No matter how premeditated or rehearsed Trio has become over the years, it often yields surprising results – even in the control-freakish Season 5 I nailed a reinvention of “Other Plans” in single take.

When I had my tonsils removed in 2002 I had no way of knowing how it would impact my singing. I waited, impatiently for my throat to heal enough that I could sing.

As my first sans-tonsil week ended my voice started to return to normal. At first I sounded weird and too-open – like Bjork. Higher notes were less constrained, lower ones more boomy.

I decided that I had to document my altered vocals with a Trio, but with my singing handicapped my song choices were limited. As a result, on the few songs I could sing I spent more time rehearsing my guitar parts than vocals – my voice wouldn’t stand up to repeated tries at each song, so my fingers had to deliver their peak performance.

That’s how I arrived at this fantastic version of “Icy Cold,” from Trio Season 2, #15. The fingerstyle passages at the beginning and end were played exactly as arranged – I didn’t ad-lib at all (highly unusual for me when it comes to intricate guitar pieces).

At the time the addition seemed like a lark, but over the years it’s held up as one of the best all Trio performances – a one-time-only reinvention of one of my favorite original songs.