (Michael Hedges)
24 Like a Rolling Stone (Michael Hedges)
25 Jabberwocky (Michael Hedges)
26 The Rootwitch [Instrumental] (Michael Hedges)
27 talk (Michael Hedges)
28 Gimme Shelter (Michael Hedges)
29 Oklahoma (Michael Hedges)
30 talk (Michael Hedges)
31 Free Bird [Snippet] (Michael Hedges)
32 All Along the Watchtower (Michael Hedges)
33 talk (Michael Hedges)
34 No Expectations (Michael Hedges)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/41bkFHJp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/ehlRocIc4H0dw9p/file 

There was a lot of difficulty making this cover image. Technically, it's a screenshot taken from this exact concert. However, the footage was very low-res. So using Gemini, there was some pretty creative filling in of details to get this result. But this is how he would have really looked, with that harp guitar (for a portion of the concert), those clothes, and so on. Even for his helmet, because the screenshot was dark and murky there, I relied on a different photo of the custom-made, strange, beat-up helmet (that worked with his microphone) he was using at that time to make sure it was accurate.