Welcome to the latest in our ‘Jeff Healey – Rarities’ series. Here we’ll spotlight various rare audio and video clips of Jeff (…and occasionally some special guests will be along for the ride)…

‘When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky‘ is a song written by Bob Dylan that originally appeared on his 1985 ‘Empire Burlesque‘ album. Musically, the song has strong echoes of another Dylan composition, ‘All Along The Watchtower’, as famously interpreted by Jimi Hendrix, only filtered back through the Bob Dylan lens (if ya know what I mean).

In 1988, Jeff covered this track (and about a dozen others) for the ‘Road House‘ film and soundtrack. An audience favourite, ‘When The Night…’ was a live staple throughout the ’88-’89 tours. By the time ‘Hell To Pay‘ was released in 1990 however, it had pretty much been retired from the live set in favour of fresh material.

The performance we’re spotlighting today took place on the ‘Feel This‘ tour, at the 1993 Balingen Festival in Germany. One of the things that makes this interpretation worthy of our attention, (other than the fact that the song was rarely performed by Jeff in the 90’s) is that it features the short lived expanded line-up we seem to be talking about a fair amount these days. This version of the band included the late Washington Savage on keys and Mischke Butler and Toucu singing back-up.

The addition of these players transforms the cut into a more fully realized production; Washington’s keys (alternating between synth and more traditional piano sounds) fill in the background without overpowering; Jeff is freed up to cut loose with some truly inspired playing; and the song has just the right amount of Dylanesque drama to give the singers something to really sink their teeth into. Simply fantastic.

It makes one wonder what could have happened in the studio with material catered to fit this road-tested line-up.

It was not meant to be however. Various factors, including lacklustre sales on ‘Feel This‘, led the band to consider this a worthy yet failed experiment and any further pursuit was abandoned. Shortly after this tour, the JHB would head back down a more stripped down route, albeit with guitarist extraordinaire Pat Rush joining in on the fun…

Hit play and turn this bad boy to 11… You won’t regret it!

(…once again, this cut comes to us courtesy the collection of our good friend László Kaszás!)

Dig!

~Rog