While he was still singing with us he banned all material that had not been recorded by the group between 1957 and 1967. There were four notable exceptions to that: anything I played on the saw (a very contraversial topic, but Bob like it), "Jamaica Farewell" (usually only performed in our symphonic pops concerts), "Rollin' River", Brownie MacIntosh's very Trio-ish composition and "All Of The Hard Days Are Gone", the Kevin McKrell song that Bob (and all of us) took a strong liking to. "Rollin' River" fell by the wayside when Bob lost interest in performing it. The saw, of course, was my personal football, and I took it with me when I left. The other two exceptions remain in the repertoire currently. In addition, there were several songs that George and I tried to reintroduce from the accepted repertoire, including "Run The Ridges", "Blow Ye Winds," "Deportee" and a few others. Some of these made it into a couple of shows but then withered for lack of Bob's enthusiasm. However, toward the end we were able to reintroduce a number of forgetten gems, such as "New York Gals" and others that have slipped my mind. (I've put a lot of that stuff behind me and find it difficult to recollect details now without referring to notes, which I don't have on had at the moment. I call it "Part-Timers".) We were reviewing material for a potential recording project that would have included some new material. I had submitted several of my own tunes for consideration, but Bob was not interested in doing anything written within the group, citing what he perceived as John Stewart's manipulation of the repertoire that the group recorded on it's last few albums in the 1960's. Apparently he felt that John had forced the group to record his own material contrary to what Bob felt was appropriate for the group. Certainly a debatable subject, but Bob has strong feelings about that and he does, after all, own the group.
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