Down by the Salley Gardens

There’s nothing at all wrong with doing public shows — shoot, we in the band are such hams that we all get a charge out of puttin’ on and showin’ off on stage — but we live for the weekly jam sessions, when we just kick back and play for each other. These nights are a musical crazy quilt, zigzagging all over our eclectic repertoire, zipping from a zany jug band tune to a sweet ballad and then back again in the span of dozen minutes. Here’s a typical moment. Fresh from that raucous blues stomp, we suddenly land out the softest sod of our evening’s stroll together, this gentlest of all Irish tunes, compliments of the poet William Butler Yeats.