Fifty-four years ago this month, Youngstown natives Phil Keaggy, Daniel Pecchio and John Sferra were making music on one of the most prestigious concert stages in the world.

Glass Harp fans traded bootleg recordings of that Nov. 21, 1971, Carnegie Hall concert for years. In 1997, the band gave the show its first official release on CD, and now those fans can spin the set on vinyl, the dominant format when it was recorded and the one that now generates the most physical sales in 2025.

A mobile recording unit captured the performance by the power trio — Keaggy, guitar and vocals; Pecchio, bass, flute and vocals; and Sferra, drums and vocals — at its genre-spanning best — part-straight ahead rock and part-progressive rock with plenty of jamband improvisation. The original plan was to release the live recording as the band’s third album for Decca Records, following their 1970 self-titled debut and 1971’s “Synergy.” But the band also was recording “It Makes Me Glad,” which ended up being its third and final release, at New York’s Electric Ladyland recording studio. That’s how Glass Harp was available for the Carnegie Hall gig.

“Decca was pretty good at keeping us busy,” Pecchio said. “Our recording schedule was Monday through Friday. It was like banking hours, from 12 to 5 (p.m.) or something like that. So on the weekends, we were free.”

The band was booked to play a McGovern rally in New York on one weekend. Another weekend the band played the Celebration of Life music festival in Louisiana.

“They flew us out of New York on Saturday, and we got on a commercial plane with the Chambers Brothers,” Pecchio said. “The whole plane was pretty high by the time we got to Baton Rouge, because you could smoke back then on a plane, and what they were smoking was stronger than anybody else.”

It was a nightmare of a festival where two concertgoers drowned, a third died of a drug overdose and more than 100 people were arrested for drugs. It was oppressively hot, Pecchio said, and Glass Harp didn’t go on stage until nearly dawn.

The offer to open for The Kinks at Carnegie Hall was far more pleasant, albeit nerve wracking.

“I was very nervous,” Sferra said. “It was a very heavy thing at the time, wondering if we could do it, will there be a train wreck on stage or will we forget something. But it all worked out pretty good. After the first couple of chords, we started with ‘Look in the Sky,’ and I just kind of abandoned myself and said, ‘I’m going for it.’ And it was great being up there. Of course, being with Dan and Phil made it all good. So we just forgot about the audience, forgot about the pressure of playing Carnegie Hall, and just got into jamming and doing what we do.”

It went so well that Glass Harp blew past its 45-minute allotted opening slot by about 8 minutes. That didn’t go over too well with the stage manager or, probably, The Kinks, who weren’t too friendly to start with, according to Pecchio. The band wouldn’t shake their hands when they went to meet them, and Glass Harp only had 15 minutes to soundcheck, despite doing a live recording.

“Luckily, it’s a three-piece band, so it didn’t take too much to get all that stuff together,” Pecchio said.

But that extended set caused issues for the vinyl release, both when it was first considered in the early ’70s and also for the current release. Fitting more than 20 to 22 minutes of music on a single LP side requires compressing the dynamic range and degrading the fidelity of the recording. “Can You See Me?,” the closing song of the Carnegie Hall set, was just a few seconds shy of 29 minutes.

Had it been released in the early ’70s, Keaggy’s guitar solo would have been significantly shorter. The original masters were destroyed in a fire at Electric Ladyland, and the only reason the full version was included on the CD is that Pecchio’s father-in-law, who was an audiophile who recorded some of the band’s local gigs, made a copy of the safety master that he borrowed from the engineer, and it included the excised guitar solo.

For the 2025 vinyl release, the band could compress the dynamic range to squeeze the entire show on a single LP, make it a three-sided double LP with a still compressed “Can You See Me?” on side three or include the full uncompressed version over sides three and four, requiring listeners to flip the album in the middle and interrupting the flow.

Instead, Keaggy oversaw the editing of “Can You See Me?,” paring about 9 minutes to make the running time 19:49 on the new album.

“Phil took the task of going in and taking bits out of his solo, bits out of John’s solo, bits out of my flute solo, shortening phrases that maybe went around four times and he brought him down to two times,” Pecchio said. ‘He did a really good job.'”

Pecchio is right. Those who’ve memorized every note on the CD version will notice the changes, but the vinyl version doesn’t feel abbreviated. There are no jarring cuts or transitions that pull the listener out of the experience. It makes the best out of a situation with no perfect solution.

The new album is pressed on baby blue vinyl and comes with extensive liner notes and several photos. However, none of those photos were taken at Carnegie Hall. As far as the band members know, no photos exist from that night.

The vinyl release is available locally at Record Connection in McKinley Heights and Underdog Records in Hubbard and will be available online through Glass Harp’s Bandcamp site.

Sferra said he likes the sound of the new release and is less critical of his playing than he was when the band was together.

“It’s got a little bit of an edge to it,” Sferra said. “It sounds a little raw. I like it. It’s very cool.”

For Pecchio that night was and still is a validator, an answer for those who questioned dropping out of college to pursue a career as a musician.

“It’s a milestone,” he said. “They played Carnegie Hall. Well, they must be good.”

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.