This an interesting and unusual bootleg, as far as bootlegs go. At the time, Hillman was on tour with a band, but he had a night off. He had a friend named Vinny Fisachela, and that friend had a small party of ten or fewer people at a house owned by someone named Kip. Hillman put on a concert just for that small group of people, backed only by his own acoustic guitar, plus backing vocals by Kim O'Kelly, who was the backing vocalist at the time in his touring band. Due to the informal nature of the show, it seems Hillman played every song he could remember, resulting in a concert that was nearly two hours long. So I like this concert because it's like having him in your living room playing for a group of friends. In fact, that's exactly what it was!
Furthermore, the sound quality is excellent. There's another bootleg concert of him and O'Kelly from just two days earlier, playing at the club My Father's Place in Roslyn, New York. That's a good show too, and that bootleg seems to have gotten around some more, but the sound quality of this one is clearly superior. There was one big flaw with it, in that there was some kind of loud thumping sound through many of the songs. But I gave the recording to my musical friend MZ and asked him to fix it. He basically cut back the bass range, which drastically reduced the thumping. It didn't eliminate it, you can still hear it on the more lively songs, but it's much better now. And I don't think there's much sonic loss at all, since there wasn't really anything else in the bass spectrum anyway, given that this is just acoustic guitar and vocals.
On top of that, I also appreciate Kim O'Kelly's involvement. She seems to have had a short musical career. I can't find anything about her other than she was a backing vocalist for this one Chris Hillman tour. But she added a lot with harmonies on nearly every song, as well as taking the occasional lead vocal. She also talked a lot between songs. It's clear that was annoying Hillman. One of his first comments is asking her to shut up, and later on he rejoiced when she temporarily taped her mouth shut. But between her and him talking back and forth, there's a lot of entertaining banter.
By the way, there was one slight problem with the recording, in that there seems to have been a missing section with the talking before the song "Hot Burrito No. 2," continuing into the start of that song. But the first verse was repeated later in the song, so I was able to edit it enough so the missing beginning isn't a problem.
Around the time of this recording, Hillman had put out a couple of solo albums which didn't attract much sales or attention. But they had lots of good songs on them. (At some point soon, I want to post a kind of Hillman mid-1970s best of collection.) He naturally played a bunch of those, but also did some classic Byrds songs like "Eight Miles High" and "So You Want to Be a Rock n' Roll Star," as well as Flying Burrito Brothers songs, and Manassas songs. He even did a couple of Stephen Stills songs he had no hand in writing, like "Do for the Others" and "Ring of Love" (though unfortunately he couldn't remember "Rock and Roll Woman" and only played a snippet of it).
I'm guessing that maybe this bootleg hasn't gotten the attention it deserves due to the thumping problem mentioned above. But now that has mostly been fixed, I think this is one of the best Byrds-related concert recordings there is. Hopefully, this will give you a great appreciation of Hillman's talents.
01 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
02 Nothing Gets Through (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
03 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
04 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
05 Wheels (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
06 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
07 Love Is the Sweetest Amnesty (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
08 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
09 Eight Miles High (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
10 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
11 Do for the Others (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
12 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
13 Slippin' Away (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
14 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
15 Take It on the Run (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
16 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
17 Quits (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
18 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
19 Ring of Love (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
20 Fallen Favorite (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
21 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
22 [Take Me in Your] Life Boat (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
23 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
24 Rise and Fall (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
25 Hot Burrito No. 2 [Edit] (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
26 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
27 Safe at Home (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
28 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
29 Hot Burrito No. 1 (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
30 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
31 Heartbreaker (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
32 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
33 Playin' the Fool (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
34 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
35 Falling Again (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
36 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
37 Witching Hour (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
38 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
39 Clear Sailin' (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
40 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
41 Bound to Fall (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
42 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
43 It Doesn't Matter - Bound to Lose (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
44 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
45 The Dark End of the Street (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
46 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
47 Rock and Roll Woman (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
48 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
49 Time Between (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
50 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
51 Christine's Tune [Devil in Disguise] (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
52 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
53 Ring of Love (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
54 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
55 Sin City (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
56 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
57 Step On Out (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
58 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
59 White Line Fever (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
60 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
61 Like Strangers (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
62 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
63 Hot Burrito No. 1 (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
64 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
65 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
https://www.imagenetz.de/dUrW4
I looked all over for any photos of Kim O'Kelly, and could only find one, where she was with Hillman. So naturally I used that for the cover. Unfortunately, it was low-res and in black and white. I colorized it, but there's only so much I could do about the low-res problem. If you know of a better version, or any other photos of them together, please let me know.
Thanks for this post, I'm looking forward to listening to it. There is a concert on Youtube from 2019 - An Evening of Song & Stories with Chris Hillman - by Museum of Ventura County - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6RyjdKmUDk.
ReplyDeleteLooks very good. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAn amazing concert! Kim backed Chris a few days later in a conventional concert. In 1978, she was with him when McG C H player with Crosby.
ReplyDeleteWhere has she been for 40 years?
She knew the enormous songlist (except she and Chris(!) had forgotten Eight Miles High and sang lead for a considerable part of the evning with energy, empathy and feeling, as if she had sung it for years.
Thank you very much for providing it. It is a much better version of this superb evening. Robin, Profmoscow
Hi Robin, thanks for that info. Do you know that because you were at that concert? It sounds like it. I too wonder what happened to her.
DeleteBy the way, I also have a bootleg of Hillman and her at Kip's Place in Rosyln, New York, on March 1, 1978. I don't plan on posting it here though, because the setlist is very similar, yet shorter, and the sound quality is good, but not as good as this one. But it's out there on the Internet, much more than I've seen this one.
Dear Paul,
ReplyDeleteSadly not. It may have been at the Boarding House. It was one of the few later concerts (3 or 4) with 4 of the five original Byrds. Kim joined Chris for his short set and was introduced by Chris.
I did not see her name in his autobiography, nor did she come up in my Google search. I am glad that you found the photo.
Chris' other long-term singing partner, Herb Pedersen, is always worth a listen. His "The Homecoming" as a delightful, melodic song, but the words beatifully tell of time passing (too quickly) and whether we will have time to revisit our past.
If any of his tapes pass your way, or the Hendrix/Love acetate, I will be downloading the same day!
Thank you for the great site. Sincerely, Robin