I recently attended a Billy Joel concert, again. Ok, I have probably seen him 20something times. Me and a gaggle of friends saw him perform in Cleveland at the Quicken Loans Center, which is adjacent to the Cleveland Indians stadium ( where Billy threw out the first pitch that night and then came to the concert ). Most everyone in our gang had never seen him before and were really impressed that a guy that old could still rock and roll.

The highlight of the evening, for me, was about halfway through the concert, Billy played a song of his that I have never heard him play in concert before. One of my all time BJ favs, ROOT BEER RAG. Ironically, that used to be the name of his fan club mailing list, Rootbeer Rags. It's all instrumental, and it's ragtime. Billy's music is quite varied, but I discovered someone taped that very song at that very concert and posted it on youtube and I wanted to share it with all of you.

Now, when you watch this clip, Billy looks old, but it's the lighting and check out how guitarist Tommy Byrnes is trying to keep up with him. It's awesome. I saw Billy at PSU back in '95 at one of his special EVENINGS OF QUESTIONS, ANSWERS AND A LITTLE MUSIC where he plays for a small group of a few thousand at colleges to teach students about the music business. It's great. It's just Billy, a keyboard and the baby grand piano. He briefly played with the Root Beer Rag almost as a prelude to another song, and I remembered I almost fainted, because I love that song so much and thought he would do the whole thing.

Funny thing about the Root Beer Rag, years ago when I was in the church choir, our pianist would always dabble at the Root Beer Rag as my entrance song at our practices. Several other buddies have recorded their version of the rag and taped it for me as a gift. Enjoy!