House Of The Rising Sun By Shelton Irwin of APB Crescent Beach, Fl. 05-25-2007

This is an unreleased soundboard sample track that I recorded after having repaired a club's sound system. I was called up to Crescent Beach Florida to a club down the street from Artimus Pyle's then house on intracoastal waterway. His band APB was performing there over the weekend and they had trouble with the sound system and called me up there to try and fix it. I brought along another mixer, amps, cables, mics, and the basics and drove up from Orlando and spent some time during the day working on the sound system.

Later in afternoon Shelton Irwin had arrived early and went on stage by himself playing for the growing crowd and called up a local woman named Amanda to sing a few songs and so this track was the first I recorded on the now cleaned up sound system. There is a little bit of feedback in this track because Amanda picked up the mic and stood on the ground in front of the stage in the range of the main front of house PA speakers causing a little bit of feedback, but not too bad.

Shelton Irwin lived in Williston outside of Gainesville, Florida at the time and he drove over to back up Artimus in his band APB "Those Guys" some of which were not going to show up on this night, and so other players joined in like Buzzy Meekins formerly of the Outlaws and Molly Hatchet, and Greg Baril played guitar and sang as well. I probably recorded the entire show later on, but for now, here is cover track of the song House of the Rising Sun played by John Shelton Irwin (RIP) and a local woman named Amanda.

I brought along my Phillips CDR recorder and simply mixed this on the fly into a 2-track digital recorder to see what I could get. Just an off the cuff unrehearsed live track right off the stage. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have over the years, especially since Shelton has passed on to the afterlife... we called him the Mad Manatee. The nicest man you could ever hope to meet. And one hell of a songwriter and arranger.

You can hear him directing Amanda's vocal arrangement in this track as it is performed live, and later on I will post more from Shelton. If you search youtube, you can find more videos of him and his son. I miss old Shelton Irwin. Maybe that's why I like this raw live track so much- in his memory.