Here’s a set of tunes I recorded recently with Ned Boynton.

In October, 2023, my close collaborator Ned Boynton and I traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA to play as a guitar / accordion duo for the cocktail hour and wedding ceremony of a couple of now-newlyweds. I really enjoyed getting to meet them and their families and it was especially rewarding to see them get married.

After we were back home in San Francisco, Ned suggested we jump in front of some microphones in my studio, press record, make a snapshot of the set of music we played for that wedding event, and share the recorded music with the newlyweds as a keepsake for them. So we did that, and now Ned has posted the recordings on Bandcamp to share with everyone.

The focus in this set is mainly popular, singable tunes from the middle 20th century, so you won’t hear much of the flashier and jazzier tunes we often do in some of our live sets. But I think these tunes are a lot of fun to listen to. Maybe you’ll enjoy this honest document of some duo music.

I played my Serenellini Professional 414 Cassotto for these recordings, and Ned played his Gibson ES-5 through a 1962 Fender Deluxe.

Among the instruments I might have played, I chose the Serenellini largely because of its mellow-sounding contralto reed set on the bass side and its overall rich tone and responsive character. My Petosa AM-1100 would have been another beautiful choice but its bass-side contralto reeds are more, let’s say, assertive because of its standard reed block configuration where the Serenellini has an L-shaped bass reed block that mellows the sound considerably. I find the AM-1100 tends to suit me better when I’m using both left and right hands in a group with a bass player, while the Serenellini tends to be the right tool for duo situations where the accordion is responsible for the bass instrument’s role in the overall sound.