               |
I had a memorable chance to meet Phil Keaggy once, many years ago.
I recently discovered a few unusual (and unfortunately not terribly good) photos of the event, which my mother had in
a photo album. My friends and I were huge fans of Phil and his band,
Glass Harp, and were quite disappointed
when he left the group. However, shortly after he left the band, he spent some time
playing around Northeast Ohio with Peter York (now President of
Sparrow Records) as a mostly acoustic duo. We were
lucky to get them to come and give a concert in the afternoon at my high school,
and then at night at my church. In between, Phil and Peter came to our house to
rest. Phil was struggling with a sore throat, and in fact pretty much lost his
voice during the afternoon concert, forcing him to play extended instrumentals,
which we didn't mind at all! My mother gave him some Chloroseptic throat spray
to help soothe his throat. Here's a photo of Phil posing with the
bottle (I said it was an unusual photo!): |
 |
| Phil Keaggy and Peter York (circa 1973?) |
|
After resting, Phil sat in our living room and played a little guitar. I recall that he played Paul MCartney's Blackbird, which impressed us a lot because he could play it right, as opposed to our own efforts. It was little awkward because we were so nervous around him, although he was very friendly and polite. He had dinner with us, and then we headed to the church for the evening concert. I taped both shows, and pored over the reel-to-reel tapes for years. Phil played a lot of acoustic, but would sometimes switch to his Les Paul, and solo over Peter's acoustic backing. Because he was struggling with his voice, there was a lot of improvised lead guitar. Unfortunately, I have no idea what happened to those tapes, I probably wore them out. One last photo, from after the show at church. I have a
feeling I took this photo, it's at least bad enough to be my handywork! But it
could have been taken by my mother. |
 |
| Phil having a heart-to-heart discussion
after the concert |
|
That's Phil, facing us in the middle, barely visible. I recall the young man he was talking to very clearly, but can't remember his name. To the right, Peter York is looking on from behind Phil. The teenager watching from the left, with his face mostly obscured by the flash on the mic stand, is future master luthier Kevin Ryan. There are lots of sites with more information and photos of Phil, including some much better photos of his days performing with Peter York. Here are a few:
|
